Sunday, September 16, 2012

September News 2012

We have had a lot of great days for golf this September and I hope we have a lot more coming up!

8th Hole on a beautiful day

7th Green

The Grounds Crew has been busy with a couple projects.  Tees are being aerified, topdressed, and seeded one-by-one.  On a few tees you may see the strips between the blue and white tees have been mowed down like this:  

These dividing strips were grown out at different times between 2004 and 2006.  Some of them work, but others -- like this one on the 4th hole -- have caused problems.  First of all, this strip eliminates at least 6 prime tee placement locations.  With the amount of rounds that are played at Sugar Creek, we need all the tee space we can get!  Secondly, this strip gave a little too much space to the blue tees and not enough to the whites.  We will continue to place the tees in the same locations but adding this real estate to the tee will allow us to spread out wear more evenly.
Grubs and the associated skunk damage have been bad this year.  Every day, we flip over a lot of sod in areas like this:  

Skunks digging for grubs
Skunks looking for grubs caused this damage

At Sugar Creek, we treat the fairways and tees preventatively for grubs but not the rough.  The damage is usually minor enough that there is no permanent damage.  Some areas this year will require a grub treatement and some restoration work.
We are finding more and more trees with Emerald Ash Borer symptoms.  The count is up to 64 at the moment.  For more on our tree population, see this post.
Tree with Emerald Ash Borer
Tree with Emerald Ash Borer symptoms
 Come out and enjoy the great weather at Sugar Creek: 

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