Extreme Conditions= Extreme measures

8.4.11

Due to the extreme weather conditions the Greens Committee and I, with the support of the BOD, have decided to go Cart Path Only until conditions improve
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When the turf becomes this hot and dry it attempts protect itself by "shutting down" or going dormant. When this occurs the plant stores very little water in the leaf blade leaving the plant unable to tolerate the stress of heavy traffic. The leaf blades are simply crushed by cart tires, and in some cases the weight of a person walking.

 This decision was not taken lightly and hopefully is a very temporary one.

Here are some pictures illustrating the conditions.

Until we have cooler temperatures with more moisture growing conditions will not improve. So, we have to remove the dangerous variable that we can control, cart traffic.

The damage caused by cart traffic can be long term. Although we still have plenty of time to recover, if conditions change soon, we are looking at the long term quality of the Course.

As you can see even areas of healthy turf can be affected in extreme conditions like Wednesday.