How are your courses fairing with the heat?

[Fairway_CY]

Just wondering how the courses everybody plays at are handling the heat.  The majority of the courses here are getting VERY brown and burned out.  I guess that's to be expected with continual heat like we've been having.  Since June 11th, the high temperature has been below 90 degrees only 8 times... and 2 of those days were 89 degrees, so not a whole lot of a 'break' from the heat.  Also, we haven't had a ton of rain, so things are drying up pretty quickly.  

The courses are having to leave the greens a little longer to protect them, but a few courses (especially those with Bent Grass greens) are starting to lose them.  The course I played on yesterday was really poor in certain areas and if the greens survive another week, it'll be a miracle.  It's a shame but, I suppose that's part of living down here.  

So... how are your courses holding up with this heat?

CY

[billchao]

They're fine. We have plenty of water.

Actually now they're a little flooded.

[kpaulhus]

Its been extremely hot in Arkansas this year, relative to last year. Our course is staying very green with all the rain we have had. I felt like it was either raining or 100* the last month. They even punched our fairways last week and sanded them and they are still very green. 

[dennyjones]

We have been hotter than usual with many days in the 90 and very dry.   Some of the courses still have plush fairways and greens, others have had issues with the lack of water and greens have suffered.  

Rain around our house is fleeting.   North about 25 miles, two nights ago they received almost 5" of rain.   Our rain gauge showed 1/2".   

[David in FL]

Summer in Florida means plenty of afternoon rain.  We're green and lush.  

Come on down!  

[Patch]

My home course is still looking pretty healthy green even though we are on a long string of triple digit days around here.  I attribute it's great  playability to the folks responsible for maintaining it year around. Those guys have their "stuff" together. 

On the flip side, I have driven by some courses in the local area that look to be in bad shape. I am assuming their course maintenance crews are a bit on the dense side when it comes to dealing with the summer heat around here.  

I guess my point is, given the right materials, and expert know how, people are responsible for how a golf course looks. Not so much the weather. 

[jkelley9]

In NC our courses are primarily bermuda fairways/rough and they are loving this weather. This is thriving season for them so long as they're getting water (which they are). They'll start to kill out in the next few weeks though, I think. Greens are in good shape but are having to be left long (and super slow).

We've also had steady rain patterns for several weeks now (at least once every 2 days or so, but often a little bit every day). Unfortunately this isn't helping my tall fescue lawn lol, which I'm trying to let go dormant and not be subject to rot and insects. 

[roamin]

On August 1, 2016 at 8:51 PM, David in FL said:

Summer in Florida means plenty of afternoon rain.  We're green and lush.  

Come on down!  

This! It's been hotter-than-hell. Every. Single. Day. But the course I play looks great...

[Buckeyebowman]

So far, so okay! Depends on the water supply the course has to call upon. I've found that when the course can control how much water it gets, that is when it will play the best!

Played a local, upscale, public course recently that has some very large, very deep ponds that were dug to provide irrigation water. They are a good 15-20 feet low! I wish I could figure out how to post pics here, because I'd show you a few. All the piping and stuff below the surface is now visible.

Oddly enough, the hardscrabble little 9 hole course we play league at has no problem with water. Found out a couple weeks ago that there is an abandoned, flooded, subterranean mine below the course. The course owner located a flooded shaft, sunk a hole to it, and now has unlimited water for his course.

Not everyone is so lucky!

[NJpatbee]

In North Jersey my home course survived the 7 days of 90F weather fairly well with the fairways allowing more roll than normal and the greens fast, but everything was still green.  I was at the PGA at Baltusrol on Sunday and of course it was green and soft with all the rain but I am sure it would have been lush without the rain for the tournament.  

[billchao]

9 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

I wish I could figure out how to post pics here, because I'd show you a few.

You just attach them using the paper clip icon underneath the text box. If they're over 5MB, you'll have to resize them first.

[DaveP043]

Its been good and hot in northern Virginia, but we've also had regular rainfall, so we're doing OK.  The ponds that feed our irrigation system have a pretty small contributing watershed, so when we don't get rain for a while, we can get low on water pretty quickly.  Right now the ponds are full, and the course is green and healthy.  

[krupa]

I've lamented about this in another thread.  We're having a record (or near-record) drought this year.  The course is brown and dry and the ponds are incredibly low.  We finally had some rain this weekend but it's going to be dry with temps in the mid to high 80s for the rest of the week again.

[Fairway_CY]

Good to hear so many courses are thriving!  Admittedly, I play a lot of local courses that aren't necessarily the best at maintenance to begin with, but... the course I played Sunday is one of the higher end courses so it was a shock to see how bad the greens actually were.  

I'm just south of Charlotte and a large majority of courses I pass while driving around the territory for my job look okay from the road, but when I actually get ON the courses and see the greens... it's a shame.

Here's to hoping the heat breaks a little bit and the Bent Grass courses can thrive again!

CY

[DaveP043]

2 minutes ago, Fairway_CY said:

Here's to hoping the heat breaks a little bit and the Bent Grass courses can thrive again!

Your area is a tough one for bent grass, the heat is almost too much in many years.  I have a condo at Talamore, near Pinehurst, and they've just spent the entire summer replacing the bent grass greens with an ultradwarf Bermuda that they expect to be more heat-tolerant.  A number of courses in the area have converted to various forms of dwarf Bermuda in recent years, including MidPines and several of the Pinehurst courses.  In northern VA, we're in bent country, and I've seen heat and/or drought wreak havoc with greens even at some of the best clubs.  This year, though, we're in good shape.

[mcanadiens]

So far so good. It's actually helpful for City of Dayton courses to be dry. Helps the lads keep on top of their grass-cutting responsibilities a little better. With the bunkers just understood to be terrible 365 days a year, the long grass is the most problematic playing condition we occasionally face. I have noticed an unusually large amount of weeds in the tee boxes, but I don't think the weather has that much to do with that.

That said, we're supposed to be getting some rain Wednesday-Friday. Hopefully that means the greens will be on the softer side for the Club Championship this weekend.

 

[Aflighter]

3 hours ago, Fairway_CY said:

Good to hear so many courses are thriving!  Admittedly, I play a lot of local courses that aren't necessarily the best at maintenance to begin with, but... the course I played Sunday is one of the higher end courses so it was a shock to see how bad the greens actually were.  

I'm just south of Charlotte and a large majority of courses I pass while driving around the territory for my job look okay from the road, but when I actually get ON the courses and see the greens... it's a shame.

Here's to hoping the heat breaks a little bit and the Bent Grass courses can thrive again!

CY

Hey CY, them greens were terrible last year in that tourny.They actually looked better this year.The long par 5 and the short par 3 over the gulley were the worst looking.They putted ok I thought.They gotta replace them with Bermuda or theyll always be like that. Gets too hot here.

[MrDC]

No problem, green and lush, the sprinklers were going off all around us while were playing last week, it felt so good, I never hoped that they would stay on while I putted out before but that's how hot it was.

LI has a bit of a water problem this year, not much rain, but relatively speaking we have it good, lots of water and hence beautiful courses in the dead of summer.