Mowing Fairways

- Our last remaining intern's morning assignment was to mow fairways on the Highlands Course. Since starting his internship in May, he has mowed every playing service on both courses and operated every piece of golf maintenance equipment. The Highlands mow fairways with two five reel fairway mowers and to keep a clean on edge on the fairways the clean up pass is mowed directly behind the intermediate mower.

Edging Greens

- On the Highlands, to prevent the TifGrand Bermudgrass collars from encroaching in the TifEagle greens and vice versa, they are edged. This keeps the greens and collars the size they were intended to be from the renovation. Also, edging the greens helps the operator see exactly were the edge of the green is when they are mowing their clean-up passes. Edging greens occurs roughly once every three weeks, but really just depends on how vigirously the turfgrass is growing.

Aerification

- The interns played huge roles in carrying out both courses aerifications. They operated aerifiers, top-dressers, gradens, and verticutters. Riverside's aerification went from July 4-10 and Highlands was July 17-21. The guys logged some long hours and had great attitudes through the whole process.

Below: One of the interns is operating a graden on the Riverside greens, this machine removes thatch  to improve the turfgrass' ability to breathe, absorb nutrients, water, and sunlight. 

Bunker Maintenance

-We are fortunate at Atlanta Athletic Club that the club is closed on Mondays. This allows us to do jobs that we are not able to complete in as timely of a manner Tuesday-Friday, when the club is open. Mowing bunker faces is one the tasks we complete every Monday. We use flymo mowers are used complete task, these are mowers that do not have wheels and move by creating a cushion of air between the mower and the ground allowing the mower to hover. This allows the mower to move in any direction and mow steep banks without scalping.

- The bunker are edged every other week to two weeks depending on how fast the grass is growing. This process begins after the flymo mowers have mowed. First, the sand is pulled off the faces of the bunker to allow for a sharp clean cut. Then, a weedeater is used to put that clean edge of the bunker. The last part of the process is to blow the grass clipping out of the bunker, push the sand back up on the bunker faces, and rake the bunker.

- The interns take on the  responsibility of making sure all bunkers are mowed, raked, and that the crew is completing the process in a timely fashion. This allows our interns to find out what it is like to run a crew and the importance of detail.

Fertilizing

  - Today, our interns fertilized the Highlands with a granular product.  This application occurs biweekly as a part of our fertility program that consists of applying an equal balance of granular and liquid fertilizer. After the fertilizer is a applied a water cycle is ran to prevent any fertilizer burn. Before the application the fertilizer is calibrated to make sure the correct amount is applied. During calibration we measure the length of the throw; each applicator measures it by their own paces so they know how many paces to take between each pass.