Oakdale Greens Department

 We have started our first week of maintenance (Thompson) on greens/tees/fairways. As part of this we will be vertidraining the greens and sweeping sand into the holes. This is to increase infiltration on the greens. In helping water move down through the greens soil profile so they will breath better and drain better. The dryer we can manage the greens the more consistently firm conditions we can provide. On Thompson the only green that we will not need to do is #5. This is a USGA built green that has a sand profile that doesn't need to be modified.

 For the Men's Member Guest we put a putting course on the practice green. Designed and constructed by the greens crew and cleaned up the next morning. 

We have started to clean up the edges of select tee decks. Squaring them up to make point down the fairways and removing unusable edges that are sloped. Over the years edges change, tee grasses (bent grass) bleeds into the rough and needs to be removed to clean everything up.   All of these tees are on Homenuik. They have been realigned and edges sodded. We have also started on Thompson #4 and will continue on other select tees on the courses.

We had a golfer out practicing around the 1rst green of Homenuik on Monday the 9th. There was multiple practice balls around the green and 5 divots on the putting surface. This is very inappropriate and unnecessary. Please refrain from using any other club other than a putter when playing or practicing on the greens. These areas are repaired now and in a few weeks will fully recover.

The recovery on the fairways is coming along well. We have seen all areas reduced and some fully recovered. We have been doing a mixture of venting (with a machine or by hand), overseeding, extra watering, and increased fertilization. The bentgrass on the fairway grows laterally and is filling in smaller areas. August is a perfect month for seed to finish growing in these areas, with cooler nights and reasonable temperature days recovery will continue.  

Demoing a bunker machine to see if this would be a good addition to our equipment. They produce a nice smooth finish in the bunker but it can be a challenge to get in and out of the bunkers. We don't want to damage the edges of any of the bunkers.