Gold, White, Green

The flags on the course will now correspond with their location on the greens. This will give golfers a basic idea of the distance to play and allow the maintenance staff flexibility on where to put the pins. In the past with the caddies, there was no need for different colored flags other than white. The new colors are as follows:

Gold - Front
White - Middle
Green - Back

Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Course

Today we received our official letter stating that Bear's Best Atlanta is a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Golf Course.  We are just the 20th course in Georgia to become certified.  Here is a small portion of the letter we received.

"Congratulations on being designated as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary!  You have shown a clear commitment to enhancing wildlife habitat, protecting water quality, conserving resources, and education......Your efforts are contributing to a nation-wide system of lands that are being managed for wildlife habitat and natural resource conservation.  Perhaps more importantly, you are helping to serve as a model for making decisions in the future that benefit both business and our environment..... Keep up the good work!!!"

Vertical mowing of greens

Now that we are healed in from the small aeration we have started to verticut the greens again. With the warm weather and all the fertilizer releasing to grow back in quickly, the greens have been on the slow side the past few days. They are growing like crazy. We double verticut the all three practice greens and then cut them for a second time today. We will then verticut all the greens on the course tomorrow morning and mow them as well ahead of play.  This cuts out excess lateral growth and stands the leaf up to get a good cut.  They will still be a tad on the slow side for a few more days, but with the verticutting, extra mowing, and some rolling we will get them back up to speed.

Standing the grass up 2 directions

Machine used to verticut

New water cooler stand on #8

We have installed a new water cooler stand that can be accessed on your way to #8 and #10 tee boxes. It will hold two coolers so we can avoid that stand running out of water in the summer.

Audubon International

Over the past year here at Bear's Best Atlanta we have been working towards the goal of becoming Certified in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses.  So far, we are certified in Environmental Planning, Water Conservation, Wildlife and Habitat Management and have done an extensive Environmental Case Study on our property.  We are currently waiting to hear from Audubon on becoming certified in Outreach and Education, Chemical Use Reduction and Safety, and Water Quality Management.  Once these three catergries are certified, we will be certified in the complete progam. According to http://www.auduboninternational.org/ we would be only one of 12 properties and 19thh course so far in the state of Georgia to become certified.  If you have any questions or want to know more about the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses please let me know.

Please goto their website to learn more http://www.auduboninternational.org/.

Small Tine Aeration

We aerated all the greens ahead of play today. We used between a 1/4" to 3/8" tines depending on inside vs outside diameter. It went great and the greens were actually faster than yesterday after they were double rolled. With the play behind us we cleaned the plugs off the greens, blew clean and then double rolled. After play went through the remaining sand from the plugs was drug in and the leaf blades stood up. We will mow, lightly topdress and spray our wetting agent tomorrow. This aeration is mostly visual and the ball still rolls great.  I will post more pictures this week.



View from #9 green after it was drug this afternoon



New bunker sand

The new green side bunkers on holes 2-9 and 11 have performed great in the first month since they were built. One issue is the fluffy sand has not packed in completely yet. We are continuously packing the sand down to make them more playable and to avoid fried egg lies. We have rebuilt one of our old sand pros to pack the sand with the tires yet only lightly rake the top to avoid getting into the liner.

Packed down edges with lip

Pulling excess sand off faces and packing edges

Rebuilt sand pro with rakes that will not pull up liner

A surprising morning

When Dave Merritt, assistant golf course superintendent, got to the shop this morning he noticed the pumps were pumping 900 gallons per minute. This is not good. A thrust block at #1 green had busted at 8:56pm last night causing the 900 gallons per minute to run for about 10 hours. We started right at 7am with the crew and had #1 playable by the first tee time at 9am. The following pictures are a timeline of the cleanup.  The crew did such an awesome job, no one would have known what we went through before play today.


#1 Green at 7:20am this morning



Dave looking at the damage at 7:20am

After the water drained, mud was left.  Jesus cleaning off the green about 4 times with hose

What caused this damage

#1 Green at 8:40am.  20 minutes before the first tee time.  No one knew what it looked like 1 hr and 20 minutes earlier

#1 Green this afternoon.  The maintenance crew did a tremendous job getting this green playable today.

Round-Up and Cart Path Only

We have been spraying our Round-Up and pre-emergent on our Bermudagrass roughs this week. That is why we have been Cart Path Only so we do not track the products onto the ryegrass fairways. You will notice the slight blue dye that we use to see where we have been. Thanks for understanding and we will be back to 90 degrees on Saturday, weather permitting.


Slight blue dye look in the roughs



Tree Removal #15

We have finished removing the pine trees from around #15 green to create a better growing environment. The maintenance crew then chipped all the trees up and is currently disposing of the mulch. What a difference this had made.

#15 Before Tree Removal

#15 After Tree Removal