Green Committee
Dave Swanson
Hello Friends. I hope everyone has been out enjoying the fabulous conditions of our world class golf course. The fairways are green, the rough is challenging and the latest aeration has healed with green speeds running around 11. It’s a great time of year for golf. The course has endured a long summer season of play that saw a number of large tournaments, steady play and a few construction projects as well. The staff is preparing for a dry winter as forecasters predict a La Nina event. This is bad news for this continuing drought but the forecasters were wrong last year about the “Godzilla of all El Niño’s” that terrorized Texas and left us unscathed. We are preparing for winter now by raising the mowing heights of the fairways and tees so we may endure a long dormancy period when we start experiencing frost. Our first frost event usually arrives around the second week of November and the season lasts until the middle of March.
Beginning the 7th of November the staff will be doing a bi-annual kikuyu grass eradication. Kikuyu grass is an invasive grassy weed that you may see here and there in the rough, if we don’t eliminate it will gradually outcompete all other grasses on the course and takeover. It is very difficult to play out of, is unattractive and very maintenance intensive. Our staff has been successful at keeping it out and has done so for 25 years. We intend to stay the course. You will see some dead patches in the rough where the spray was applied. The staff will come back and reseed these areas with ryegrass and some bermuda seed to provide new grass for the blemish. Thanks for your understanding and patience during this process.
The Native Areas
In 2014 we took advantage of the Metropolitan water District’s $2 per square foot rebate program to remove turf here at the golf course as a part of our water reduction initiatives. I’m pleased to announce that according to plan, this has resulted in a seventeen percent decrease in water volume used to irrigate our course. Unfortunately due to rate increases it has not resulted in a decrease of our water bill by seventeen percent but we are much better off than we would have been. Over these last two years the plantings have been maturing slowly from the small 1 gallon plants we started with. In some cases the plants have exploded with growth while others have struggled and failed. We have experienced a bit of a learning curve as these 19 acres develop and we are adapting to what plants succeed in these soils and what plants do not. Over the summer time the drought tolerant plants go into a period of dormancy to conserve water and during the fall and spring they grow and develop. We are now in our second year and some of the planters have become very dense. In the planters that are more in play of errant shots we plan to do some thinning so our members have a better chance of finding their golf ball. We also plan to add additional plantings in areas needing more. Now that we have a better idea of which varieties of plants work well in these areas we hope to achieve the look we are after over the coming years.
Native Area Rules
In speaking to several of our members it’s become clear that many are not aware that you no longer get a free drop from the plantings in the native areas. You must play the ball as it lies or take an unplayable lie penalty. For pace of play I would recommend playing a provisional ball if you hit into one of these areas as we are experiencing more lost balls as the plantings get larger. Unfortunately I have learned this through personal experience. Enjoy your golf and I’ll see you out there!
Dave
Chairman; Green Committee