The Little Things That Make The Course Look Better!

We recently set aside 2 hours to edge out the ragged grass and gravel below the stairs to the men's tee on 8. We then installed some stone we had from other projects and the whole area looks 100 times better.  I am constantly looking to make simple inexpensive changes that better the enjoyment of our members as well as the guests that play the course.  It really does come down to making the "little Things" important!


Mike O'Neill, GCS

Very Wet Lately...

Last week we received 4.5" of rainfall for the week and then Sunday we received an additional 2"!  When we get that much rain in short periods of time, the above photo is the end result.  We end up having about half of our bunkers looking like the above pic of the front bunker on 17 looks like.  This requires a great deal of labor to pump the bunkers, remove rocks and push the sand up onto the bunker faces and get them back into some sort of playable condition.   Not only does this create more work but you can see the soil and rock contamination that occurs every time the bunkers wash out this bad. Without liners in 95% of the bunkers we get a tremendous amount of soil and rock contamination and leaves the bunker in worse shape than it was.  We do our best to remove the noticeable stones but this process makes the bunkers look and play worse and worse....

Mike O'Neill, GCS

NYS Amateur...A Great Success!

The NYS Am went very well by all accounts.  We had the greens about as firm and fast as we could get them, even after the .6" of rain in 15 minutes we received on Wednesday.  The course played and looked great as a result of the hard work of the individuals pictured above.  My staff worked their butts off to get the course into the tournament shape we had here at Bellevue the past few days.  I would like to thanks them for their hard work and dedication in making the event a great success!  Now we regroup and focus on providing the best conditions possible the remainder of the season for the membership.

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Flower Bed #8 Men's Tee...Not Weeds!

At first glance, the flower bed behind the 8th men's tee looks like it is full of weeds, but it's not!  The new low growth is a Northeastern Wildflower mix we hydro-seeded back in April.  The mix will offer a variety of different wildflower species native to the northeast such as Snapdragons, Lupine, Baby's Breath, Wallflower and Catchfly just to name a few.  As the plants mature they will offer a variety of different colors as well as a good stabilizer for the soil in the flower bed.  The bed will still need to be carefully weeded often until the flowers mature and provide a nice dense cover over the ground.

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Clover And Weed Control!

With the recent dry weather we have been experiencing, out irrigation deficiencies become very noticeable. Sure the grass gets dry and brown looking where the irrigation does not cover, but the by-product of notkeeping healthy full grass with good irrigation is the invasion of weeds and mostly clover! We have been attacking the clover recently with some targeted sprays.  The sprays will work temporarily but the clover and weeds will eventually come back in.  In the end, and with your own home lawn, the best weed control is always a well irrigated, fertilized stand of turf!

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Thin Greens Filling In Nicely, We Needed The Right Weather!

The photo above of the 16th green was taken May 12th.  The photo below was taken June 2nd.  A drastic difference in turf quality considering the hard work it took to get it to the picture below.  We have sodded, seeded and sprigged the green to get it to the point it is now.  The main factor that helped us is the soil temps have come up to a good point which are conducive for seed germination.  The greens that were thin will continue to fill in as we get the warmer weather and our cocktail of fertilizers continues.

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Inter-seeding Bentgrass Into Areas On Greens With Winter Damage.

Many courses in the northeast suffered very severe winter damage this winter.  We are not severe here but we do have some stubborn areas where the turf is not going to come back very quickly.  The top (2) photos are from April 16th, when we manually spiked and seeded the thin areas on the greens with A4 creeping bentgrass.  The bottom (2) photos are from May 15th when we went into these thin areas again with a slit-seeder machine that physically injects seed into a groove made into the green.  This allows for the seed to soil contact we need for effective germination of the seed.  These areas will be nursed back to health with frequent watering to allow for complete germination.  Getting some bentgrass to fill into the voids will go a long way in the future as the bentgrass is way more hardy than the poa annua that populated the thin areas before last winter.  We will repeat the process on any thin areas as we go forward in getting the greens in championship condition!

Mike O'Neill, GCS