Hello, and welcome to a new blog I hope you will find easy to use and informative. My name is Matthew Wharton and I am the new golf course superintendent here at Idle Hour Country Club.
First let me say it is an absolute honor and privilege to be here and I am looking forward to meeting you this coming season. Hopefully you saw my bio in the club email announcing my hiring so I don’t need to bore you again here.
The short version of why I am here is I love Donald Ross and I believe your Donald Ross golf course to be one of his very best, and I want to help you make it be the best. I have been on the job now for one full week, and in that time I’ve seen rain, snow, and bitter cold - it’s 20 degrees outside as I write this.
But also the team completed the aerification of all putting greens and approaches this week. All greens and approaches were core aerified with 3/8 inch hollow tines and the cores removed. The following day the greens and approaches were DryJected with sand. DryJecting is a process of using high pressure water to create a channel within the soil profile and immediately backfilling that channel with sand, all without disrupting the surface.
Despite the freezing temperatures immediately experienced following the aerification, the minor surface disruption should allow for a quicker than normal recovery. I also had samples collected just prior to aerification and submitted to the lab for analysis. I will use these results to help design our plant nutrition strategy for the coming season.
In other news our friends with Green Tee Golf have been onsite working on Holes 13 and 14. On Hole 13 they installed a catch basin to capture the surface runoff from the tennis and fitness parking areas and have removed the unwanted grasses just to the right of the club entrance off Richmond Road. This area will be sodded soon. They also installed a drain behind 13 Green that carries water away from and around the back of the green to the stream. On Hole 14 they removed the damaged drainage to the right of the Green and installed new following the removal of several overgrown trees.
In summary, week one was filled with multiple seasons, several meetings, a house hunting adventure, all while the team worked hard to impress. There is still much to do as the evidence of the high winds on March 3rd still linger and opening day is now less than one month away. You can also follow me on Twitter at @IHCCGreenkeeper.
Until next time…