Dear Bentwater Members,

In preparation for the upcoming cold temperatures forecasted for the first week of January 2018, I wanted to take a moment to explain what things we must do in order to protect our greens.  First, Ultradwarf Bermuda grass such as TifEagle and MiniVerde do exhibit cold weather tolerance, but it is readily accepted by the USGA that when temperatures fall below 25 degrees, we must do additional things to protect these green surfaces.  The best method that we can utilize is what is known as “icing” the greens.  It is paramount that we increase our moisture levels in these sand based greens.  The water acts as an insulator keeping the soil temperatures above freezing.  Also, the worst thing that we can have happen is allowing our greens to dry down prior to the sub 25 degree nights with high cold winds.   This desiccation of our putting surfaces could have severe adverse effects on how we go through the rest of the winter and also affecting our spring green up.  Having said all this, we will need to water nightly over the next week.  This normally is not our practice this time of the year, but during this cold snap we must do this.  This will cause the soil and turf surrounding the greens to be wetter than normal.  I understand that this is not optimum for playing golf shots around the greens, but understand that this is necessary to protect the greens growing in a sand based (faster draining) medium.   I hope this bit of information can help you understand why it seems to be wetter around the greens than normal.  If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to email me at dlatham@bentwaterclub.com.

 

Regards,

 

Donny Latham

Director of Agronomy

The bunker work has started on Grand Pines.  We excavated sand from 9 and 18 today including all old drain pipe, bunker liner and contaminated sand.  We will continue this work before Jeff Blume can come out this week to paint new grass lines before we begin reshaping bunkers. 

Hello Bentwater, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I wanted to take a moment today to update you on the Grand Pines bunker project.  We will begin today taking down the construction site in the country club parking lot and this will continue through the weekend.  We will be removing the 40' container and all the small tools left in that area and moving them to the back of the maintenance shop at GP.  Starting Monday 12/4 we will begin removing sand/gravel/drain pipes from holes 9 & 18.  Jeff Blume will be on property to oversee the rough shaping of these bunkers.  I think what you will find is that the bunkers will remain relatively close in shape and size to what is existing.  However one change you will notice is that the grass line will be lower on many of the existing bunkers.  What has happened over the years, after looking at older photos and talking with Jeff Blume, the grass line has been significantly edged up.  This isn't something that has been done wrong, but is common normal maintenance practices over the past 12 years.  The bunkers have lost some of the original character that was initially built.  We will work to restore the original look and character in each bunker.  I have been asked by many about removing some of the bunkers and I can only tell you, that I am not the architect and I do not intend on changing the design, especially with Jeff Blume on site.  There are a few bunkers that we feel we can reduce in size based on observations I've made over the past 8 months of play.  One thing to note, we will not be adding the liner and white sand to large bunker on #16 (original 7).  This bunker is obviously a very large bunker that will be played more as a waste bunker.  We will install the liner on the Bermuda grass edge closest to the green and we will purchase new sand for this bunker, but it will not be Arkansas White sand.  We will hand rake the sand closest to the greens edge but in the back of the bunker we will leave natural only raking this area 1x a week.  I know many of you are excited about this coming and needed change as well as I am, but one thing to note.  This is going to take several months to finish and we will need to close certain holes during the construction.  We do this for the safety of the workers and also to allow for uninterrupted work.  I will keep you and the proshop staff aware of what holes that will be closed as we move forward.  Look forward to seeing all of you out on the golf courses.

Donny Latham