Tomorrow, the tee sheet is blocked off until 10:00am in order for staff to DryJect greens. These types of aeration programs are critical for the long term health of USGA spec greens. While there is never a good time to do this work because of disruption to your golf season, DryJect is performed this time of year as opposed to conventional core-removal aeration because it is far less disruptive and generally heals much faster. We save the more disruptive programs for spring time when there is less demand for the course.
Although the process is less disruptive, it does take an afternoon for the sand to dry, and be worked into the turf, cleaned up and rolled. We recognize there are those who want to play and enjoy being on the golf course regardless of the greens and therefore we will not close the golf course for the day. Historically, it leads to a few golfers panicking about the greens even though we haven't started the final clean up effort. After a day or two, I always hear members commenting that the aeration didn't impact ball roll much at all. Your patience is appreciated and needed to be sure your putting greens perform well into the future.
Our schedule for tomorrow is as follows:
6:15am the greens will be sprayed with a fungicide and a jolt of fertilizer to help them recover as soon as possible. Spraying occurs prior to DryJect.
6:30am we will start the process and work ahead of play.
-around 2:00pm, is historically when we finish the golf course and we wrap up with the practice green.
-after each green is finished, we will roll each green one time.
-Tuesday night, the greens will be watered heavily and then rolled again Wednesday morning. Our goal is get the greens smoothed out prior to mowing to avoid potential scalping. By Thursday morning, we will be back to mowing and rolling as usual.
3:00pm we will have a team of staff members brooming the greens to disperse sand now that it had a chance to dry. Hopefully we have a beautiful day with high skies to dry the sand quickly.
As you can see, it takes about 2 days before we are back to our routine. Over time, this is an important program we use to maintain firm greens and keep the organic matter in our 20 year old USGA spec greens diluted with sand. Please see the images below to get a better understanding of this process.
Thank you,
Brian J. Stiehler CGCS, MG
