Tour Championship 2014


We hope that everyone had a chance to watch some of The Tour Championship on TV. If I was to describe the week, the only words that come to mind are " ORGANIZED CHAOS" It was a massive few weeks for our agronomy team and without the guys that are in the trenches everyday we would not be able to produce the product that we do.

First of all we were extremely lucky! We dodged alot of rainfall which would've been disastrous to our preparations.

This year we spent alot of time perfecting our bunkers. Advance week we plate tamped all of the bunker faces once we had our sand depths to the appropriate depths. This process alone took approximately 2 days to complete. Once we finished tamping we continued to monitor the moisture in the bunkers so they didn't dry down too much. If needed, we would hand water the bunker to maintain the firmness. This year we decided to smooth the faces with the underside of the accuform rake and only rake the bottom pan of the bunker. Why you may ask? Well its plain and simple, not disrupting the face of the bunker greatly decreases the chance of plugged lies. And not to mention if the ball did enter a bunker it would come to rest in a level part of the bunker. We don't just do this for the professionals, we continue this practice year-round for our members.

If you did catch some of the golf on TV you would've noticed how true the greens were. In many comments made by tour officials, commentators and so forth, they constantly commented on the putting surface. The greens were close to perfect for the week, we had great turf coverage,firmness and playability. This year we focused extremely hard on our cultural practices. Not just the practices but the timing of the practices. We religiously groomed and topdressed on a weekly basis prior to the Championship. We even topdressed the Saturday prior to Monday's practice round. Our protocol tournament week was backtrack mow in the am followed by a roll and a roll only in the pm.


The rough a East Lake was also a talking point. This year the tour allowed us to beef up the rough a little more than years past. We put our final mow on the rough Saturday prior to practice rounds at 2 and 1/4 inches. I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but at that height of rough we put some doubt in the players mind with what type of lie they would have, whether it would be a flyer or a chunky lie.

Fairways were also in great shape. We lowered our cutting heights advance week and mowed daily in the pm shift alternating our mowing direction each time.

Id like to thank our team of volunteers for this years tournament, we had volunteers from far and a wide. We had approximately 50 volunteers a day that gave up their own time to help out our team achieve our goals.

 

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