Recovery Work And What's Ahead In September

The "tear down" of the tournament infrastructure has progressed well and should be complete by early next week. Aside from a rogue semi driver everything has gone according to plan. The major rain storm late Thursday has delayed work out on the course but the crews were able to take care of other areas on Friday.

We have already begun some repairs on the course which has come through very well thanks to the dry weather during tournament week. Even a light rainfall would have turned the spectator areas outside the ropes into a muddy mess. The transition zone between approaches and fairways has been core aerated with our greens aerator. Double cutting of fairways for 10 days resulted in a lot of compaction about 25 to 30 yards out from the greens. The spectactor and equipment cross paths are being solid tine aerated at present. They will be fine until we begin our fall aeration program. The paths that were worn down outside the ropes will be solid tine aerated and verticut once Golf Canada is finished on the property. Again these paths are in pretty good shape as it stands right now. We have some ruts to repair from the crane and the semi but they are out of play.

The obvious signs of damage are the areas under the suites, grandstands and tents. It will take a while for the color to return to normal but these zones should be okay. The road across #9 and the gold tee on #12 are another matter. The wood decking has been removed from #12 tee and it looks bad. It will need resodding. We will assess the situation and decide on what recovery plan to implement in a few days. The road across #9 will be resodded after all equipment has left the property.

The driving range setup and repair has been delayed somewhat as the staff was pumping water and is still pushing sand on the golf course. The plan is to stay on the mats and begin work on the natural grass surface. More on that next week.

Anything else you may notice on greens or tees is basically some first aid to repair zones that have thinned out for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with the Tournament.


September Changes - fall preparations begin at this time of year:

• mowing heights will come up on greens, aprons and fairways
• walking mowers are replaced with riding mowers due to labour shortages that happen every year in early September
• mowing frequency is also reduced as growth rates and turf recovery slow down
• leaves will begin to fall and the long cleanup will start
• tees, approaches (or aprons if you prefer) and fairways will be aerated as the month progresses
• greens will be aerated in October however we will mini / solid tine next week and our light topdressing program will resume. 

Finally, NO MAJOR PROJECTS are scheduled for the remainder of the season. Good news for all after a very busy summer.

Wade

Life Is Slowly Returning To Normal

The 2013 CN Canadian Women's Open is over and The Royal Mayfair is settling back into our normal day to day operations. All course materials should be out on the course by the end of today. Washrooms have been reopened, the drinking fountains are once again flowing and all the ball washers will be filled. It would have been great to have everything in place Tuesday morning but there are only so many hours in a day and my entire staff aside from Eric, Ian and myself had a well deserved day off on Monday. Please be patient if you notice something out of place. We are aware of it and will get to it soon.

Before I blog about recovery work that will be ongoing over the next few weeks some thank-you's are in order.

I'll begin by thanking the Royal Mayfair Membership for opening up your facility and allowing this tournament to be held here. I hope you are proud of the golf course. It stood up well and showed the golfing world what Edmonton and Alberta has to offer. I cannot miss thanking, Mr. Don McGarvey, Mr. Kevin Mckee, all the Volunteer Chairpersons, Robb James and his team, Brian Lacasse and his staff for looking after us and keeping us fed, the clubhouse staff and especially our GM, Mr. Wade Hudyma who seemed to be everywhere at all times ready to shake hands and offer encouragement to my team.

Our experience and time spent with CN, Golf Canada, all the setup teams, the LPGA and the great group of volunteers was an experience I will never forget. Bo Ream and his officials from the LPGA taught me more about major tournament preparation and rules that will help me in the future. The spectators were very respectful of the course and it was an awesome sight to see that many people completely surrounding the 18th hole on Sunday.

I would also like to thank the competitors for their kind comments and appreciation of the golf course. Their praise of the conditions and the tournament as a whole validated the work we put into the facility. A huge thank you to the champion Lydia Ko for her comments about the course and especially the greens. Probably the best thing I heard all week. Make that THE BEST thing I heard.

My last and most important thanks goes out to my Turf Care team and all the volunteers we had from area golf courses. To have colleagues, their staff and industry suppliers here was a great help. Without that kind of  committment an event like this cannot be held. Ok, my last, last thank you goes out to 3 very professional people on my staff. Ian Scott, our equipment technician, Eric Mitskopoulos, 1st Assistant and David Smith, 2nd Assistant. To make a long story short, they are critical to our success. End of story. Thanks Guys!!!!

Another blog post is on the way in the next few days that will detail recovery work and other course happenings as we move into September.

Wade

Advance Week Is Upon Us

Known as "Advance Week" this is the 7 days leading up to Monday, August 19th. We will spend the entire week fine tuning all our procedures and cleaning up loose ends. The forecast also suggests we'll likely be dealing with some weather like we are this morning. It's been worse this season but we still have fairways to pump water off which will restrict mowing there and in the rough today. The bunkers came through fine this time. You could just see the relief on our crew's faces during our morning meeting. They are very good at bunker repairs but they've been through the ringer this year.

Part of advance week is protecting the pin positions on the greens. What this entails is cup locations that you will not be used to seeing very often or even at all. I apologize in advance. Hopefully it won't be too bad. We have given printouts of each green to our 2 setup staff so that should help. They have done a great job over the last couple of weeks fixing small imperfections in the greens which has further improved the putting surfaces.

On The Course:

• Cups will be painted daily and edges trimmed with small scissors.
• Snow fence will be laid out on all the par 3 tournament tees, #2 gold, #3 gold, and #10 gold to protect the majority of those surfaces from use by members or those competitors that may arrive early.
• Major tree line trim. We haven't really been cutting in these areas over the last month as our resources have been directed elsewhere. The string trimmers, push mowers and smaller rotary deck mowers will be out over the next 3 days.
• Golf Canada, Tower Equipment and SER will be out in full force from sun up to sun down. They are behind schedule.
• CBC technicians and Golf Canada electricians will be arriving this week as well. You will notice small green flags in the rough where any cables are laid down. They are there for our rough mowers but please be mindful of these flags and such. 
• A very large crane will be driven out to the 18th hole near the hospitality suite area on Friday. Wish us luck. It has to go there at the request of CBC, no compromise. Believe me I tried to have it located somewhere else. 
• Member divot sweep over the course late Friday organized by Mr. Bob Ingram. Thank you for all your help.

Speaking of divots. Now more than ever divot repair must be done consistently and correctly. Please put large divots back in the divot hole and sprinkle sand over top. I cut fairways on Sunday and could not believe some of the divots that were not repaired in any way, shape or form. I hope I am correct in putting the blame on guests.

• One other task. I mentioned in my last blog that we were done for topdressing. We changed our minds and will be doing a very light topdressing on the greens tomorrow morning (Tuesday). 

All for now,

Wade

On The Course This Week

Before I outline the course work for the next several days leading up to Advance Week a few thank you's are in order. First I would like to express my appreciation to the members that were here on the evening of August 5th to cleanup any small branches that the crew hadn't got to since the wind storm 2 weekends ago. Mrs. Kelay Ohlhauser  assisted in coordinating the group and they worked for a couple of hours and enjoyed some food and beverage afterwards. I wish I could remember the names of everyone so at the risk of missing someone I won't try.

The second thank you goes out to the membership as a whole for enduring the topdressing program last week. We compressed greens, tees, approaches and fairways into 3 days. It went well and the golf course is going to get a break for awhile. From this date forward we do not want to disrupt the playing surfaces until the tournament is over.

Golf Canada, Tower Scaffolding and SER have been setting up infrastructure since early last week and they will continue 7 days/week until they are finished. Now the presentation of all that is built upon the steel will begin to take shape giving our course the real look and feel of a major golf event In Canada. There is obviously some wear and tear to deal with especially across 9 fairway (as usual). We made the decision to use the single crossing point rather than spreading out the traffic in order to keep damage limited to one area. It will be marked as a crossing point so it won't affect play

On The Course:

Mowing Heights
The fairways and collars will see a slight drop in mowing height as requested by the LPGA. The cut on greens will remain the same. We feel that with rolling and control of moisture we can attain speeds and roll befitting the demands of Professional golfers. However the greens can sustain lowering if need be. Hopefully the weather cooperates with us for a change this summer and we have dry conditions the week of.
The rough will be brought up to 3 inches beginning on Wednesday, August 7th. It is healthy, dense and green. Bad news for those playing over the next 10 days so keep it in the middle.

Bunkers
Good timing here. They are in need of another thorough sand adjust and complete edging especially after all the heavy rains we have experienced this season. The goal is to attain the type of lip we currently see on the front faces and less of one on the shallow back faces (approximately 1 to 2 inches). Steep back faces will naturally have a deeper lip as we do not want to pull too much sand up the slope. Ideally we only want 1 to 1.5 inches of sand covering any slope in order to keep balls from staying high and not rolling down to the floors (bottom) of the bunker. Or at least that's the theory.

Presentation
As you can see we are repairing many unsightly areas on the perimeter of the course. We are also in full conversion to fine hemlock/cedar bark chips in our move away from pine straw/needles shipped in from the USA. We have added many new areas around the course and I hope you like the look. It will mean a concerted effort at weed control in the future but we feel it's worth it.

All for now,
Wade