Letter to Members and Staff

August 29, 2009

To the Membership and Staff of Valencia Country Club,

Sometimes opportunities can come our way that force us to make difficult decisions. I have made the difficult decision to leave Valencia Country Club to pursue an opportunity at Lakeside Golf Club. Admittedly this decision is bittersweet.
For the past eight years, Valencia Country Club has provided many avenues for my personal as well as my professional growth. I was able to host eight Champions Tour events, renovate the practice facility and other areas of the course, and most importantly, make improvements to the daily conditioning and manicuring of this Robert Trent Jones, Sr. layout. The current issues facing Lakeside will allow me to continue to grow as a professional and to broaden my experience. After eight rewarding years at Valencia, I am ready and excited to address the challenges that Lakeside Golf Club will offer.
I feel very fortunate for the many relationships I have made at Valencia. Jim Fitzsimmons had the confidence in me to give me the autonomy to make crucial decisions involving the golf course, our membership, and my staff. Our Head Pro, Craig Cliver, has not only been a pleasure to work with, but we were also able to form a Head Pro / Superintendent team that rivals the best in the business. Much needs to be said about my maintenance staff and our assistant superintendent, Jesus Reyes. He leads a dedicated crew on a daily basis to continually improve the golf course and meet our goal to provide one of the best maintained courses in Southern California. Finally, the relationships that I have formed with the Membership will not be forgotten. All of you have supported me through every frost delay in the winter and every 100- degree day in the summer. Thank you!
As I leave Valencia, I feel the course is in a good place. The course has survived the summer months well. The greens have full turf coverage and provide very good putting surfaces on a daily basis. Our fairway Bermudagrass populations are as high as I have seen during my eight years. With our new fleet of equipment, the maintenance operation has all the tools it needs for a successful overseeding this fall.
Jim has asked for my assistance in locating quality candidates for my replacement, and also to be involved in the interview process. I will assist him in every way possible to ensure that Valencia’s next superintendent be qualified to continue the high level of golf course maintenance that is a tradition at Valencia Country Club.
Respectfully,
Robert Hertzing

California Air Resource Board

On July 26, 2007, the California Air Resource Board (ARB) adopted the in-use off-road diesel vehicle regulation, which will reduce harmful emissions from off-road diesel vehicles that operate in California. The regulation applies to all fleets that own and operate self propelled off-road diesel vehicles with engines 25 horsepower or greater within California. Golf Courses may own a variety of affected vehicles such as mowers, sprayers, material haulers, and other diesel equipment used for golf course maintenance. Off-road vehicles are ones that cannot be fully registered to drive on roadways, and were not originally designed for use on roads.

This regulation requires all applicable fleet owners to report their off-road diesel vehicles to ARB and label them with equipment identification numbers (EIN).

Beginning this morning we are in fully compliance with labeling. We waited till that last minute to put on labels with the EIN's that were assigned. Unfortunately, there are regulations which dictate size and location of the EIN on each piece of equipment. As you can see in the photo the EIN is large and, in my opinion, unsightly.

More information regarding this regulation can be found at http://www.arb.ca.gov/

Driving Range Yardages

New on the Driving Range this morning are signs that tell you distances to the target flags. We have located six locations on the range tee for the signs. The location closest to the tee line on will be the sign that will be out that day. The Yardages are measured from where the sign is located. Hopefully this will help everyone dial in their game for the up coming Grupp Cup!

Drainage

This was the seen this past winter during a heavy rain. Behind #18 green the cart path and the slope have surface drainage that runs on to the putting surface. This created a difficult situation during one of the Men's Team Play matches because the pin location was where it is shown in the picture.

To help minimize the water shed that comes from behind 18 green we are installing sub surface drainage. The drainage will be typical with drainage that we have installed in other areas of the course. It will consist of a trench 12 inches deep. At the bottom of the trench there will be 2" layer of gravel put down before we a lay down a 3" perforated pipe. Then the trench will be topped with gravel and new sod installed on the top of the trench. This drainage will help minimize the amount of surface water that feeds on to the green. In addition to this drainage project, we will also be address a wet area on the right side of the #12 fairway. All of the work will take place over the next two days.

Procore 648

The first piece of our new equipment fleet I am going to profile is the Toro Procore 648. This machine is an aerifier for greens and tees and when it came on the market 5 years ago it revolutionized the way we look at aerifiers. It is faster and punches a cleaner hole the than any of the its competitors or predecessors. More information about the machine and a video can be found on Toro's website:

http://www.toro.com/golf/cultivation/aerator/green/648.html

It just happens we are going to use our new aerifiers at the beginning of next week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we will be lightly topdressing greens and then using our aerifiers to spike the greens. The spiking allows for better water movement into the soil profile and faciliates gas exchange from the soil to the atmosphere. Once the greens are topdressed and spiked, the sand will be brushed into the canopy with push brooms and then rolled. Once the greens have been rolled the spike holes, which are a 1/4" in diameter, will not be noticeable. The greens will be rolled through the week as the sand settles into the turf canopy.

In order to accomplish this task in a timely manner and with as little disruption as possible there will be now early morning back nine play on Tuesday, August 18th and Wednesday, August 19th.

This morning we performed this process to the chipping green and the back portion of #17. Victor Reyes, Jr. is operating one of our new aerifiers in the photo:

Out with the old and in with the new.

If you were around the club last week you saw bits and pieces of some new equipment. Well, this week you are going to see the whole fleet. The lease on our high use equipment expired on August 1st, so out with the old and in with the new. We began the process of back in February with getting competative bids and then looking at leasing companies. Six months later all the pieces have fallen in place and now the golf course and members will benefit from a state of the art highly efficient fleet of equipment. We replaced 41 pieces of equipment, most of which are used on a daily basis. The new equipment allows the maintenance staff to be more productive and reduce the down time that we saw with aged equipment. In addition, the new equipment will provide a finer quality of cut, use less fuel and have lower emissions.

In future weeks I am going to profile the different pieces of equipment, their features and how we use them.

This a photo is of Federico Cervantes using one of our new Fairway mowers this morning.

July weather recap

Well the month of August has so far been kind in the weather department. The high temperatures have mellowed out and we are going to take adavantage of a few forecasted cool days. Monday and Tuesday this week we will be spiking and verticutting greens. Tuesday afternoon we will apply a light topdressing and then leach the greens with a heavy irrigation cycle Tuesday night to help push the sand into the turf canopy.
A quick recap of July's weather:

• all 31 days had a high temperature in excess of 90 degrees
• 23 out of the 31 days the temperature exceeded 95 degrees
• at one point in the middle of the month we have 7 days in a row where the temperature exceeded 100 degrees
• the hottest day of the month was the 19th where the mercury hit 108.

Good news is from all the hot weather is the bermuda in the fairways has transitioned nicely and good fairway surface conditions will exist till overseeding.

Stairs

For the past week Dennis Keene's Crew has been at the course replacing the stairs leading to the 13th tee and the gold tees on #4 and #8. Here is a photo of the completed job on #13.

Driving Range Use

Here is a topic I have been wanting to discuss for a while. Even though we rebuilt our range five years and expanded the tee surface by 50%, we can still struggle to re-grow turf before the tees are rotated back to a particular spot. Our greatest struggle is in the winter when cold weather prevents rapid turf growth. The single biggest impact each member can have to help the situation is having a small footprint when it comes to range use. What do I mean? Create your divots in as tight as pattern as possible. I saw these two very different stalls this morning. The one golfer consumed about 6 square feet while the other consumed about 2 square feet. Bottom-line is if everyone hit balls on the range so that their divot pattern took up as little turf as possible, we would have better and more mature turf on the range year round. The first photo is the proper divot pattern, the second photo is not.

Temperature Update

For those of you keeping score. Sunday we hit a temp of 107 F, Yesterday and we hit 102. We are on a high level program of syringing greens in the afternoon to help cool the turf canopy. We also did go forward with raising the cutting height on the greens. For those of you technical people, we typically mow at .125" or 1/8 of an inch. Today we raised the cutting height to .140" or 9/64" of an inch. We continue to roll greens a couple times per week to help preserve green speed. Hopefully this heat wave will break soon. One of the few benefits to slower greens is greater number of pin placements. We can place cups in spots that would not be playable with quicker green speeds. Hopefully for the next few weeks you can enjoy a little variation in the course set-up.

Cart Path Repair

The last two days as been devoted to cart path repair. While a lot of our paths need some work, we had to select the worst areas first. This morning we poored 20 yds of concrete on the paths the run between #12 and #15. These spots had the most damage from tree roots and ground settlement. You can see our resident mason, Randy Bragdon, supervising the pouring today.

High Temp.

Just in case you were wondering...The high temperature on our weather station today was 105F and it occured at 2 pm.
I get asked a lot of which weather forecast I use. Well I look at about four different ones, especially when it comes to different models for rain in the winter. As far as getting an accurate temperature forecast in the summer I like the National Weather Service. The following link is for the Valencia Area:
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=34.4239033407167&lon=-118.575439453125&site=lox&smap=1&marine=1&unit=0&lg=en
The triple digits are expected to continue through next week. If you come out to play be sure to drink plenty of water before and during your round. Once you start to feel dehydrated its to late! Key is to drink water and be well hydrated before heading out into the heat.

Heat and mowing heights

Well the summer heat has arrived. We are in the middle of a long extended heat wave. The last seven days have brought us temperatures near 100 everyday and the forecast is for this heat wave to continue well into next week. While we have kicked our greens maintenance program into overdrive with syringing, leaching cycles every seven days and preventative fungicide applications, our last step in preserving the health of our greens through the heat of the summer is raising the mowing height. I raise the mowing height as a last resort because in addition to slower green speeds and I feel that smoothness is negatively affected on our Poa annua putting surfaces. In order to minimize the affect of the higher high of cut we will be rolling greens two to three times a week.
To help explain the benefit and necessity to a raising cutting height I want to share something the Dr. Larry Stowell from Pace Turf has published.
" What do golf course putting greens and thoroughbred race horses have in common? More than you might think. Both are high performance products of scientific innovations in breeding and management that have resulted in faster horses — and faster greens — than ever before in history. As a result, both require specialized and intensive care to achieve their high performance levels. Like horses, turf must be supplied with sufficient nutrition, water and care. If they are lacking in any of these, they become weak, more susceptible to disease, and incapable of high performance. Without attention, they die of starvation. The importance of being green: Unlike animals, plants don’t have to obtain their food from outside sources. Instead, through the remarkable process of photosynthesis, they can make their own food inside the green tissues of their leaves and stems. All they need is sunlight, air, water, and enough green tissue, and Presto! They can manufacture enough starch and energy to fuel their growth and reproduction. But many factors can interfere with photosynthesis. On golf course greens, mowing heights that are too low are one of the most important, and one of the most common reasons that greens fail during the summer. There comes a point when the turf plants simply don’t have enough food to support the growth of roots or the production of new leaves. If the plants are mowed too low for too long, their food becomes limited, they become weak, and they eventually succumb either to
disease or starvation.
Higher mowing = recoup time for turf: While greens (like race horses) can survive extreme conditions such as low mowing for short periods of time, their long-term survival depends on time for recuperation, when higher mowing heights allow for production of new leaves, roots and other tissues.
Bottom line: Fast greens can become dead greens quickly, especially during the summer when turf is already stressed by heat. The low mowing heights that produce faster greens can remove so much leaf tissue that the plant is unable to produce the energy it needs to survive. Research has shown that even a slight increase (1/32”) in mowing height can result in dramatic improvements in turf quality, disease resistance, recovery from stress and root growth. It is therefore frequently necessary to raise mowing heights during the summer or other periods of stress. Green speeds may decrease as a result, but when you consider the alternative — that is, dead turf — it is a small price to pay."

Bunker work

Over the past two weeks we have be doing work to a few selected bunkers on the course. We started with the main bunker on the chipping green. Since it was constructed 5 years ago sand from bunker shots has accumulated on the top lip of the bunker. A lot of sand. My best estimate is that the top lip become about 12 inches higher than 5 years ago. After original construction you could see the chipping green surface when standing in the bunker. The top lip had grow some that you could not longer see the surface when standing in bunker. In order to re-establish the proper height of the top lip we removed the sod, then graded and removed all of the excess sand. It was easy to find where the original grade line was because the original grade was in soil and all of the excess material was sand. Once the original grade was re-established we laid new sod and replaced the sand in the bunker.

On the course, bunkers on holes #9, #10 and #18 received some attention. With these bunkers we re-established there original shape and contour. Years of maintenance and edging can drastically change the shape of a bunker. While the staff does a great job in trying to minimize this change, we selected these bunkers were playability may have been affected to work on first. Here is a before and after of the back right green side bunker on #9:

Weather Update.

After the month of June treated us so well with cool weather, July is taking us for a beating.
95 degrees is the temperature that we begin to kick our greens maintenance into overdrive. When the temperature reaches this point we begin to scout for dry spots on the greens through out the day and then syringe greens in the afternoon to cool the canopy.
For a recap of the Year to date; in month of May we had 5 days where the high temperature exceeded 95 degrees. In the month of June we only had 3 days. So far in five days in July, 4 of the days have exceeded 95 degrees.
So summer is definitely here. We appreciate your patience when we have to handwater and syringe greens.
For your friends that follow from Palos Verdes, we have had 4 Days this year in excess of 100 degrees. Was that a jacket I saw you wearing this weekend?

July 4th!

July 4th marks an important day for golf course maintenance here at VCC. One of our goals and objectives for the golf course is superior playing conditions from January 1st to July 4th. Now this is not to say that we slack off for the rest of the year, it is just in the first half of the year when our grasses and conditions allow us to achieve excellence. Around this time of year is when the heat starts to take its toll on the ryegrass in the roughs. The greens also become stressed from the consistently warm temperatures. In addition, we start to see the short comings of a 22 year old irrigation system. However, we still work hard to produce very good playing conditions through the rest of the summer till overseeding.
I would consider this year to be a success. Starting with Men's Team play and working our way through all of the major golf events that we host for the year and finally wrapping up with Women's Team Play and the President's cup, I feel that our maintenance staff has been able to produce to outstanding conditions for every event. And today leading into the July 4th weekend the greens are reading 11 on the stimpmeter and the fairways have a 100% turf coverage with the bermuda transition progressing nicely. My hat is off to my staff, they are the ones that get it done on a daily basis.
One interesting bit of information and reasoning for why we focus so much on the first six months of the year: 70% of the total rounds of golf for the year are played in the first half of the year.
With fewer people on the course in the next two months it allows us to accomplish some projects that can only be done in the summer months.
Starting this week we re-leveled a sunken area in #2 approach and re-sodded with bermuda grass a weak area around the drain in #10 fairway and the left side of #17 fairway.

Here are two photos from these projects


Beginning next week more projects will be under way. A few of the projects scheduled for this summer include:
1. Renovation of the large bunker at the chipping green. Sand as accumulated in excess amounts on top of the bunkers thereby not allowing the player to see the putting surface from the bunker.
2. Re shaping of greenside bunkers on # 9, #10, and #18
3. Re leveling and sodding of Lake edge on #8
4. New stairs to #4 and #8 gold tee
5. Repair of Cart path where it is shared for #12 and #15.
6. Addition of bunker sand to the greenside bunkers.


As we work our way through these projects I will be posting updates as to our accomplishments and the process that we will be going through.

Happy 4th of July!

Summer time irrigation

In an effort to help promote the warm season Bermuda grass, we practice deep and infrequent irrigation. Deep and infrequent irrigation means that when we do irrigation it is with sufficient quantity to wet the soil profile. Then we do not irrigate again until the water in the profile has been used by the plant or has evaporated. This deep and infrequent technique favors the deep rooted and more heat tolerant Bermuda grass. Typically for the month of July the fairways will be irrigated every third night. As you would expect the morning after an irrigation event the fairways are wet. You might get some mud on your ball and in places you may hear the water squish under the cart tires. On the second day after an irrigation things are drying out and playable is good. On the third day the fairways have dried and the course will play firm. By the afternoon of the third day you will see some drought stress on the areas of the fairways that are populated with cool season ryegrass. In the areas that are highly populated with ryegrass we will add supplemental water on the second and third day to help these areas survive until the next irrigation cycle.
Transition to Bermudagrass is going well this year. In addition to the other cultural practices that we do the method of deep and infrequent irrigation will ensure that transition is as quick and as painless as possible.

Aerification Update

We are now two days post small tine aerification. The aerification process went very well. The process this time started with vertical mowing in two directions, then the sand was applied to the greens. After the sand was in place then we aerified with small tines on a 1.25" by 1.25" pattern. Then greens were then seeded with bentgrass and the sand was dragged in a figure eight pattern to fill the holes. The greens were rolled and then fertilizers were applied. Potassium and Calcium were applied to help offset the ill effects of the sodium in our water. Over the last two nights the greens were heavily irrgiated to help settle the sand into the canopy and move the applied fertilizers in to the soil. During the recovery the greens are rolled every afternoon. We will return to mowing on daily basis starting Saturday. I would expect the green to be fully recovered by next Wednesday. The two pictures are of our afternoon greens rolling that help smooth the surface and push the holes back together. The other photo is an up close of a typical putting surface this afternoon. You can see the small holes made by the aerifier are now filed with sand and the rest of the putting surface looks like it recieved a good topdressing.

Venting!

A Mid-Summer Venting

Small Tine Aerification and topdressing will occur:
June 22nd and 23th
Holes 11 -17 will be completed on Tuesday the 23rd. We hope to have these holes available for play by 9 am.

This mid-summer small-tine aerification is critical to the success of our greens through the summer months. The ‘venting’ using small ¼” solid tines allows for improved gas exchange and release of toxic Carbon Dioxide that has built up in the soil.

Where does all of the built up carbon dioxide gas in putting green soils come from? The majority is produced by soil-dwelling bacteria and fungi that consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide as a by product of their metabolism. As the temperatures increase in the summer so does the production of CO2.This would not be a problem if the CO2 by-product had a way of escaping from the soil into the atmosphere. However, the thatch layer tends to act as a barrier for gas diffusion. Compaction further seals the turf surface, making gas escape even more difficult. This early summer venting aids in creating a healthy environment for the greens to survive and prosper through the summer.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this necessary maintenance task. I expect that the greens will be completely healed within 7 days.

Lake Maintenance

Over the years, one of the most problematic areas of the course is our lakes. The lakes heat up in the summer time causing algae to bloom, fish to be starved of oxygen and give a off a smell that is not so pleasant. Some of the causes of our lake problems are excessive organic matter on the bottoms, excessively shallow, and a lack of water movement and aeration. The first two problems would require complete reconstruction. The last problem is something that can be addressed. Yesterday we completed installation of an aeration system on our irrigation lake. 9 air diffusers are set up through out the lake to help maintain oxygen levels and circulate the lake vertically through the summer.

Currently the Pondweed in lake is actively growing. Today and tonight we will be lowering the lake level through irrigation. Then on Wednesday morning we will chemically treat the pondweed. The lake level will need to remain low for 48 hours and no water can be removed from the lake in order for the herbicide to work properly. The herbicide does not harm the fish or other wildlife. Once 48 hours pass we will refill the lake a resume normal irrigation on the course.

The photo shows one of the lake aerator pods. Also in the lower portion of the photo you see the pondweed that growing near the banks of the lake.

Fairway Aerification

Tomorrow we finish our early summer fairway aerification. We began May 4th and completed one to two fairways per day. Tomorrow we will complete the 6th fairway and that will be our last. There are many reasons and benefits to aerification. For us we aerify fairways this time of year for two predominate reasons:

1) Add create channels to allow oxygen to penetrate into the soil. By increasing the amount of oxygen we see an increase in soil temperature and an increase in the microbe activity. The increased microbe activity adds in the breakdown of organic matter in the soil. Organic matter in soil is the type of soil that gets sticky when wet and allows mud to stick to your ball. The increase in soil temperature encourages bermudagrass growth.

2) Aerification also allows sunlight to penetrate the turf canopy to where the bermudagrass shoots are beginning to grow after winter dormancy. Bermudagrass is a sun-loving grass and grows best with maximum sun light. Many agronomists, including me, argue that the biggest killer of bermudagrass is a lack of sunlight.

May is a busy month for the golf course. The days are longer and the weather is perfect, despite what Craig thinks, and therefore we do more rounds of golf this month than any other. Please do your part in keeping the course in great shape by filling divots and fixing ballmarks.

One last thing, if you wonder why I have not posted an entry in the past month please visit- www.laurenhertzing.blogspot.com

Congrats!

Congratulations to those who won their respective flights in the Men's and Senior's Club Championship. Once again it seems as though the golf course stood its' ground. I was pleased with the way the course was presented for the tournament. I felt for three weeks post aerification the greens rolled well and the course firmed up through the weekend to produce championship worthy conditions. I am very fortunate to have such an excellent staff that time and time again steps it up a notch for tournaments.
Moving on to this week. Today we began fairway aerification. Like in years past we will attack one or two fairways a day. By doing this we will have the fairways cleaned up and ready for play by 10 am. This week will be working on the back nine. Next week we will focus our attention to the front. Next week we will be starting play off #10 to allow us more time to work on the fairways prior to play. We conduct our semi annual aerification during the month of May to help encourage our transition to bermudagrass for the summer months. The aerification allows sunlight to penetrate the turf canopy and reach the emerging bermuda grass. In conjunction with aerification we will be applying a granular fertilizer for the bermudagrass and applying a growth regulator that will slow the growth of the ryegrass while not inhibiting the bermudagrass.
In addition to fairway aerification, we will also be verticutting and topdressing greens on Tuesday and Wednesday.

An Update on a busy week.

The picture of the yellow dot represents the hole locations for the Men's and Senior Club Championship this weekend. As you are out practicing and fine tuning your game this week you can check out the hole locations for the weekend. There are three dots on each green and you won't know which dot correlates to which day until the tournament gets here.

This is a busy week for the golf course.

On Maintenance day Monday we are aerifying the Driving Range and re-distributing sand in the bunkers. Both of these are time consuming projects and require most of our labor for these two tasks.

Tuesday is Ladies Team. We will be double cutting and rolling the greens for the ladies and their opponents. Beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing on for a few days we will be having a golf course photographer out taking a few photos of the course. His name is Aidan Bradley and his work can be seen at www.golfcoursephotography.com

The rest of week we will be preparing the course for the first major of the year.

The greens are 95% healed from aerification. As the week progresses and we continue to roll the greens, our speeds will be back to normal and we will be ready for the busy months of May and June.

Dan Forsman Note

I recently recieved a note from Dan Forsman, 2009 AT&T Champions Classic Winner, that I would like to share with everyone:

Dear Robert,
Please accept this check as a "Thank you" to you and your amazing staff who worked so hard to prepare the awesome Valencia Country Club for the AT&T Championship. The golf course was in tremendous condition and I particularly liked the 18th green. My wife Trudy and I were hoping perhaps you could host a BBQ or special gathering for for you and your staff who worked so hard during the tournament week and all year long.
We know you will do what makes sense and please thank everyone for their hard work and kindness. They say it was the last, but we are sure hopeful it won't have been. We dearly want to come back.
Robert, please invite Craig and his staff as well as others you would like, as they all worked so hard and made the week extra special for all of us.
Warm Regards,
Dan

Aerification Begins!

We started aerification yesterday. We completed deep tining all of the greens and aerification on the putting and chipping green. This morning we begin finishing the aerification process on #1 and will be working in order. Typically we finish nine holes today and nine holes tomorrow. However, due to the rain in the forecast for tonight and continuing into tomorrow we will be aerifying as many greens as possible today.
Our Spring time aerification is a 12 step process:
1. Deep tine using a 3/4" diameter tine that goes 9" into the ground.
2. Roll green to smooth any tuffing from the deep tine machine.
3. Aerify greens and approaches. We are using 1/2" diameter tines on a 1.5" x 1.5 inch spacing.
4. Pick up plugs. This is done the old fashion way with scoop shovels and muscle.
5. Blow clean green surface.
6. Verticut green.
7. Mow green with groomers in the on position.
8. Top dress with #30 silica sand. It takes about 100 tons to cover 190,000 sq.ft.
9. Drag green to work sand into holes
10. Use power brushes attached to a triplex greens mower help smooth sand over entire surface.
11. Apply fertilizer. Nutrients quanites are applied based on soil and tissue tests.
12. Irrigate one heavy cycle to help settle sand into the holes and start the recovery process.

April Fools week

Just wanted to give a quick update as to what is happening on the course this week.

• We are aerifying roughs in traffic areas. We will finish aerification this week and then apply wetting agents and soluble calcium. This process should help keep our high traffic area looking good well into the summer. The photo shows the aerified rough between the cart path and fairway near #18 green.
• Thursday morning we grounded the stump on #2. We will be cleaning this up and sodding the area. We will then be adding 2 pines in that area.
• We added an irrigation head in # 5 fairway. We have a historically dry zone in #5 fairway that we continually have add supplemental water. To help eliminate the constant hand watering of this area we have added an irrigation head that we be controlled from our irrigation system.
• We prepping all of our machines for greens and approach aerification next week. Aerification will be just like last year's Spring aerification. We will utilize deep tines along with shallow hollow tines and then filling the holes with sand. Estimated full recovery is 11 to 12 days. I will post more on aerification in the next few days.
• One final thing, we have added 3 stalls at the range. Due to the season and the quick recovery time in the spring we can accommodate more stalls. When the heat of the summer kicks in and turf recovery slows we will have to re-evaluate our range stall situation.

Wild Week of Weather!

Last Thrusday we hit 87.5 degrees, then we cooled off by Sunday to 53 degrees and 4/10" of rain. Following rain Monday brought us winds that hit 45 mph. Now that the wind has subsided we have hit 30 degrees that last two mornings. These are big swings that keep us on our toes when it comes to managing the golf course.

The winds brought one casuality:

This is the pine that was on #2 hole about 100 yds from the green right of the fairway.

The winds also left us with a lot of debris to clean up. In addition to cleaning up debris this week, we have aerified tees, verticut and topdressed greens and repaired a main line irrigation break behind #14 green.

Getting back to Normal

After a very successful AT&T our maintenance operation as been full steam ahead in getting the golf course back into shape for the membership. The first priority is getting the rough mowed. On Tuesday we mowed all the rough on holes 1, 10, 18 and 2 thur 9. Today we will finish the rough on holes 11 thur 17 and then head back to the other holes. The current rough cutting height is 2 1/4" Within a few weeks we hope to be back to our normal height of 2"

Here is a photo of rough mowing taking place this morning.

Practice Round

Practice Rounds started today. Very few pros are out today as it is probably a recovery day for those that played in Newport Beach. Richie is out on the course playing his practice round with our Head Pro Mr. Cliver. Between the two of them I am sure that they can figure out the course.

Rich's tee time for the pro-am on Wednesday is 7:40 of the 1st tee.

Final grooming is taking place on the course. The roughs are being topped at 2.25" and the greens are rolling 11 feet on the stimpmeter. This picture was taken of the 8th hole a few minutes ago.

Rainy President's Day

As of 8am this morning we have had 3/4" of Rain. The rain currently has tampered off to a light drizzle. As you can see from the photo above many of the greens have a lot of standing water.

Currently the course is closed until noon. At that time we will reassess that saturated conditions and determine whether or not we will open. Our decision will be based on whether or the not the course can accommodate play with out causing long lasting damage. When the greens are saturated a foot print or indentation can be seen for a long time.

Weather up date.

A quick weather up date. Since my La Nina posting we have had some rain. Over the past 6 days we have received 2.25" of rain with a little amount of hail mixed in for good measure. Yesterday and Today have been good drying out days for the course. Today, once the frost cleared, we were able to get the mowing fleet on the course. We are trying to get everything mowed prior to the next forecasted rain event on Friday.
Now that things have settled back down after the "transition" events of the past few weeks I promise to be more diligent writing entries to keep you up to date about the golf course.

Dry!

While I don't want to make this Blog all about the weather, I feel that the weather it one of the single biggest limiting factors to the condition of the golf course. Last post I talked about frost and how we have been affected by it. Well it never fails, two days after that last post we have had a high pressure system set in over the southwest of the US and it has been non stop wind and heat. Last January we had 9 inches of rain for the month of January, so far this year we have had 0. And no significant chance of rain is in the forecast. While this dry month has been great for playing golf, the drought situation that we face in the Southwest portion of this country continues to worsen.
The US National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center recently (January 8, 2009) posted an important Climate Prediction Update. Based on lower water temperatures in the central and east-central Pacific Ocean, climatologists are now calling for a La Nina condition in the Northern Hemisphere for Spring, 2009.
For the U.S., this signals above-average precipitation in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, and below-average precipitation in the South, especially the southwest and southeastern states. Warmer weather in the southern U.S. and cooler weather in the Pacific Northwest are also likely outcomes. This is bad news for southern states that have been suffering with a drought for the past several years.
Outside the U.S., a La Nina conditions usually results in high rainfall over Indonesia, and below-average precipitation over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.
For more detailed information on El Nino and La Nina, see this very good website, Frequently asked questions about El Nino and La Nina.
At this point water rationing could be mandated as early as this summer. Valencia CC does have a plan in place to reduce water consumption if mandated and will be done so in a way that protects that playability and turf health of greens, tees and fairways. If we get to this point I will have a more detailed posting on how this will be implemented and what to expect. Until then, conservation will be key and a rain dance can only help.

Winter is here!

Our first frost of the season was on December 14th, about 3 weeks later then normal. Since this day we have made up for the lack of frost by having frost on 21 of the last 24 days. Two of the days with out frost it was raining.

Frost occurs when the soil surface is 32 degrees or below, causing dew to freeze on the turf. The ice crystals that form are lovely to look at, but are also the most serious hazard to the health and appearance of turf during the winter months. Frost produces a silvery sheen on turf as is illustrated in the photo above.

Frost by itself does not necessarily cause damage to turf. However, when weight is applied to frosted turf in the form of foot or vehicular traffic, damage will result. This is because frost transforms turf from a s soft, springy surface to a fragile, brittle surface that cracks when pressure is placed on it.

All types and heights of turf can be damaged by frost, not just putting greens.

Golf cart traffic on frosty turf results in damage that appears 2-3 days later. Walking on frosty greens also produces foot shaped patterns of brown, dead turf. In both cases, turf is slow to recover, leaving unsightly brown areas for weeks or even months.

Frost is frequently an early morning problem that is relieved once the sun comes up and air temperatures rise. Once frost crystals melt, turf is safe for foot and vehicular traffic.

There is really only one way to avoid frost damage, and that is to avoid all traffic until it has melted.