Course Update 6/6/2021

Our turfgrass is healthy and happy throughout. Greens continue to improve as we topdress out the remaining bumpiness and work on bringing some speed.

Elk urine spots were horrendous this season, possibly the worst they’ve ever been. We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time removing the ruined soil and reseeding. Rainfall is helping with this healing process.

We continue to make plans for a full bunker renovation beginning in September of 2022 and finishing in Summer of 2023. We have secured Beau Welling Design as our design consultant and are currently in discussions with two contractors: Frontier Golf and Heritage Links.

This was my last report to my greens committee regarding Poa Annua: “The Poa Annua chemical that we are experimenting with is called PoaCure. It has shown promise in other climates. Research began with it all the way back in 2005 or so. It has been in beta testing around the world for about two years now and was just approved in our region of the country last year. Little is known in our particular climate about how best to use it, and we are being very careful to not obliterate all of our other species of turfgrass. The company that is selling it is limiting the sale to ensure that it is just used on small tests at this point to limit their liability. Even in the best-case scenario, research suggests that it takes at least two years to remove Poa Annua from bentgrass and Kentucky Bluegrass…and in climates less conducive to poa growth in the first place. We continue to use it on 3 green and 6 fairway at rates where we are not putting all of our turfgrass at risk. As we all know, this particular climate is ideally suited to growing Poa Annua and with every mild winter, it gets worse. The Poa Annua remains very active under snow cover in mild winter temperatures. We continue to strive to clean up greens by plugging out Poa Annua, time will tell how successful we are with PoaCure.” To that we have added some more aggressive rates on a sliver of #3 green and #6 fairway. We have also added the ‘1’ tee on hole #3 as an aggressive test area. This particular tee is probably 80% Poa Annua. It should help us determine our threshold for pain.

We have been trying to make the paving happen. We are looking to complete holes 3 through 7 this season. T-Bend is struggling mightily with understaffing and an incredible demand by new homeowners.