Tee Renovation Scheduled For #2 And #5 Men's Tees.

We recently inquired and received 15 loads of  Free soil from a local pool company building a pool in the area.  The soil was some very nice topsoil so the plan is to put the soil to good use by re-building the 2nd and 5th men's tees.  These tees are the weakest on the golf course for many reasons so we will address the master plan and renovate them to provide a very nice teeing surface for next years golfing season.

 #5 Tee below contains (2) very uneven and misaligned tees.  The tees here are also inundated with tree roots from trees in the area.

 The master plan below shows how the #2 tee will be built utilizing (2) separate tees for the blue and white teeing area.

 The master plan below shows the 5th tee and how it will merge into being (1) large tee at the same  elevation.

In the meantime, we will begin construction sometime in early October and during this time the blue and white tee markers will be placed on the ladies tee until next season for daily play.  Preemptive apologies for any inconvenience this will cause until next season.  

Mike O'Neill, GCS

The Obvious Benefits Of Core Aeration...

The pictures above shows two different portions of greens that we core aerated back in July.  These areas are historically high-traffic areas that receive excess wear and traffic from foot traffic, a wetter than usual area or a pinch point where golfers tend to funnel because of the topography in these areas. These areas are both, as mentioned, "Wet Areas" that tend to stay wetter than the rest of of the green. The extremely wet June we experienced further exacerbated the problem here so we took the approach to core aerate these spots and the benefits are evident with the healthy looking turf in all of the aeration holes.

With the demands to keep greens speed at a certain expected level, these areas that are weaker will be expected to thin out come August.   I have heard members ask "Why are the greens slow today" or "Why can't the greens be this fast all of the time".... The answer is in the pictures above.  We would have extensive thin areas like the ones pictured above if we did't take our foot off the pedal at least a little bit.  These areas will fill in nicely going forward thanks to the aeration process.  We will be core aerating all the greens on September 8th;  the process is very labor intensive but the benefits to our greens is exponential and is the reason our greens play the way they do all summer!

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Wetting Agent Products For Turf...Worth The Investment!

The above picture shows how dry the intermediate rough has gotten recently with the dry weather we have been experiencing.  It is very noticeable how healthy the fairways look compared to some of the rough.  In the picture above, you can see a distinct line where we sprayed wetting agent on the fairways this spring to help keep the fairways moisture level adequate.  The lackluster irrigation system is the main reason we spray the wetting agent in the spring.  Next year we will include the intermediate cut in the wetting agent application for very obvious reasons!!!

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Proactive Aeration On Historically "High-Traffic Areas" On Greens.

This week many will notice the random strips where we have core aerated the greens that tend to go south during the months of July and August with our rigorous maintenance programs to keep up greens speed.  These areas tend to thin because of an existing issue with drainage or lack of soil underneath.  The spots we aerated are areas than cannot withstand the pressure of frequent mowing and rolling coupled with excessive foot traffic.  The aeration is an attempt to be proactive in creating a healthier environment for the turf in these areas.  You can see by the above picture, my assistant Keith Eilertsen is also applying seed to these areas to promote an even more tolerant bentgrass turf species to traffic for the future.

Mike O'Neill, GCS

#12 Approach...Much Improved!

The late fall project of creating "Drainage sumps" for surface water removal of the 12th approach has been completed.  The drainage is doing a nice job through this very wet spell.  We recently removed bentgrass/poa sod from our nursery green collar and sodded the entire area.  This area should play and look a whole lot better from here on out!

Mike O'Neill, GCS

Divot Etiquette On Range

The driving range is a great place to hone your skills and tweak you swing as you so feel necessary. The driving range is an excellent amenity to have for this purpose.  Here at Bellevue we struggle every year with inadequate teeing surface area to accommodate the amount of golfers that use the range tee, usually in the evenings I have noticed.  The above photo was taken of the range tee yesterday which shows an abundance of divots being taken in one spot.  The bottom photo shows how we would prefer divots be taken, with a small gap between each divot.  This small gap will allow the grass to eventually creep back into the void and reduce the healing time needed to achieve 100% coverage of grass again.  Please consider doing this the next time you are on the range tee to allow the tee to stay in much better shape through the course of the season for everyone to enjoy.
Mike O'Neill, GCS

Tough Spring For The Irrigation System!

The abundance of irrigation breaks this spring is attributed to a long cold winter and an aging irrigation system.  The pipes in the ground are an old type of pvc that has a very thin wall and in turn gets very brittle with age.  The pipe in the ground is pushing 40 years old so we are starting to get more and more breaks as we start the system up.  We are at 16 sprinkler breaks and 5 main line breaks already this spring.  We also ran into problems during the recent hot stretch of weather not having the whole system working.  We ended up having to run tanks of water around the section of the course that is lacking the irrigation because of broken lines.

We are hoping we are finally getting ahead of the problems but every time we have a break, that takes away from the detail work we could be accomplishing on the golf course.

Mike O'Neill, GCS