Wayne Karp, Publicity
The March Member/Guest was one of the best events ever hosted by MOGA. Approximately 110 players (including several women) participated with seven winners in each of three flights. There were over 90 door prizes awarded, and the meal at Oakwood was outstanding.
April was another busy month for the Men’s Oakwood Golf Association (MOGA). The month started with “Beat the Pro,” where the overwhelming majority of the field fared pretty well against Eddy Renio, one of our Oakwood Pros. Next, 32 MOGA members were pitted against the Cottonwood Men’s group for the Home and Home, vying for the coveted traveling trophy. On April 19, over 60 MOGA men participated in the Member/Member Chapman tournament. The month ended with a Team Stableford event.
Upcoming schedule for May MOGA games:
May 3 – Beat the Pro 9 round 2
May 10 – Low Gross/Low Net
May 17 – Match Play by Flights
May 24 – ABCD Shamble
May 31 – ABCD Mixed
June 7 – Best Ball by Flights
The events are now on the 7:30 a.m. and noon schedule for the summer.
MOGA Membership: New to the area or just looking for a great way to spend time on the course and meet some new friends? You don’t have to be a resident of IronOaks to join our group. We have over 350 members with golfers at every level. MOGA has an event each Thursday throughout the year. Why not join MOGA and meet some new friends while playing a variety of team and individual games each week?
MOGA Appreciation Day: The third Thursday of every month is MOGA Golfer Appreciation Day with a free beer or soft drinks for MOGA members at the Oakwood Pro Shop.
Course improvements continuing: According to Ross Buckendale, our course superintendent, “This spring and transition is going to be a lot of work. A lot of aerification in order to get water to move through our soil profile and, along with that, being able to move salts through our soil. There is a large accumulation of thatch in the fairways and roughs. Over the years of not aerifying and pulling cores, this is starting to be a huge concern with no consistency throughout the golf course. We have areas that have 1.5 inches of thatch. This causes water to hold in the thatch and create soggy wet conditions and eventually causing root rot in the turf. We need to get rid of this, and we will get really aggressive on the fairways and roughs with aerifying. We will start slowly lowering heights in the fairways and surrounds to promote transition. We will wait until the soil temperatures are at the proper level, and they are about 8 degrees from that currently. We are currently at 53 on average right now and need 61 degrees to get the Bermuda fully active and 65 degrees to actually start growing. As you have noticed, we are core aerifying our tees right now. There is the same issue on the tees. There is a large thatch layer that is preventing water penetration into the actual soils. The water is getting held up in the thatch layer and not penetrating the soil. Therefore, we have localized dry spots because that water that gets held up in the thatch evaporates so quickly, which then, in turn, causes us to overwater to prevent turf from dying. We will be spiking the greens to get water penetration as well. There is a small amount of disease on some greens here and there. At this point in the game, I am reluctant to spray it because of the closeness to the transition period. We can turn our attention to pushing Bermuda grass instead.”
For all other MOGA information, results and future tournament dates, please visit the website at http://www.mogagolf.org.