Summer is coming

To eliminate the island silhouette in my former blog cover I asked Peter McCormick of Turfnet to "work me up a new one", since he created the last one. He also created a new badge to promote membership in Turfnet that I wanted installed. So we have yet another new face to the blog. I hope you like it.
We now have all boat cleat markers and the confusion is rampant. I thought it would be clear but apparently some people are struggling with the theme of carrying the front side color to the back and having it be a split marker instead of two separate colors. It may take a few weeks until everyone has played the course and then it should be smooth sailing. The concept of a short forward course and a middle set of tees is getting rave reviews. The last of the tees will be opened next week. Just in time for the kick off to summer, Memorial Day.

back nine tees in action

left over tee spray used on first fairway: something to that iron

Setting up for participation in a study by UMass

The fairways have been white for two weeks with Poa seed heads. I had some spray leftover from our first tee and approach application so I used it on the first fairway and within a day it was so noticeable it forced me to make a ferrous sulfate application to mask it. I had wanted to make this application for days anyway so it all worked out in the end. Iron plays a very important role in the plant and produces a brilliant green color when sprayed on turf.  If sprayed at a high enough rate it will kill moss and can actually turn the grass black for a short time. The fairways look much better although the streaks in between the spray pattern are now making me crazy. May need to lower the rate on the next application or switch to using the booms and the foam marker.
We also had a couple of visits from the University of Massachusetts this week. We are taking part in an interesting study on soil bacteria and fungi with two other courses on the island. This study has been done in potatoes but never in turf so it should be interesting to see the results. The location of samples was laid out the first day and then the samples were taken the next, They will return in the Fall to do another round of samples.
The course and crew are taking shape and even the weather has made a welcomed appearance or two this week. Let's hope for continued fair winds and a good week of work to prep for our first member's tourney next weekend. Enjoy the new tee set up.

Tee It Forward

The good news is we painted up the boat cleat tee markers this week. The bad news is the rain we were supposed to get while painting these did not come until today. When you live and die by the weather sometimes you are a hero and sometimes a goat. Because of this great forecast a few people had a chance to play the course without any markers at all and that would have been the ultimate chance to Tee It Forward. Did you? The initiative is simple: play the distance that gives you a chance to score. The fact is everyone enjoys the game more when not tortured by length, deep rough, crazy fast greens, excessive water or bunker hazards etc. Without question today's clubs and balls make the game easier. The driving distance for someone with a high swing speed is just stupid at 250-300+ yards. The clubs are more forgiving of errant shots. There are so many choices for balls there has to be one that is perfect for everyone. Yet the average player is still an 18-22 handicap or something along those lines. Any course constructed in the last decade or so has multiple tee boxes to choose from. They stretch the course to 7,000 yards or more but also allow for shorter courses for beginners, women, seniors, players of all abilities. How we get people to pick the right tee for them is the hard part. I cannot tell you how many rounds I have played from 6800 yds and above and felt tortured. All because some idiot in the group wanted to play the tips!

Chris painted up the new scheme

The initiative is simple: play the distance that gives you a chance to score.

flower stand on Franklin street

Mink Meadows was constructed in 1936. This is the tail end of the classical design era. It was still a ground game and the courses played firm and fast as watering practices and maintenance practices were a lot different to put it mildly. We have added many tee boxes over the years. Most were to add variation from front nine to back. Many added length and a couple shortened it for the forward tees. As we continue to add more forward tees we gain the ability to create a middle set of markers. I loath to call these senior tees because the Tee It Forward movement is not age or gender bias. We no longer have stigma associated with our colors here. We will refer to the colors simply as Front (red), Middle (green), and Back (blue). To eliminate the public male golfer arriving and wanting to play the "back"/longest tee here and playing blue/blue I tried to come up with a scheme that would fix that and also avoid having six colors with the addition of our new middle tees. The plan is simple: carry the front nine color to the back and all three sets share the same neutral color. So back nine markers are: Front (red/white), Middle (green/white), & Back (blue/white). This is mostly confusing for our male members who were accustomed to playing white markers as front and blue markers as back. It was decided this would be an easier transition than three new colors. We shall see. It was impossible to time a new score card with the painting of tee markers and opening of the new tees so bear with us as we get everything in sync. The two new courses (Red; Red/White & Green; Green/White) need to be rated by the MGA. And the plan is that we can actually have all tee sets in the system so you could play any variation and still enter it as a valid score towards your handicap. For instance I cannot wait to play the course for maximum length variation Red - Blue/White. This would give some of us a potentially drivable par four and a swing on 7/16 from 93 yds to 194 yds. Sounds like fun doesn't it?  As part of this change we also moved the reds to the forward most tee box on every hole. This was done to have a short nine for beginners and Sr women. It will also add variation to the front set of tee markers. I whipped up the middle set today out of old style markers as I wait for the new boat cleats to come in. There are also many markers next to each other to save teeing space until we open the newest forward tee or construct one. It is a work in progress. So come out and enjoy a round and simply pick a color scheme and have fun.

Tournament prep

Well we managed to pull it off. The course has had a transformation in the last few days. To me it has looked like  it does all winter. Messy. Now it has that manicured look to it. A lot of the change was mowing. Everything has been mowed several times this week and that regular repeated cutting makes the turf stand up at attention and look neater. The seed heads are still flying on fairways and that gives them a whitish hue but they look better. The rough has been cut everywhere and trimmed so it is almost even everywhere. It is still growing in fits and starts. The weather has dipped back into cold and raw but we are making strides and most of this week was stellar. The staff deserves a big pat on the back to whip the place into shape after a tough few weeks cleaning up sticks, building tees and moving a cart path. I will admit I had my doubts we could make it happen. The PA tourney will be here and gone by the time I post again and people will love the place.

interesting clouds one afternoon 4 T

newest tees even received a haircut this week. Looking good.

As usual we will aerify and topdress the greens on Monday May 6th. This will give us three weeks before Memorial Day. I do not think they will need that time to recover fully as we usually have them back to normal in about 7 days. We will also be aerifying and topdressing tees soon especially the new ones. This will help break through any mat the new sod may have and also help to smooth them out. The ones built last year have been done once already and as soon as this years are ready we will do those. I look forward to better weather and seeing more of you return on the coming weeks. I have been tweeting regular updates so if you are interested in short snippets as to what may be going on around the property look me up @22crowther

As soon as I posted this I received an email with the above video of the NERTCS video produced by one of our vendors. Check it out. The golf auction we had was successful  and as soon as I get details I will post them.