Good winter and spring turf conditions.  Spring has finally arrived here at Tregaron and the crew and I are excited for another season. The weather conditions over the winter were favorable for the turf, particularly the heavy blanket of snow that insulated the turf from the extremely frigid spell we had in February.  Overall, the course has woken up nicely from winter dormancy.

 

Good cultural practices for optimal playing surfaces.  Every year in order to ensure healthy and vigorous turf and thus high-quality playing conditions we strive to maintain strong cultural practices.  This is done with the intent to have as little effect on play as possible while doing so.  That said, this season we chose April 6th and 7th for our spring greens aeration.  Wet and cold weather greeted us on those days which made things challenging but I am pleased at how it turned out.  The greens have been treated aggressively with fertility for a quick recovery and now we need some cooperation from mother nature in the form of some warmer temps for them to heal and return to optimal playing condition.

 

While on the subject of greens, I want to thank all of you who diligently fix your ball marks and have one request.  To help our greens heel faster and to keep them in optimal playing condition, would you consider helping us, and each other, by fixing your ball mark and one other?

 

Care and weeding of native areas for beautification.  In our continued efforts to “clean-up” and beautify our native areas, you may notice in the coming days/weeks we will be mowing down these areas in order to increase the efficacy of the season-long weed controls we will be applying.  As you know we are a links style golf course with acres and acres of native areas.  Contrary to what one might think, these areas are still intensely managed and require a significant amount of work to maintain properly.  We will continue to ask golfers to strictly keep golf carts out of the native at all times.  Native that has been driven through with golf carts takes weeks or months to recover and is far from aesthetically pleasing.  Native that is “clean” and undisturbed is an asset to the course and is truly beautiful.  Please help us maintain these areas of the course by keeping our golf carts out.  Thank you.

 

Continuing to improve cart paths and bunkers.  In 2019 our ownership established a number of priority repairs and improvements for Tregaron.  Cart Paths.  Significant resources have been applied to upgrade our cart paths and golf course drainage.  This month, we replaced 400’ of cart path and several drain structures near #17 green and a replaced a damaged section near #7 tee.  Since spring of 2019 we have installed 2000’ of new cart path.   Bunker Drainage.  Another ongoing project we are working on is our bunkers.  We are continuing our project to install bunker surface or atrium drains, which is now about 50% complete.  Bunker renovation.  And, in April we will begin a bunker “renovation/alteration/improvement” project on #s 16,17, and 18.  This will include significant work to these bunkers as well as modification of grades near these bunkers to divert surface water.  We believe our players are going to be pleased with the end result of these changes.   We hope our golfers enjoy the improvements as much as we enjoy providing them.

 

Thank you all and play well out there!

 

Brandon Uleman, Superintendent