We have been through quite a bit during the last few weeks. Irene caused havoc and mayhem on the golf course and we continue to literally pick up the pieces and move forward. Remnants of Lee also came through RI and dropped four inches of rainfall last week...but that was a needed soaking!! I'll briefly recap a few highlights from Irene and again get back to writing about more everyday type issues we face in September and October.
As the storm moved through Sunday September 4, we reserved a rental on a brush chipper from the Cape area. Twenty equipment rental agencies were called before we had success. We had employees at the Club on Sunday to deal with situations that needed immediate attention, and this proved very worthwhile. Both storm drains at the Clubhouse building became clogged with tree debris early and were cleared during the day. If this wasn't done, the clubhouse building certainly would have been flooded through the front door and in the 19th hole.
We hired Warwick Tree Service before the storm left Rhode Island to perform necessary tree work to put us back in business. I am not sure what we would have done without them because golf course damage was extensive. Besides the obvious uprooted and downed trees, we had many dangerous situations with precariously hanging limbs that needed to be pruned. Warwick Tree was here for three of the first four days of cleanup despite their long list of affected customers.
Our Potowomut crew arrived on Monday to a golf course littered with tree debris everywhere. Photos were taken to document damage for insurance purposes. Our employees went hole by hole raking, blowing and picking up sticks, branches and small trees. The chipper arrived Wednesday morning. We started cleaning on hole ten because damage was less on the back side, and knew we could open those holes the soonest. Thanks to Shawn Campbell, Seth Force and bag room and restaurant employees for their help on Monday!! They were invaluable!! As of this writing, major debris has been picked up, piles of leaves still need to be picked up, and many areas need to be re-visited and cleaned again.
Also, much tree work remains for outside tree professionals to complete. All snapped and hanging branches will be pruned. Root balls from uprooted trees will be removed and stumps will be ground and established with turf. Turf damaged from tree work will be renovated and re-seeded. There are entire trees that still need to be removed because of storm damage, (see photo below of a huge new crack on a Maple left of #1) including some sizable ones. Yes, we are open and safe for golf, but please know that much work still remains.
Back to storm details. Power was lost to irrigation pumps Sunday during the storm. A National Grid Engineer arrived Tuesday and told us power probably wouldn't return until the following Sunday or Monday. The golf course can't survive long without rainfall or irrigation water, neither of which were possibilities on Tuesday. Before the Engineer was off the property, we called our pump supplier, DAF in Connecticut and reserved their only diesel powered pump that would enable us to pump water into our pipes at a third of the capacity we are used to. (Later in the day, the service people told me before Tuesday ended numerous Westchester County and suburban Connecticut clubs, including many with name recognition all over the United States wished they had called first.) The pump was installed on Wednesday and irrigation was initiated to drying greens and fairways. We arrived to work on Thursday morning surprised to find power in the pumphouse; the pump quickly was moved by DAF to another powerless golf course in New Canaan CT.
Power to the irrigation system controls comes from the maintenance facility. (Our generator was powered up to run irrigation satellites, but it proved to be too small.) Even though we could pump water, we could not tell which irrigation heads to run and for how long. For this reason, Assistant Superintendent Dan Virgulak and I had to visit each sprinkler head (we have 1100) to turn them on and off individually. Because of the diminished capacity of the pump, we could only run eleven heads at a time, compared to the thirty five to forty that run when fully operational. This is why irrigation was running while you played golf...it took a long time to irrigate 35 acres of turf under these conditions!
Power was restored to our shop on Sunday September 3, and we were completely back in the irrigation business! As of today, all irrigation is again operational.
TURFGRASS
Rain last week helped the golf course to recover from a few summer issues. All fairways had a bad reaction to a different growth regulator product applied in July and August. You may remember the off color appearance from a few weeks ago. Safe to say, this product will not be used again on fairways; we will return to the more expensive yet safer alternative. To aid additional healing of fairways, we won't apply more growth regulators this year. To thicken them up, we will encourage growth that we are usually trying to suppress.
Edges of greens that are thin or non-existent will be seeded with help of an aerator attachment purchased for this purpose. We will seed the areas to a newly developed creeping bentgrasses designed for extremely low heights of cut.
Tees will be aerated later this week or next. After tees are completed, we will begin fairway aeration. Greens will be aerated beginning on Wednesday, October 5th.
The areas where sod was taken from the turfgrass nursery (chipping green by the practice tee) will be renovated and seeded within the next few weeks. We used quite a bit of our home grown sod the last few years and it has been slowly shrinking!!
Sincere thanks to my wonderful and hard working crew for Irene clean up efforts. As usual, they went way above expectations to get the golf course back in play for members. Also thanks for many enthusiastic positive comments from members during the last few weeks.
