Oakfield Golf and Country Club Turf Department: Pre

One of our goals at Oakfield is to keep the golf course in tournament-ready conditions for the entire summer but the weather of late has been hampering our efforts. This morning, just 24 hours before the Men's Club, Mother Nature dropped this bomb on us.

53 mms of rain. Most of which came just before dawn leaving little time for the water to soak into the soil and exit through the drains. The only real damage to the course are the washouts in the bunkers. Here are some pictures of from this morning.

Number 11 bunker.

Number Eight fairway bunker.

Number Eight green side bunker.

You can see in the picture above that the washout has gone deep enough to reach the bottom of the bunker. The difficulty with this result is the contamination of the bunker sand from the soil underneath. Most of the bunkers have liners in the bottom, but the edges still wash down and leave a silt residue.

Here are Johnny and Devon repairing the washed out edges of number three green side bunker.

Here the boys have pushed the silt into the piles at the bottom of the trap. Once collected the silt is removed.
This is one of the most dreaded and thankless jobs that we tackle whenever a large storm passes through.  Every single bunker on the golf course required some level of repair.  Most of the crew spent most of the day, working in teams, to correct the problem and get the course prepped for the club championship.
A little side note about the dedication of the staff. Most of our staff work every third weekend, which results in a 12 day on 2 day off shift followed by two weekends off during the regular season.    Because the Club Championship falls on a weekend, most of the staff will be in this weekend,  which results in most working 21 days straight. We offered days off after the tourney, to compensate for the extra time, but most reject the offer. This schedule takes place twice during the summer, this weekend and the weekend of the Invitational. God love 'em.

Our plan in the morning is to double cut and roll the greens, not in attempt to surpass prior green speeds but rather return them to the state before the storm. Let me repeat that.  We are not driving the greens speeds up for the tourney but rather returning the green speed to 10, where it was before the storm.  We hope that the members enjoy the weekend and good luck!

After a series of problems of frustrating problems the monitoring station for ten tee is operational. We apologize for the delay of progress with this particular project, however now up and running the monitor will allow you to see down the fairway with absolute assurity that it is safe to hit. We would also like to thank the fellows from the Stone Depot, Dion and Ken, for donating the stone and time for the base of the monitor. It's members like these two contributing to the golf course that help to make us a step above the completion.  Here's their website to see some of their other work and what they offer.    http://www.thestonedepot.ca/

Eight Tee is also well on it's way to be up and running after a frustrating spring and summer. On Friday to last week we sodded the top of the red deck with sod from our Nursery and the following Monday did the same for the gold deck.

The begin of the red deck sodding.

The golf and red surfaces complete.

While traveling past you will notice that the surround are now also sodded. That took place on Tuesday of this week. Our plan from here is to wait for the sod to catch to where it is playable, some time in late August (weather dependant) and then create the new cart path through the back of the existing gold deck. The final stage of the project, which is to eliminate the old gold, red deck and cart path will take place in the fall to limit the disruption of play.

Here's a video of the some of the work.

With the humid weather comes disease typical to a golf course. One example we are seeing lately is the commonly referred to as Dollar Spot. Most of the short cut playing surfaces are treated in advance of such weather. Below is a picture of four fairway where some of the disease gained purchase.