Weekend watering.

Now that the weather is getting warmer and we have started watering I thought I'd better explain what we're doing when we come back to water on the weekend, as I'm sure you've seen us running around the course. When we come back to water in the afternoon, our goal is not to actually water the grass, it is simply to cool the plant down enough to get through the heat of the day. The plant cools itself through transpiration and on days when it is warm, sunny and windy with low humidity, the plant loses a lot of water. If it loses too much water, it starts to wilt. What we want to do is help the plant through the day, so when we come back we only want to cool the plant down, not actually water it. It's as if we're letting the plant run under a sprinkler or jump in the pool to cool down. You may be wondering why we don't just water more at night, and that's a reasonable questions. We could water enough to get through the day, but the course would be too wet to allow for good playing conditions and I'm guessing that 18 holes of a soggy golf course would be pretty frustrating. While we are doing this we try to disrupt your round of golf as little as possible, however there are times when we may be around while you're golfing, and for that I'm sorry. Just know that we do everything we can to work around you, and while we may bother your group, we will do our best to only do it once.

In order to avoid some frustration for you own let me explain our thought process while watering. If I find a gap in play on the course (usually there are two or three on the course at a time), I'm going to run a lot of heads on those holes before anyone gets there, and then I'll keep returning to that gap as the lead group keeps moving through the course. I always keep the trailing group's pace of play in mind when I'm running heads. For example, say I have a gap from #2 to #5 and you're on #1 fairway. I'm only going to run the heads on #2 for a total of six minutes, and the heads on #3 for a total of fifteen minutes and so on until I reach the lead group. I generally allow for 10 minutes per Par 4/5 and 6 minutes per par 3. So, if you get to #2 and the heads are still running, just know that they are probably about to go down. I try to avoid making you guys have to wait on irrigation, but sometimes you guys play quicker than I anticipate and sometimes I just flat out get the timing wrong and for that I apologize. Now, ff you are just out for a quick few holes keep this in mind because jumping in front of the hole that is getting water is only going to make you wait longer, as I will have heads running ahead of you, or there will be a group where the gap ended. Also, if I'm trying to run say 9 stations, I'll run 3 at a time for 3 minutes each which means that heads will be popping up unexpectedly and if you're jumping ahead of play or irrigation on a previous hole, you may get wet if I'm not around to stop the program I set up.

So, that's what we're up to on the weekends when you see us running around. I'm the guy watering on Saturday afternoons and the other assistant, TJ, handles Sundays.We both handle watering the same way and do our best to make sure we're not disrupting your round of golf. Thanks a lot for your understanding!

Ian