Tournament time - Ball Roll

For our biggest and most competitive event of the season, ball roll and greens conditioning is the up most importance and a precedence we have set the last several years to have the greens rolling.  Using the term "ball roll" instead of greens speed for describing the quality of a putting surface, means the condition of a green is not just measured by the speed but also by how smooth, true, and consistent it rolls, and all of those characteristics in my opinion make up "ball roll".  Yes the greens will be very fast this weekend but they will also be ultra smooth, firm, true, and consistent.

2013 Whing Ding Sole Survivor

Staff has worked extremely hard the last two weeks fine tuning the condition of the greens.  Ball roll does not come from just dropping the height of cut, but it is a combination of fertilizer running out at the right time so the greens are very lean, the height of cut, sand topdressing for a smooth and firm surface, rolling frequency and timing, and the moisture level from irrigation in the green.  The first four items listed have all taken place over the last two weeks and now the only thing left is to dry the greens down as far as we can to get the hard firm surface.  A little strategic planning while we watch mother nature to get the timing just right so they peak with moisture level by Monday afternoon (the lack of), but we do not dry them down to quickly.  There are a lot of aspects that go into managing tournament greens and it is not just dropping the height of cut or turning off the water, but a combination of many different aspects.

Tourney time - pin placements

This coming weekend is one of our biggest and most competitive tournaments of the season.  For these major events we go out and select the pin placements for each day about 1 week in advance.  This allows us to stay away from these pin locations for regular daily play for the entire week leading up, with the hopes that the turf around the cup will receive less traffic and less ballmarks.   That does mean for this week that we will have some pin locations that may not be our "typical" locations, they may be closer to a hump or closer to the collar than normal.

Pin placement is closer to the center ridge than we would normally cut

They will still be very fair and in good locations, but they might be a little different than normal as we protect and grow-in the prime areas that we will be using for the event.

Rattle Snakes - be careful

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all of my readers out there.

This is always a very busy weekend for us as we host one of major tournaments, the LT Classic.  This years field has 136 players and the week leading up to this has been extremely busy getting the golf course ready for the event.  Things have really peaked right now and the course is in great shape.  A little rain by mother nature and some warm sunny spring days has things playing great, greens are rolling there usual 12', and your maintenance staff has been working very hard and doing an exceptional job to get everythinginto tournament condition.

Here are a few pictures from this mornings prep work.

Hole #13

Remember - we do have rattle snakes in the tall native grass areas.  Right now all of the babys are coming out of the dens, so please be careful if you are looking for a ball in the native.  The maintenance staff is seeing about 5-10 snakes every morning on the course.

This is one of the largest ones we have seen on the course in years, most of them are 1-3 ft in length.

Ladies Amateur Championship coming to Lewiston Country Club in 2014

We had our first walk trough today with the PNGA (Pacific Northwest Golf Association) to prep for the Ladies Amateur and Mid-Amateur Championships that we will be hosting this summer July 7-11.  This is a big event for us to be hosting in the pacific northwest and we are very excited to be selected to host it.   There will be some great ladies golf to watch and a very exciting time agronomically to prep the course.

Touring the course, planning out course set-up

The manual for course prep and playability

Planning meeting with tournament committee, head pro, and food and beverage manager

Stay tuned this summer to see the things that we do to prepare the golf course for an event of this scale.

Super Bowl Tourney

Goal posts are ready for the super bowl tourney this weekend.  Do you think you can hit a golf ball through the uprights?

Hopefully Prater will send a lot through after the tourney.