Fall 2021

The arrival of fall is always a celebrated time for the maintenance staff. The sometimes brutal heat of a Missouri summer has been survived and another successful growing season is in the books for Adams Pointe Golf Club. 

Fall is a critical time for the golf course. The health of the turf going into winter has a direct correlation to the success during next years spring and so on.  As always fall aerification has been preformed to relieve compaction and help with gas exchange in the root zone. Fairways and rough have been overseeded and are already growing in nicely. The entire course has been fertilized. Giving the grass a boost of nutrients in the fall helps the plant store all the carbohydrates needed to survive winter dormancy.     

No. 18 fall of 2021

                                                                            

Red maple trees(full fall color)

Morning mowing gets quite dark before daylight savings

Two pin oaks have been transplanted in the native area along the right side of No. 18. These trees are in the same location as the two previous trees that unfortunately had to be removed over the last couple years. Staff has always felt that the location of these trees is an important visual in framing out the courses closing hole. 

 

Pin oaks are a relatively fast growing tree that can reach 60-70 feet and will grow 24 inches or more per year. This one is currently around 12 feet or so.

The many grasses of adams pointe

Although we saw 90 degree days late into September, fall is officially here. The sun is at a lower angle, days are getting shorter and overnight temperatures are starting to get cooler. This is all great news for our cool season turf types as they can begin to heal from the summer heat and prepare for winter. Adams Pointe, like many courses, has multiple species of grasses used for it's playing surfaces. The greens and fairways are both cool season bentgrass. The greens are a blend of Cato and Crenshaw bent cultivars while the fairways are composed of Princeville bentgrass. The roughs are mostly a mixture of tall and fine fescues and bluegrass cultivars. The tee box surfaces are a warm season zoysia grass. Mixed into almost all of the course, minus the greens, is a pesky warm season bermudagrass. The course was originally constructed with the bermudagrass and redone in 2004 with the aforementioned turf cultivars.     

As a general rule cool season grasses do most of their growing when daytime air temperatures are between 60-75 degrees. Many factors including disease, too much water and heat stress can kill off turf during the summer months. Every year in the early fall both the rough and fairways are overseeded. Along with areas that have died off or thinned out we also overseed into the bermudagrass that has invaded the fairways. Throughout the year it is a battle for ground, so to speak, between the cool season and warm season grasses. During the spring and the fall the bentgrass has the upper hand and a chance to fill in thinning areas. The opposite is true for the summer and the warm season turf types. Bermudagrass is, unfortunately for us, a very aggressive and quick spreading grass. Overseeding in the fall with bentgrass into the bermuda will introduce new plants and hopefully give the cool season grass a better chance in the fight.    

Overseeding into bermuda in fairway

Overseeding thinning/bare spots in fairway

Overseeding in the rough

 

Turf Disease 101

Turf disease such as pythium, anthracnose and dollar spot affect highly managed turf during the hot and humid summer months. This July has been no exception as the humidity has been very high all month. Dollar spot is the most prevalent disease on our cool season grasses here at the course. The pathogen that causes this disease can grow when temperatures are between 50-90 degrees but is most probable when temperatures are between 70-80 degrees. Dollar spot, as well as most turf diseases, thrive in wet conditions. Prolonged leaf wetness, most commonly from mornings with heavy dew, cause the disease to develop and spread through the turf.  

Dollar spot (Clarireedia jacksonii)

Dollar spot with visible mycelium

On closely mowed turf, dollar spot injury is generally 1-3 inches in diameter and are often sunken. On higher mowed turf, they may be as much as 6 inches. Where disease is bad these spots can merge into large areas like in the top picture on this post. In the second picture the growth of fungal mycelium is visible.

Close up of mycelium on leaf blade

This mycelium can be transferred from one plant to another from mowing and foot traffic. Left untreated it has the potential to take over and kill a lot of turf but fortunately it is a relatively slow grower and can be both prevented and/or treated reactively after development. The best way to combat turf diseases is having a healthy stand of grass. Low nitrogen fertilizers with micro-nutrients are spoon fed to the greens throughout the stressful summer months. This July we applied two applications of preventative fungicides to the greens that cover a broad spectrum of turf diseases which include dollar spot.

 

Practice Facility Upgrades

Man, June was a hot one. Halfway through the month it seemed like summer had arrived early and was settling in. We had 12 days in a row of 90 plus degrees and the greens were starting to get heat stressed. We couldn't give them enough water! Fortunately, cooler days came and we were able to needle tine them just in time for the 6+ inches of rain we've seen here at the end of the month.   

Punching holes in #4 green

The practice facilities have seen a sizable increase in usage over the last year or so. The added traffic over the winter has unfortunately caused some damage to the zoysia grass on the driving range tee.  We decided to replace the first 5 feet in front of the artificial mats with fescue sod.    

Range tee before and after

We are currently in the process of adding targets to the driving range. The yardage poles will soon be sodded around with zoysia grass. The sodded areas are shaped to mimic a putting green surface. We are also building a new tee box 40 yards closer to the fairway on No.10. The green tee blocks are going to be relocated to this new tee. We are hoping to have it open for play next season.

Yardage poles on range before and after
with sod stripped but not yet sodded

MAY WE GET SOME ROLL

5 weeks after greens aerification 4/28/2021

The up and down temperatures this spring have been less than ideal growing conditions. We are 5 weeks out from greens aerification and our punch holes are still not completely filled in. That being said the greens are firm, faster than normal and rolling great! There are many factors that affect the speed of putting greens. 

Conditions that we control that affect greens speed:

• Mowing height 
• Mowing frequency 
• Rolling
• Topdressing
• Moisture levels (to some extent)

Conditions that we can not control that affect greens speed:

• Excessive moisture(due to rain)
• Humidity
• Wind
• Turf growth rate(which can differ from day to day and season to season)
• Time of day/sun angle and whether you are putting with or against the grain
• Foot traffic 
• Ball marks
• Displaced bunker sand

Obviously, mowing height of the turf plays a roll in how fast or slow the putting surface rolls but that is far from the only factor that affects greens speed. The firmness of the green is a major component affecting the speed of a putt. It is also the larger of the challenges we face as we keep the greens both playable and healthy. Our cultural practices stay fairly consistent throughout the golf season as we mow every morning and roll several times a week. The real battle is in keeping the greens growing healthily with a combination of fertilization and irrigation without too much or too little of either. The USGA has a great article on this topic, which I encourage you to read here.

Parks Maintenance Sales Tax Initiative Renewal

Isn't this great? Blue skies, fresh cut grass, birds chirping. I love this golf stuff.

No.18 3/31/2021

The turf is greening up and it is beginning to look like golfing season. As always we are excited to provide our golfers with quality playing conditions all year long. Our greens are still in the healing process from our spring aerification which we completed on March 22nd this year. 

In 2017 Blue Springs voters passed a sales tax initiative that raised the sales tax one-half percent for five years, which equates to 25 cents for every $50 spent inside the city. A portion of these tax dollars were allocated for use by the golf course. The new roofing on the clubhouse, cart path and bunkers were made possible as a result of the residents of Blue Springs passing the tax initiative. Tuesday, April 6th, there is vote to renew this tax plan. Adams Pointe has already and will continue to benefit tremendously if it passes again. The other portion of these tax dollars, listed in the pamphlet below, go towards parks, trails and other public use facilities around the city of Blue Springs.  

Drainage Issues

The course is finally thawing out from the roughly 6 inches of snow we saw in the month of February. The snow would start to melt during the day and then refreeze overnight making it easy to see some of our drainage issues that we have around the course. The design of Adams Pointe is such that a large amount of water runs into drain boxes located in the fairway. No drainage system is perfect and over time new low areas show up holding water that never makes it to a drain box. Our wonderful compacted clay based soil also has trouble moving heavy rains down through its profile. Over the years the maintenance staff has added drainage pipes into some of these low, trouble spots that hold water. We have recently dug into some of these spots to find that our drain lines have been damaged. Some have been crushed and some have been accidentally punctured during aerification. Hundreds of feet of trenches have been cleaned out and new perforated drain pipe has been installed on holes #9 and #14. 

broken drain pipe #14

broken drain pipe #9

broken drain pipe #9

 

new pipe in cleaned out trench

*Adams Pointe will be closed Monday, March 22nd for spring aerification*

Where's the Groundhog?

Maintenance work on a golf course can often be very repetitive. This is especially true for the winter months. December, January and February consist of a lot of the same work from year to year. When the weather allows us to get outside we trim/cut down trees and brush, work on drainage and irrigation issues and other projects that get pushed to the side during the busy growing season. When the weather isn't so pleasant outside we'll work on things around the shop. Painting ball washers and traffic signs, cleaning trashcans and tidying things up as we wait for spring to arrive. 

The purpose of this blog is to keep all of you updated on what is going on around the course. To keep it from also being repetitive we like to focus on projects that aren't so repetitive, boring if you will. This last month at Adams Pointe was fairly cold and quite wet. Snow/rain events were spaced out just enough so that the course was closed due to it being too wet or completely coved in snow for a majority of the month. The weather was also not conducive for us to accomplish any noteworthy projects. 

Speaking of repetitive, how about those CHIEFS? A close friend of mine writes a blog on Fansided. If you are a chiefs fan and interested in a good read, please check it out here.