As the record breaking heat wave and drought continues here in the desert, the GMS team(and our turf) are thankful that August has ended and the cooler temps of late September & October have finally arrived. We have been battling high temps for the last three months with very little rain, and with the lows still in the mid 70s there has been no relief and recovery for our cool season turfgrass. Most of the weak areas in the fairways that we see are from the Poa Annua(annual blue grass) stress and die back from the extended period of high heat.

Poa stress/ die back #16 fairway
Cart traffic through stressed poa #11 Fwy

Some factors we had to deal with....

Temps in 2023

- All 31 days of July recorded temperatures of record heat over 92 degrees.

- 26 of the 31 days of August recorded temperatures over 90 degrees.

Moisture in 2023

Weak Monsoon. We average (pds golf course) about 13" of moisture per year with a majority of that coming with the summer monsoon. We didn't receive that boost this year.

- Moisture 2022 :January - September ... 13.5"

- Moisture 2023 :January- September ... 4.93" (1.05"of total in Sept.)

Recovery & Regeneration

It's not all doom and gloom......

We have started to see turf recovery in some areas thanks to the recently completed fairway aerification and the full course fertilization we put out last week . We will continue, as the weather allows, slit seeding weak areas along with top-dressing them as we go. We would appreciate that all golf carts stay out of these areas until further notice.

Slit seeding and top-dressing weak fairway areas

Super Dave Slit seeding #12 fairway...... 2 directions

Slit-seeded and top-dressed #9 fwy

#9 fairway..... seeded and sanded

We have also concentrated on seeding/sanding bare areas on approaches and green collars on a daily basis.

#4 approach
#7 approach
#7 approach had some good germination ( 4 weeks later)

A few photos from our fall aerification

Another aerification in the books, everything went well as we core tined the greens and solid tined the fairways and tees. We wanted to thank our "Jefe" Bill Nauroth for coming down during the greens aerification portion and helping out.