Recovery

The temperatures have finally dropped low enough to take the stress off the golf course, mainly greens.  After the deluge of 6+” of rainfall followed by temperatures in the 90 – 100 degree range for many days, we are ready for a break.  During the Men’s Invitational we were also adding more stress to the plant by mowing and double rolling the greens. As you can now see the conditions were just too much for the old bentgrasses and the annual bluegrass to handle.  Some dye-off has occurred as a result and we are beginning the recovery process by raising the height of cut, venting the greens by aerifying with needle tines (pencil size), topdressing, and inter-seeding with the newer hybrid types of bentgrass.  If you compare the old greens to the new #4 green it is obvious how much better the new hybrids can handle the environmental extremes with the added tournament conditions.  These two pictures were taken after the men’s and ladies invitationals.