From our USGA Turf Advisory Service Report this year the following was reported:
The golf course is irrigated with water that is high in sodium and bicarbonates and has moderately elevated levels of total salts. None of these are at dangerous levels, but they are certainly high enough to cause additional turf stress during droughty conditions and in areas where appropriate drainage is not provided. There are no economical solutions to reduce salinity or sodium issues in the irrigation water. At these levels, the best management practices are to provide good drainage so that salts and sodium can be leached through the profile. The most effective treatment option to improve water quality will be diluting the well water with a higher quality water source if necessary.
What does this mean for us right now? We have not had a
measurable rain sine July 7th. For the month of July we were almost
2” behind normal precipitation, basically we are in a severe drought and we are
dependent on the irrigation system.
I have spoken about this many times before but basically when you use the high sodium water, the turfgrass plant is up taking that sodium and salt dehydrates the plant causing wilt in hot weather. We are currently at 32 days over 90 degrees this year. Our only solution is to add more water to help hydrate the plant. In a perfect world if we had a great drainage system in all of our fairways, we could over apply the saline water and flush some of the salt down the drain. We don’t have this; we have good black soil that holds water and becomes wet and soft for the players. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do until we get a good soaking, flushing rain event. We have to keep the turf plant alive.
The other part of the equation is the delivery of the water.
We have an irrigation system that was designed back in the early 90’s. We did
help the delivery of the water when we changed over the main line delivery of
the water during the golf course renovations we did before the Solheim Cup. We
have over 3,400 sprinkler heads on property. In a perfect world you would hope
every one of those sprinkler heads would operate perfectly, I have news for
you, they don’t. We look for dry spots, overly wet spots on a daily basis, we
are constantly fixing sprinkler heads, adjusting heads to make sure they are
working correctly. We even changed out all of the nozzles on the greens heads this spring because they were so worn. Ideally all heads would work properly, they would have the
right pressure to the head, the water would not drift off site in the wind and
you would perfect uniform coverage. It doesn’t work that way, look at your home
irrigation systems, how many of you are watering the street or your sidewalks on a nightly basis?
The same happens with us, we try to make adjustments and make sure it works as
well as we can, but you are still going to get wet spots and dry spots. It just
can’t be helped.We work very hard to minimize those areas.
In our world we would love to not have to operate sprinkler or hoses during the day while you are golfing. We would love to not have wet spots, dry spots, stressed spots or salty turf. What I want you to know is that we have a very talented staff that is working very hard to maintain the turf during a very stressful time of year. We are sorry that some of you don’t like the playing conditions that they are currently experiencing. Please know that we are trying our best with the tools that we have.
Hopefully we experience some rain soon, cooler weather soon and we can provide you with a firm and fast golf course.