A Reversal Of Fortunes

After my blog post on July 22nd, Into The Fire, reported how my dire predictions for a hot and dry summer were coming to fruition, it was as if mother nature was out to prove me wrong.  In the last 2 weeks, the weather has made a dramatic reversal back to "average", which after weeks straight of furnace-like temperatures, feels pretty darn nice. 

Truth be told, July turned out to be the hottest month ever recorded in Grand Forks with an average temperture of 6.2 degrees above normal.  However, we were much more fortunate than the remainder of the midwest and managed to sneak out above average precipitation for the month.  The 3.35" of rain that fell in July was only .20" above average, and while the majority of that rain fell at the end of the month when we received almost 2" overnight on the 25th, we were happy just to get anything at that point. 

Now however it appears that August is going to make up for the junk weather that July gave us.  In the last week of July and this first week and a half of August we have received over 3.5" of rain and have had temperatures near and even below normal.  By the third week of July some of the rough areas on the course that are outside of the irrigation could have gone up in flames if you had dropped a match on them.  Now, two and half weeks later, most of those areas have almost completely recovered and are green and growing again. 

Even better, the greens to seem to have recovered pretty well, except for 3, 6, and 10 which suffered enough damage in the heat that they probably won't completely recover until later this fall.  Cool season grasses thrive in daytime highs around 75 degrees, and especially love the cool nights when the temperatures dip down into the 50s.  We have had plenty of those days in the last two weeks.  If the grass had a face, it would likely have a smile from ear to ear right now.

Also, we are to the point in the season where our growth regulators are much more effective, and with our new roller we are able to finally get the speeds going pretty well on the greens.  While I rarely use the dreaded stimpmeter, I had to get it out this week just to see where we were at.  After a single cut and roll on Thursday morning, 16 green gave me some pretty reliable numbers at 11' 9" (US Open green speeds are probably around 12' -13' just for comparison).....which in all honesty is too fast for our 50 year old greens.  While some of you scratch golfers may like those screaming speeds, we don't have enough decent pin placements on our greens to support those speeds on a regular basis.  I would say somewhere around 10' is a better daily number for us, but it sure is fun every once and awhile to get a little carried away....

Well, it seems like for the last month or so I have had nothing but bad pictures of stressed out grass and flooded bunkers to put on the blog, so now that the weather is nice, and both the grass and I can take it a little easier, here are some nice pictures to give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling again.....

Hole 18 at sun up

Hole 9 looking nice, especially with the creek banks filled
in with vegetation this year

I had to throw in this picture of Allie out playing in the wildflowers
while we were out for a course tour one evening.  I have to admit that
they have been an amazing success this summer, we will definitely be
planting a lot more next spring!