Golf Course Maintenance Fall Quarterly Update from The National Golf Club of Kansas City

FALL 2020

THE NATIONAL GOLF CLUB OF KANSAS CITY GOLF COURSE MAINTENANCE UPDATE

It’s been just over one year since I arrived at The National and what a year it’s been. Settling in to new surroundings, meeting a new staff, getting to know a new membership and co-workers, and (of course!) dealing with a pandemic have made 2020 a busy year.

The pandemic part has really made things interesting, but through it all, it has nonetheless been a pretty good year.

As time goes on, I look forward to getting to know more of you and learning more about this wonderful facility. In this edition of The National Quarterly I will summarize this past summer and discuss some goals for 2021.

The fall season is my favorite time of year. Pleasant weather, autumn colors and football are just a few reasons why. It’s also an opportunity to start preparing the course for the upcoming season in 2021. I will explain some of those plans on the following pages.

Regards,

Gary Sailer

Director of Golf Course Maintenance The National Golf Club of Kansas City garys@fivestarlifestyles.com

MOISTURE MANAGEMENT Managing moisture is one of the most important things we do every day. It starts each morning with checking greens moisture with a moisture meter. This meter allows us to know exactly how much, if any, water needs to be added to each green. This produces healthier greens and also allows us to provide better putting surfaces in terms of firmness and speed.

Graham Edelman, GCM Assistant, takes moisture readings.

We can’t control Mother Nature, but we can control how much water we add to each green based on our readings from our moisture meters. This is a critical tool in our day-to-day maintenance practice.

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PoaCure Update We will be making two more applications of PoaCure to our trial areas on the back of #7, the west side of the chipping green and the north side of our nursery green this month. This follows the four applications we made to these areas in the spring.

May 28th

Some poa has returned during the summer months and these additional applications will eradicate those areas. It will also give us a good idea of how much encroachment the bentgrass has made into these areas that were occupied by the poa annua. This is more data that we will use to determine the effectiveness of this product on eradicating our poa problem. Expect to see the poa turn from yellow to orange to brown during the first four to six weeks of this process until it finally dies.

June 28th

July 28th

August 28th 3

We have identified some areas around the course that can be improved with drainage added. These areas are often soft and get damaged/rutted from our equipment and golf carts driving through them.

As usual, the weather has been very erratic. The majority of the year has been fairly dry with some exceptions like July (6.5") being wetter than normal.

A wet month like July can present additional challenges since this is also one of the hottest months of the year. Some of these challenges include high disease pressure, thinning of coolseason grasses especially on greens, and soft greens which do not yield optimum green speeds.

The problem occurs when irrigation water or rain water cannot drain away or infiltrate the soil any longer due to saturated conditions. This results in the soil becoming soft or “pumpy.” The areas we have identified are the front of #10 fairway, the back of #11 purple tee, #14 purple tee, #16 approach and #17 approach, a few of which are shown below.

September is typically one of our best weather months of the year especially for the cool-season grasses, so recovery from summer stress is very important during this month.

actual

average

yearly average

36.88

20.2 17.78

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Trevor Reid grew up in Maize, Kansas, a small town outside of Wichita. His love for baseball eventually led Trevor to Cloud County Community College where he played college ball.

Trevor moved to Manhattan, Kansas to pursue a degree in business management at Kansas State. He also got a part-time job at Manhattan Country Club in course maintenance. It was at Kansas State that Trevor met a special girl named Sarah.

They were married shortly after Trevor graduated and moved back to Wichita when Trevor became Assistant Superintendent at Crestview Country Club.

During this time, Trevor and Sarah started fostering kids. They sought and obtained legal guardianship of a seven-month-old boy named Domonickk (or Domo as they call him). In 2019, the family relocated to Lawrence (Sarah’s hometown) when Trevor became the GCM Assistant at The National Golf Club.

Trevor interseeds the greens with a spreader

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Meet Antonio Cano … our featured associate in this issue.

Antonio has worked at The National for six years. Before his time here, he installed sod on sports fields.

Antonio has a vast knowledge of our maintenance program and is able to perform almost any task asked of him. His friendly and upbeat personality makes him a joy to be around and an asset to our GCM team.

Please say hello to Antonio next time you see him on the course. We are lucky to have him on our staff!

Antonio mows the greens with care and precision

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We invite you to visit the Golf Course Maintenance facility to meet the team and get a behind-the-scenes tour. Please email me and we’ll schedule a time to get together: garys@thenationalgolfclub.com.

6700 N. National Drive Parkville, MO 64152 816.746.0200 www.thenationalgolfclub.com

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