July Rains

 I'm sure all of us can remember a year ago this time of the year, we were in the middle of a record setting drought here in southeast Texas plus the heat stayed in the 100's for record setting amount of days. Well what a change 2012 has brought us.
 July has brought some great rainfall to Willow Fork. I can't remember the last time I actually sat around during the day and watched it rain, it was nice. So far for the month of July 5.85" of rain has been recorded here, where a year ago July recoded .35"

 I wanted to give you all an update on the course conditions as of July 13th:

 Over 5" of rain has fallen in the last 13 days, fortunately the rains have been spread out and no flooding has taken place. However the course is very wet and the bunkers are washed down. I will also be keeping a close eye on the greens for any disease outbreak, going from cool wet conditions to hot steamy conditions while the turf is saturated sets up prime conditions for diseases. The height of cut has temporarily been raised in order to protect the turf from damages that are caused by diseases. Once the greens begin to dry out, we'll start lowering the cut.
 We have started pumping the water out of traps but will not start pushing up the sand until the chances of rain have gone way down. While the rains were occurring we did take advantage of weed-eating and edging the bunkers.
 Once the fairways begin to dry out we'll get right out and start mowing, that will be a journey. We mow fairways at 1/2", yesterday when I looked at the fairway cut it looked like it was a inch high or more.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The maintenance staff just asks our members to be patient, we'll be working hard and alot of hours to get the course back in our standard playing conditions as quickly as we can. For several days now, you may see a one of our guys mowing the drier areas on the course such as tee and green slopes and mounds in the roughs. We are simply trying to catch up and mow where we can, so please keep your golf cart on the cart path.


Thank You

Willy Plowman
Golf Course Superintendent