5 Years in the Making

View of the 9th Green Complex during Spring 2009 with landscaping behind MacKenzie Clubhouse

View of the 9th Green prior to installation of new bunker

An original pair of bunkers rested behind the 9th green when MacKenzie designed the golf course back in the 1920's.  Over the years these bunkers were filled in and the area was landscaped.  Additionally, a cartpath directing players to the 10th tee eliminated the furthest left side bunker.  During the renovation of the golf course in the 2000s, these original bunkers were supposed to be put back to match the original design.  There was no way to eliminate the cartpath to add a bunker and the club elected not to remove the necessary landscaping for the other bunker to be built.  In the winter of 2009 the maintenance staff took out all the overgrown landscaping below the clubhouse and converted this area to native grasses.  Jim Urbina, who has been instrumental throughout the restoration process came on-site on September 12th and carved out a new bunker on the back left side of the green complex.  MacKenzie's vision was to alter the depth perception from a player's approach shot from the 9th fairway.

Current view of 9th Green Complex with the addition of new bunker

Venting Greens

Wednesday we "vented" the greens, which is another way of saying we used a small solid tine aerification to give the greens a little mid-summer breather. At this point in the season our native soil push-up greens tend to get a little "tired" and stressed with the drought season in combination with all of the traffic they receive. By venting the greens we are able to provide much needed oxygen to the root zone which makes the grass plant healthier, while minimizing the impact on the putting conditions. The process included sand top dressing, solid tine arefication with 1/4" tines, brushing, rolling, and watering in that order. When we were finished with a green you could barely tell anything had been done.

Irrigation Adjustments

We are now just over a year removed from the completion of a completely new irrigation system. We've made it through most of the major "tweaking" that goes along with the installation of a new system, which allows us to get much more detailed in the adjustments that we are making. Starting tomorrow we will be taking the makeshift tool shown in the picture above and begin measuring the degree arc of every part circle sprinkler head on the golf course, and then inputting those numbers into our central irrigation database.

Having more accurate data in the computer instead of just labeling every head as 180 degrees will give us the ability to know to a much greater extent how much water is actually going out on the course. It will also help us maintain much better irrigation uniformity, especially on and around the greens, creating more consistency throughout the course.

Junuary?

Rain and drizzle during a very rare early June storm

June has been a very odd month in terms of weather.  We are accustomed to the extraordinary micro-climates in the Bay Area where it is 58-degrees at the coast and scorching to well over 100-degrees a few miles inland.  Typically, the golf course falls in the middle of the two extremes, making it one of the most desirable climates in the world with 70-degree weather dominating the forecast.  However, turfgrass likes consistency and when it goes from rainy at the beginning of June...to hot...back to cool and foggy, the grass doesn't know if summer is coming or going.  It is rare to receive rain during the month of June.  You have to go back to 1964 to see the last significant rain event for June...after that the last time this area recorded over 2-inches of rain in June was back in 1884!

This random, inconsistent weather can create undesirable response in turfgrass.  For instance, earlier in June the green surfaces were eliciting extreme seedhead production.  As we approach the end of June, the greens are fairly "clean" following the application of a product that stops seedhead production.  The annual poa will develop seedheads as a stress response, especially if it has been cool, then a spike in heat.  The seedheads most often affects the late-afternoon players as the "puffing up" of the poa can create bumpy greens and green speeds that are slower than desired.

While we do not experience many of the summer weather extremes as other parts of the country, we still have issues and the most recent forecast has rain expected on the 28th or 29th of June, officially allowing us to rename this month as Junuary.    

Intense seedhead production on the 18th green in early June prior to an application of Proxy / Primo

Mowing and Rolling

Over the past several months we have been using some very interesting research that is being done by Dr. Rob Golembiewski at Oregon State University to manage our green speeds. For those of you that don't know Pasatiempo has some of the most severely sloping/undulated greens in the U.S. (original Alister MacKenzie design), and we are simply unable to manage the greens for daily play at anything faster than 10.5 on the Stimp meter and still maintain fair hole locations.

Dr. Golembiewski's research, which is a replication of similar trials that were done at Michigan State University on bentgrass, has shown that you can attain viable green speeds while mowing less often and at a slightly higher cutting height than what was previously thought. Currently we are mowing four days per week (at a cutting height of .120") and rolling seven days, while targeting the higher volume play days to mow and roll in combination. By keeping this schedule we've seen improved consistency from day-to-day with speeds ranging between 10' and 10.5' most days, and slightly higher on the days when we mow roll in combination. As the summer progresses, we also expect to see all of the obvious benefits of mowing at a higher cutting height (i.e. reduced damage from our local nematode, reduced disease and water use, better wear tolerance, improved density, etc...).

#3 Cartpath Update

After a week of hard work by the maintenance staff, the cartpath on #3 will finally be open. Although the concrete was poured on Tuesday morning, it took several days for the concrete to "cure", and be ready for regular cart traffic. During the past week we had several of our guys out there making sure all of the shaping and sod work was done to our standards. The finished product looks great, and should improved the look and playability of the hole substantially

Review and History of Pasatiempo...

Click on this Link to Read the Course Review by Author Robert Fagan