Coharie CC Members,

July projects are keeping the course alive from this unrelenting drought, hopefully, we will gain some assistance from Mother nature soon. On one hand the drought has been a blessing because it has given me the opportunity to audit our irrigation system to determine which head or heads are operating properly. As of this writing there have been over a hundred heads that have been adjusted to operate properly, which means to ensure they are covering the overlap and pressure, arc and trajectory is optimal.

By the time you receive this newsletter, you will have already noticed the trimmed back tree lines, pond banks and ditch lines on the course. This was a coordination from Randy Barefoot and his team at Prestage. A big thank you for the assistance.

The progress on sixteen green is going well and is not showing any signs of stress despite this heat. I am coordinating retrieving the pallets of sod that will be used to start our Tifdwarf nursery and hopefully, this will happen in July and then go directly to greens three, five and sixteen right side where we did not sod during the drainage project. As fate would have it the above-mentioned greens are covering nicely.

On a disappointing note, there has been minor and preventable damage to some greens from slamming clubs (putters) into the green surface which is an obvious detriment. Please be on the lookout for these folks causing damage, our staff has enough to do without unnecessary meticulous green repair work.

I have made a change to our green watering program, which includes watering the greens only after moisture readings have been obtained each afternoon to determine if and how much each green should need. On a good note, our greens have been experiencing more even moisture levels across all green surfaces at one and a half and three inches beneath the grass canopy. Which translates into more consistent putting speeds, truer rolls and healthier grass.

I did not speak about this for June but all tee box complexes that were compacted such as, #1, #2, #3, #4, #9 #15, #17 (Moisture, shade related) were aerated utilizing a one-inch spoon tine pull behind tractor aerator and they are responding well to the process. When the ground is compacted the soil doesn’t receive the proper amounts of water and nutrients which prevents the rot system from breathing and uptake of the above-mentioned.

We are vertigrooming the greens every Monday, mowing them, applying sand (topdressing), dragging the sand into the grass and finally, rolling them. If all goes well (vast majority of the time) we will be completed except for rolling them by 11 am. Please keep this in mind when making your tee times for Monday morning.

Thank you for your continued support! 

 Fairways and Greens

Mike,