Sprinkler Contest Winner

March 26--The number of sprinklers on the course is 663 by my count!!  The closest actual guess was by my mom (told you she read this) at 670 but I forgot to mention the legal disclaimer that employees of WH and immediate family are not eligible to win.  So the next closest guess was 575 by Jason Hines.  Congrats to Jason (maybe that will ease the pain of Kansas' tourney loss) and thanks to those who guessed. 
Thats a lot of sprinklers to keep track of and keeps us busy most of the year but especially so during spring startup.  These are larger sprinklers designed for 90 foot throws.  Many courses will have 70-75 foot throw sprinklers which means even more heads to keep in working order.

Our greens continue to struggle to wake up.  We will give them some fertilizer this week and also "paint" them with green dye.  Painting is becoming more popular on dormant greens down south but has been used in the northern tier for a variety of purposes.  We are doing it to darken the turf so it can absorb more sunshine and warm up.  Also it should make them look better until they start to grow more.
Last post I suggested the problem with our slow greenup was the last cold snap in February but now that I have assessed more areas it appears that the cold snap in early November is more likely the culprit.  The grass under our covered knobs looks a bit farther along than uncovered but it still shows the predominant patchiness that we are experiencing throught the green.  Those covers were put on after the rapid freeze in November suggesting that weather event had the most effect on our greens' winter survival.  If you look at the picture below you can see the patchiness of the green.  This patchiness is explained in a post below (October 31) about the varietal segregation.  For whatever reason some varieties handled the winter better than others.  Slowly most areas will catch up but as mentioned before we will wait and see how much damage actually occurred this winter.  This is a very strange year as far as spring greenup and winter survival.