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Redstone Golf Club Agronomy

A Recollection of the daily happenings and events in the Agronomy department for a PGA Tour Host facility leading up to the Shell Houston Open, including everything that can go right and wrong along the way.

20

Rainy Winter
Posted in: Tournament Course Maintenance

It looks like somebody turned on the water faucet in the sky and hasn't shut it off yet.  Hard to believe you would be hearing that after the 2011 drought.  We go from the biggest drought event in Texas in 100+ years to an extremely wet winter just like that.  You hear about changing weather in Texas all the time, but this is crazy!!  I'm not here to complain about the situation, only to shed some light on the challenges it presents to a crew trying to get ready for the SHO...

 

03

PGA Tour Site Visit - Pre Tournament
Posted in: Tournament Course Maintenance

This past week we had our annual Pre-Tournament PGA Tour Agronomy site visit.  They normally come out and tour the entire course looking at all greens, tees, fairways, etc. and make assessments, suggest projects and timetables, and report back to the Tour with the results.  

This year's visit was a little less stressful...
 

21

Leveling Green Collars
Posted in: Member Course Maintenance

The collars on a golf course can be the most travelled or compacted area on a course due to the daily mowing/rolling plus foot traffic.  The compaction added to the transition of grasses can cause death in a hurry.  So, every year we tend to lay quite a bit of sod in the 3-4 feet just off the green's edge. 

What I'm going to discuss here is how we get it smoothed out and perfect for our event every spring. 

 

14

Growing in Ryegrass Rough - Winter Time in Houston
Posted in: Tournament Course Maintenance

By the looks of these pictures you would think we were destroying the roughs or a crazy employee got loose with the wrong mower. Your eyes are not deceiving you and there is a purpose behind this madness!

This is a process that we have done the last couple of years (and will do in the coming weeks) to help minimize the damage to the parent bermudagrass underneath the ryegrass that we plant to grow from November - May.

 

14

Managing Speed on Bermuda Greens in the Winter
Posted in: Tournament Course Maintenance

The question normally gets posed to me this time of year by staff members, members, and anyone curious about our operation why we don't mow greens that often during the winter months.

Every day our maintenance department sends out a daily condition report to all staff members letting them know what maintenance practices are going to be done each day and special projects to come that week.

Our observant staff takes notice that over the period of 5-7 days from time to time the report says nothing about mowing greens, only rolling and blowing them

 

09

Syngenta Business Institute
Posted in: Tournament Course Maintenance

I had the pleasure this week of being 1 of 27 superintendents selected from across the country to attend the Syngenta Business Institute on the campus of Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, NC.
At Graylyn Conference Center(http://www.graylyn.com), right next to the campus, we came together for 4 days to learn how to be better superintendents in areas unrelated to turfgrass like financial mgmt, negotiations, delegation, motivation, leadership and people mgmt, and understanding generations. It was an awesome experience getting to learn from some of the best professors and leaders in these areas.
It was also great to see some of the leading superintendents in the country, and see how they handle these same situations at their clubs.