Greens Aerification Notice

As many of you may already be aware of, aerification is an integral part of any quality greens maintenance program.  Our number one goal at Woodland Hills Country Club is to maintain the highest quality putting surfaces for as much as the year as possible.  To make this possible we must aerify greens to relieve compaction to allow water and nutrients to reach the root system of the turfgrass plants.  This fall we will aerify and topdress greens on October 5^th, please bear with us over the next couple of weeks as the greens heal and return to the high standard you are accustomed too.

Fore The Golfer: Spraying On The Golf Course

Waste Bunker

The first load of sand was dumped in the waste bunker between 8 and 11 yesterday. 

7 Tee Update

The new tee has been sodded, rolled and even mowed once.  Everything is continuing as scheduled and we will open it as soon as it is ready. We still have to fertilize it a couple more times as well as aerify and topdress to eliminate the minor imperfections in the sod.

#7 Tee

For those of you that have not been out to play golf this week, we have begun to rebuild the 7th tee.  Before we started moving any dirt, we had a couple eucalyptus trees removed on the hill to the right of the tee, and a few others trimmed to get some additional sunlight to the area of the new tee location.  A temporary mat was installed at 97 yards from the green to use while the new tee is being built. 
On Monday we removed the sod from the area and began rototilling and leveling the new tee area.  We hope to finish this process this week, next week we will start hauling in a four inch sand base for the sod. Nest we will level and compact the sand, reinstall irrigation heads and sod the following week.   
When the new tee is completed it will be similar to the tee on #6.   It will be one level, the same height as the curb on the cartpath, slightly larger than #6.  Teeing distances for the new tee will be 112 yellow, 118 for the red, 122 white, and 132 for the blue and black tees. 
I will give more updates as the process continues, we are planning on opening the new tee in 4 to 6 weeks.
Below is one final picture of the tee before we started construction.

New Trees

If you have been on the course this week you probably noticed a few new trees being planted.  We have added a pine on the right of #4 fairway near the maintenance yard and a podocarpus about 75 yards from the green on the right, both were planted for future protection from balls leaving the course.  On the right of the 5th fairway we added three pines for the same reason.  We also added three California sycamores between the 10th green and the new black tee on #11.  Finally two oaks have been planted, one on #11 where we lost the large oak earlier this year and on the left of #16 fairway (pictured below) near where an oak is dying back.

BALL MARKS ON GREENS

We have been noticing more unrepaired ball marks than usual.  Below are instructions on how to properly repair a ball mark.  Please repair yours and any others you come across on the green as a ball mark repaired soon after being made recovers much faster than one repaired the next day. 

 

The right way to fix a ball mark

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Step 1:
Use a pronged ball mark
repair tool, knife,
key or tee.

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Step 2:
Insert the repair tool at the
edges of the mark; not the
middle of the depression.

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Step 3:
Bring the edges together
with a gentle twisting motion,
but don't lift the center. Try not to
tear the grass.

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Step 4:
Smooth the surface with
a club or your foot. Repeat
steps until the surface is one
you would want to putt over.