Opening Day Update

The 2014 golf season begins today and I would like to welcome you back to a summer of uninterrupted golf. After 2 seasons of construction and hosting the CN Women's Canadian Open the Turf Care department is looking forward to grooming and presenting the course to you and you alone. Our goal, as always, is to provide you with the finest playing experience that The Royal Mayfair can deliver. In maintaining the course at a championship level we have developed a good idea as to what areas we can improve upon and also how we can change our agronomic practices to meet the demands of a premier golf facility. However, during the month of May, we do have to recover from some winter damage that hit the 18th, 8th, large practice and warmup greens.

As you may or may not be aware of the 18th green was resodded with turf from our nursery. The decision was made based on my experience with long term recovery in this part of Alberta. If May isn't warm and wet waiting for Poa annua recovery will stretch into June and eventually July. We will hopefully be back on the 18th green by the May Long Weekend. It won't match the other greens in terms of speed and roll as we need to cautious with our mowing height for awhile. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

The warmup green recovery will take a different path than #18. We don't have enough sod that is ready for use to cover what is required. Any sod we do have needs to be saved for incidental repairs from some minor winter damage and also any future problems we may experience during the season. I didn't want to resod with pure bentgrass from a sod farm because we would then have a completely different putting surface than the golf course greens (a Poa/bentgrass mix). The warmup has been worked on extensively and will stay covered with a tarp that will heat the surface and keep soil temperatures higher than normal for this time of year. By staying off it and basically "greenhousing" the turf, recovery will be rapid. The putting green and #8 are coming along fine and should be back to normal by the end of May. There is also some minor damage to greens #2 and #16 caused by someone walking on the greens. Once the irrigation system is on (next few days) we will plug out those areas.

Course cleanup finally began in earnest last week and will continue for another few days. We verticut all the rough and sweeping up the debris takes time. Not all of the old loose grass could be swept up so you will notice it on your shoes and cart wheels for a few days. Once we begin mowing the rough the loose grass will cease to be a problem.

This was the new sod on #18 after its first mow earlier this week. It has since been heavily topdressed, brushed and rolled again. The cover is back on it to keep it warm at night. The front collar will be sodded in the next week and we will be reshaping the top edge of the right green side bunker to stop the constant washouts that occur after heavy rains.

Before I close I'm very pleased to announce that The Royal Mayfair is now a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. Through the efforts of our 2nd Assistant Superintendent, David Smith, and the members of the Environmental Improvement Committee we are now one of 18 courses in Alberta and the first in the Edmonton area to achieve this status. I'm proud of our efforts to combine the game of golf with stewardship of the land and air especially in the center of a major metropolitan area.

All for now and see you on the course.
Wade Peckham