The trade show floor was packed with vendors exhibiting their latest equipment and products.
The keynote speaker at the shows General Session was David Feherty. His presentation was enlightening, inspirational, and of course very entertaining!
The 2012 GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show was another success, and I always look forward to the following year.
Earlier this week I was working in my office and got a call from Mark, our golf course superintendent, asking me to meet him on #9 green to look at something. These types of calls do not usually carry good news, so on my way there I'm trying to figure out what could be wrong. Because of the 2" of rain we received the previous week, plus the weather we were experiencing, I suspected it could be a turf disease issue. When I got to the green this is what I saw:
The green was covered with these cottony spots.
A closer look shows the cottony appearance. This is a text book example of the turf disease Pythium. This pathogen can cause a lot of damage in a short period of time if left untreated. I immediately took a sample back to my office for inspection under the microscope.
Inspection of the turf under the microscope confirmed the presence of Pythium. The pathogen was present on both leaf tissue and roots.
I am sharing this experience to illustrate a point. This type of event occurs at least a few times each year, and can happen on any day. This is why I call our spray rig the fire truck. Whether it is an insect outbreak that can decimate a large area in a day, or a disease outbreak that can do the same, we have to be able to react quickly. Sometimes it means that we have to do things that golfers don't always understand - like watering in material during play. In this particular incident we were able to coordiante with the golf shop to get on the course between morning and afternoon shotguns. The fire truck was out spraying the greens, and then the sprinklers were run to wash the product into the roots. This event most likely went unnoticed, but if we werent able to react quickly the turf would have suffered.
You can rest assured that the health and condition of the turf is being closley monitored, and the fire truck is fueled up and ready to go the next time we have one of these mini crisises!
Happy golfing,
Alan Bakos, CGCS
Director of Grounds
