Royal Mayfair Turf Notes: Irrigation Project and Cross Country Skiing

I have two topics to discuss and you may be surprised that one starting depends on the other finishing. In a nutshell the entire golf course property will be closed to skiing until Alpine Irrigation is completely finished their work for November and any open excavations are fenced off by the Turf Care Department. Even if it snows enough to establish tracks, as long as Alpine is working and to ensure your safety we cannot allow anyone on the course. Signs will be posted early next week and notification from the Club will go out to all members. This won't be long term but likely until the end of the month.

Even though 90% of the mainline work is finished on the front 9 and lateral line/sprinkler installation is completed on 7 holes (1,2,5,6,7,8,9) there are still some open excavations in isolation valve areas. There is mainline installation ongoing across the 18th fairway, behind the 13th green and out onto the 12th hole in front of the tees. As of Friday Alpine is also installing mainline alongside the south tree line on hole 5. The lateral line/sprinkler installation on hole 5 is finished as noted above. Now that the ground is beginning to freeze the lateral line/sprinkler phase will cease and trenching of larger lines will continue for another week or 2. As long as the excavated soil can be backfilled into trench lines and packed work will be ongoing.

Considering that Alpine Irrigation began work about 2 weeks late, Jeff Monkman became seriously ill and it snowed several times in October the project is almost on schedule. The wet weather throughout the last several weeks has left some areas of the front 9 in rough condition especially where Alpine had to travel with equipment and larger holes were dug for cross connection of larger pipes and valve installation. Fortunately most of these areas are in the rough and in or next to tree lines. Keep in mind that resodding in wet conditions and the fact that there is zero growth at this time of year will mean a lot of attention from Turf Care will be required next spring to improve the repair work. We have a large task ahead of us but it will get done and the scars of today will disappear over the summer.

The golf course has been "winterized" and now we leave matters to nature aside from the Turf Care staff monitoring oxygen and carbon dioxide levels under the tarps covering the greens and blowing fresh air underneath when required. The "final" fungicide applications on greens, tees, approaches and fairways went well but the continuous precipitation (especially the heavy rainfall on November 6th) that followed and very warm weather necessitated another application (last week) across the golf course. We have left small areas that didn't receive this last application to test results of not being treated one last time. We should now have better data to monitor the effectiveness of the fungicide that was applied in late October. This may save money if these same weather conditions present themselves in the future.