Why you never get comfortable in this line of work

As the Marathon Classic enters the second day of its temporary colonization of our golf course, the heat is ON!  90+ degrees and extreme humidity have taken its toll on the golf course.  As I've said many times before, I would rather have no rain than too much rain.  Unfortunately, we have the perfect example of "why" right in front of us now.  Sadly, you will not be returning to quite the same conditions you had when you left.

Just this past Thursday, you will remember the golf course as completely saturated for right on two weeks straight.  Rain on 18 of 19 days prior, the golf course was in rough shape.  Standing water covered the fairways, rough, and even some tees for days.  We had not mowed fairways or tees for what seemed like forever.  Finally, with things letting up, we were beginning to mow again Friday, Saturday, and the heat and humidity set in.

Unfortunately for us, having as much Poa annua in our fairways as we do, this meant trouble.  Saturated, smelly soil practically suffocated turf in low areas and it only took a day of heat for things to start turning bad.  Turf in these areas is thin at least and in many cases gone.  Areas of high cart traffic seemed to take things the worst.  The start of 3 fairway, 7 fairway, 9 fairway and just about anywhere carts usually travel are loaded with Poa annua and really subject to loss.  The worst areas have been in poorly drained rough areas.

This picture is from last week.  As you can see the days and days of saturation was already beginning to take its toll on the turf.

Carts driving through these areas doesn't much help either.  This turf had already been thinned and stressed from carts.

Down in front of 1 green was lost long before tournament week.  Our best efforts to squeegee water off were for naught.

The usual puddles in #8 fairway were there for days, suffocating the turf.

Another area last week beginning to thin and stress out from being innundated.

Finally, we were able to mow Friday.  As you can see, we were actually bailing hay.

Now, more of these areas have begun to "check out" and more or less rot.

Compounding this damage was the fact that the saturation was so profound here that we could not make an effective chemical application to stem disease from harming us farther.  There were some areas of disease present.  Unfortunately, the damage from the water itself was far more prevalant.  As one of my friends put it, just plain ol' "jungle rot".

Now there is some hope for these areas.  They may not be quite as bad as they seem for the long term.  Since we have been able to make a chemical application, it seems there is some growth in many of these areas.  While they are browned out, with a few weeks of favorable conditions these areas can recover.  We will use nursery sod to repair the worst of the areas, but mostly rely on the plants to battle back and refill on their own.

This area has bentgrass remaining and will fill in over time.

Many areas of poor drainage have small blemishes such as this that will recover.  Probably a little disease here but should recover in short order.

In short, Mother Nature rained down on us and punished our weakest areas.  This isn't the first time, and won't be the last.  We will take what we learn from this and try to make things better in the future.