The Sagamore Club: 2012 Accomplishments

We are almost finish to another great year at The Sagamore Club and I wanted to refresh some of the great things that we have accomplished. We continue to work on reducing the thatch content in our fairways and tees. In the spring, we hired a company to verticut our fairways in which we took out large abouts of thatch. In the fall, we had our fairways aerified and then verticut again to help with this process. We will continue with the same process next year until we have reached our goal in reducing the amount of thatch. We are also in the process of topdressing selective fairways and target areas to help dilute the thatch layer and create a firmer playing service that will in turn drain better and not stay as moist.

Some of our other goals was to eliminate all poa annua from the golf course. We feel we are getting very close to this goal and hope to reach 100% bentgrass next year. We are striving hard to keep the poa out of our driving range tee and have tried many new and old products to accomplish this. One of those products was a new product released this year called exonerate and we will continue the same program this spring.

We are also in the process of eliminating the bentgrass contamination that has developed in our roughs and intermediates. We will continue to sod out these areas and also treat some of these areas chemically with a product called tenancity. This product will eliminate the bentgrass without hurting the bluegrass roughs.

The last goals that we will continue to work on each year is the bunkers and bunkers surrounds. Each year we dedicate a great amount of labor to maintain the tough bunker design that we have been dealt with. We continue to sod the surrounds, improve drainage, and maintain proper sand depths.

Thanks for a great year and our staff looks forward to next year.