Stinkin' Elk

This year we have seen an abundance of elk on the golf course. Elk seem to use the golf course as their main thoroughfare from Lookout Mountain to South Table Mountain (I don't know what's over there that they want, but that's where they like to go). We have put out signs for them to stay off the golf course but they just ignore them. Usually we see them mostly in the fall and winter, but this year has been different in the fact that they seemed to have stayed around all summer.

Each year during the "rut" the males go around and try to get as many females as they can rounded up for mating. During this process, they do all kinds of crazy things. However, they don't wear knickers. But they do do other crazy things like tear up small trees, pee all over themselves, roll around in mud--all for the females. Fortunately, MOST humans don't do this.

Check out these pics of what a bull elk did the other night to one of our Locust trees out next to the cartpath on hole #18. You can see that this tree was a good sized tree, and it was snapped off at about 6-7 feet high--so that bull was probably a good sized animal.

Now one thing I would like to mention about this blog. My purpose is to use this as a place for information about what is going on here at the golf course. I hope people find it useful, informative, and hopefully a pleasure to read. I will not use it for promoting products, my opinions, or any other type of shameless advertisements for stuff that I think you should buy or use, etc. For example, if there were a particular type of "cell phone" that I was partial to--you know, one that really sets the standard for all mobile phones, one that has limitless possibilities, one that is the "cat's meow", etc., I would definitely not use this forum to promote it. But anyway, look what that elk did to this tree:

What Are You Doing?!?!?

Aerification. Aerifying. Aerating. Punching. Plugging. No matter what you call it, we are tearing things up. But it's a good thing. Twice a year we go through this process, and always we get asked what and why we are doing what we are doing.

There are many reasons why we do this, and it always seems to take place right when the greens are looking and playing their best.

(OK, let me clear something up. I know some of you are asking "what IS a GREEN?? It's all GREEN, right???" Well, yes, we HOPE it's all green, but a golf course GREEN is the area of shortly-mowed grass where the hole/flag is located. It's the "putting" area of the golf course.)

Golf course greens are the most important area on the entire golf course. At Fossil Trace we have 88 irrigated/maintained turf acres and only 3 of these acres are "greens". This is the most challenging area on the golf course to maintain and it is also the most critical. If you cannot maintain nice greens, people are not going to come back to play the golf course.

We mow our greens at sometimes less than .125". That is 1/8th of an inch. Try doing that at home! (Actually, DON'T try that at home--you wont have any grass left in your yard). When we have people set foot on a green for the first time often the immediate question is "is this grass REAL???". Yes, it's real.

Anyways, back to aerification. This process allows us to do several important things. First, it relieves compaction. With over 40,000 rounds of golf going through here, traffic is a huge factor and challenge at Fossil Trace and all that traffic plays to these 3 small acres of turf, creating soil compaction. Aerification relieves that.

2nd, it allows for oxygen to get to the roots of the grass plants. Like most all living things, grass needs oxygen to live, and oxygen is taken up by the roots. If the soil surface gets sealed off, oxygen cannot make its way down to the roots and the plant will die. Aerification opens up this surface.

3rd, aerification allows for removal of thatch build up. As plant leaf tissues die, they build up in the top layers of soil creating layers of dead organic matter that can prohibit the transfer of nutrients to the roots, create poor gas exchange, and also create a soft mat layer that is not conducive to golf ball roll.

There are several other factors as well, but this gives you an idea of why we do what we do. If we did not do the aerification process, the quality of our greens would deteriorate rapidly. The time it takes to heal is always dependent on the weather, and if we have warm temps then we can expect about two weeks for complete healing. Timing is always critical!

The process goes like this: We punch the holes, remove the plugs, topdress with sand, drag it in to fill the holes, and add our nutrient ammendments. As simple as that sounds, it takes a good 2-3 days for us to complete this process! Check out the following pics...

Flymowing

Bunkers. Nobody likes them. Except Jim Engh. Golfers really hate them, especially when they are in them. By definition, they are a hazard--in more ways than one at Fossil Trace. It has been suggested that we add T-bars to a few of ours to help people get out of them.

Fact is, bunkers are high maintenance. Even though they are a hazard, people want them to be pretty. If you play golf, you can probably recall seeing bunkers that are not very well maintained. At Fossil, we try to maintain all in-play areas to a high standard. Regardless of the fact that bunkers are a hazard, we want them to look nice and play well. When someone (Jim Hajek) hits a shot into them, we want (Jim Hajek) them to have a good chance of getting out of them. The size of some of our bunkers are penal enough--we don't want them to be even harder than they already are. Plus, if they are too hard, then people (Jim Hajek) will shoot higher scores (something you DON'T want to do in golf) and the pace of play will slow down. So we do what we can to help create a positive experience for our guests--even in our hazards.

So how do we mow these things? Well, it's probably the most physically challenging thing we do out here. We FLYMOW them. What's a FLYMOW? See the following pictures. It's basically a pushmower with no wheels. It kinda "hovers". Key word being "kinda".