The kids are coming!

This coming weekend we are hosting the U.S. Kids "Monterey Challenge." Between our course and Del Monte golf course there are over 200 kids from age 6 to 15. Depending on the age range, some play all 18 holes and the younger ones just 9 holes.



This is the second year of the Monterey Challenge and seems to be a hit as the number of participants has increased by 40 players over last year. Hopefully the rain will stay away and give the kids a couple good days to play their best. Good luck to all the participants!
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little off color

For the past couple of weeks we have been out spraying for Kikuyu grass throughout the course. Kikuyu is a warm season grass that actually does pretty well in our cooler climate on the Monterey peninsula but in our case we treat it as a weed. Since Kikuyu is a warm season grass it starts to shut down its growth patterns as the soil temperatures start to drop in the winter. This makes for an excellent time to spray herbicides to knock it back as the plant will translocate the herbicide down to its roots as it tries to store it's energy in the root system for the next growing season. Below is a picture of some Kikuyu that was sprayed last week along the lake bank in front of #10 green. For the most part the tees and fairways are pretty free of Kikuyu so we've put a little more effort this year into eradicating it from our rough.



In this picture you also see that the lakes are still a little on the low side. Hopefully we get a good rain soon to help fill both lakes up!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Irrigation Adjustments - #10 Right Rough

During the upcoming winter season we are putting a lot of effort into continuing our irrigation adjustments throughout the course. Most of these adjustments will be to eliminate areas that do not need to be irrigated. The first area of attack this year was the right rough of #10 before the pump house.



Our irrigation tech Hung had to move three sprinklers and change out 6 full circle sprinklers to part circles. With these changes we will help to reduce our water usage as well as improve turf quality through better coverage in the fairway. We followed up these adjustments by aerifying, seeding and top-dressing the thin areas in the rough and fairway.


- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent