As the summer temperatures swelter I have heard the many concerns about the Lakes GC greens and current course conditions. Unfortunately we have had some transition issues at the Lakes GC that we will address this week. How will we address them?

With the golf course closed this week for greens aerification we will take advantage of this time to aerify not only the greens but the tees, and fairways as well. This will alleviate compaction issues and improve water infiltration. We will also significantly increase fertilizer applications to give the Bermuda grass a “shot of adrenaline” so to speak to improve density.

We are also going to be closing the courses a bit longer for this season's aerification procedure. In the past we only closed for 5 days (Monday-Friday) and the reopened for play. Genereally there is very minimal play at the aerified course, so this season we are going to extend the closure to give the course a bit more time to heal.

The brown areas on #9 and #18 will be sprigged this week with Tif Tuf Bermuda grass for quick healing. Tif Tuf is the variety of Bermuda grass we selected for the newly renovated tee boxes and they are growing like gang busters. We are seeing a significantly denser more aggressive growth habit on these tee boxes than in our common Bermuda or Tifway 419 tee boxes.  

Our luck could be changing as well with the upcoming weather forecast predicting a quarter inch to one inch of rain this week. With some rain and humidity we will see the Bermuda grass significantly increase in density.

With that been said I hope everyone has a safe summer and we appreciate your patience.