Opening, Trees, and Little Red Dots

Opening day has finally arrived.  The grass is just starting to grow, but thanks to dry conditions the course is firm enough to handle play.  Unfortunately, with temperatures in the 20's and 30's for the next few nights, play will likely be limited to afternoons.  You will notice there is still some storm damage we are working hard to clean up, but hopefully we can pick at it over the next few weeks and get the course looking great again. 

Many people have asked about the trees that were damaged by the President's Day storm.  Our plan right now is to be patient.  We will start by cleaning up the downed limbs, and soon we will rent a bucket lift so we can prune the stubs that remain up in the trees along with any 'widowmakers' that hang above.

Finally, a word about the red paint dots on the greens and fairways.  Every spring, I dot the edges of the greens and some fairways and tees with red paint, and I always get a lot of questions like: "Are you shrinking the greens?" or "Why are you making the fairways bigger?".  Well, the answer is that as we transition from winter to spring, the actual edge of the bentgrass on the greens and fairways is easily distinguished from the other species of grasses present.  Therefore, I am only putting the mowed edges back where they belong.  We do this for aesthetics, to maintain the proper contours of the fairway design, and to make sure the right species of grass are mowed at the right height (in the case of the fairways and step cut). Below are some photos:

You can see the dark turf between the red lines and the step cut.  The step cut is seeded with ryegrass, which is darker, and had been accidentally mowed by a fairway mower at some point.  We are trying to get the ryegrass back to its proper height.

Same situation here on a green.  The white line where the collar meets the green has been 'scalped' by a mower.  The red dot indicate where the edge of the green should be.

Here's the edge of the putting green.  See where the bluegrass has been mowed down by a collar mower?  This is the best time of year to grow that out and get the proper shape and turf in place.

Another sharp turn on the hill of 10 fairway.  An easy mistake to make.