Hey everyone! We hope everyone is staying cool these past couple of weeks and have stayed dry. Here at Heart of America we have been busy trying to make the course at little easier to understand for new players! We have added signs! There are new signs around the course so new people understand which way they need to be going. They will help people trying to find #2 tee box, #5 tee box on the river. River and Rock signs are up to let people know what side of the course they are on as well. There are new signs in the parking lot so check those out the next time you come out to the course! We are also trying to get accurate yardage for the rock course for... you guessed it new signs!! We hope everyone is having a great year so far and to stay cool out there! 

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent 

Heart of America Golf Course

Hello everyone! We hope everyone is doing well and keeping those scores as low as possible! If not we have added some new poles to the range to hit towards. In total we have added six new targets to the range. Three by the lower tee as short shots for short game play, and three more mixed in with the ones already there.  The larger ones are spaced out so there is less of a gap between the older poles, distance wise. Please download the HOA app! The app will have GPS coordinates for the poles and should help judge distances for you. If you have any questions please ask the club house staff for instructions. 

Yes the camera does add ten pounds. I am six foot with shoes, so these poles are large. 

    Also you might have noticed some construction by our front gate and going west down our road. That is a new walking path the city is putting in that anyone can walk down if you are interested. It should be finished anytime in the next couple weeks. 

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent 

Heart of America Golf Course

 Hello! We hope everyone is doing well and staying warm out there! We have had warm days and cold days these past couple of weeks but we are still open and hope everyone can make it out to play the course! If you have been out you might of seen us spraying fairways and tee boxes.  We are spraying a herbicide that will get rid of the unwanted weeds in the fairways and tees. This is the perfect time to spray because the zoysia fairways are dormant. That means it's not actively growing and we can spray it and the plant will not take up the herbicide and die. But the cool season plants/weeds are still actively growing and will take up the herbicide. The rough that is still green and still growing can take the herbicide that we sprayed and die. So we need to be extra careful near the edges of the fairways and close to the greens so we don't get any drift from the wind and accidentally spray the greens. We have to actively watch the weather and make sure we spray when there is little to no wind. If you are spraying at home please make sure you are using proper safety gear and also make sure that you are checking the weather for low winds so you don't have any angry neighbors! Also we put a dye in the tank so we can see where we have been, that is why the fairways have been a bluish green.  

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent

Heart of America Golf Course

    Hello! We hope that you had a great Thanksgiving break and didn't eat to much!! It might be a bit chilly out there but still come on out to the course and play a round or two! We are open and ready for play! When you do come out you might notice or have noticed our new rock fence lining the range and parking lot. We had to do that because we have been getting broken into for the past three to four months now.  They have stolen gas, carts, equipment and have broken into our clubhouse on occasion.  Your cars are totally safe if you are worried about that, they have only come really late at night. We have cameras now and a security company to come to the course at a moments notice. But we added the rock wall because our white fence was not really a fence. You can just pull it apart and drive a cart right through. With these new rocks, we spaced them three feet apart so carts cannot drive through. We will be taking down the white fence now that all our rocks are placed. 
    

Thank you again for coming out and enjoying the course. Have a great holiday season and stay warm out there!

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent

Heart of America Golf Course

    Hello everyone!! It has been a while since the last blog post, but we have decided to start once again! We had a dry 2022 so we couldn't spend as much time on the blog post as we would of liked during the summer months.  Now the leaves are falling just like the temperature.  If you have been on the course recently you might have noticed all the leaves falling and covering the greens, tees and fairways.  Which makes finding your ball just that much harder!!  We have been blowing leaves pretty much every day now and there are still loads of leaves everywhere.  We hope that you are patient with us and with the leaves that are getting blown back onto the greens by the wind.  It is a constant battle everyday and every year for us and many golf courses around town.  We hope you guys come out and play the course and hit on our driving range! We are now down in front of the range tee ever since we seeded the tee area.  Please try to stay off the tee, it is still growing and the roots need some time to get established.  

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent

Heart of America Golf Course 

    Rain, Rain and more RAIN! These past couple weeks have been just nothing but rain. It's been tough to keep the course looking trimmed and in order because of it. But we are doing our best so we all hope you are patient with us while we get to course back to normal again. Even though we have gotten so much rain, we have been running mowers nonstop trying to keep up with how fast the grass has been growing.  It has been difficult to mow the fairways without tearing up turf, because of the rain.  Also the fairways have been sprouting up seed heads which makes cutting them quite difficult for the mower. With the amount of rain we received the river flooded over the first bridge and deposited a lot of trees and branches.  We cut up a big tree trunk that was blocking the path and pushed it into the river.  We were fortunately though, with the amount of rain we got we were surprised that the river didn't flood more of the course.  But we were lucky that didn't happen. Now that it is officially summer time we should be seeing warmer and drier days ahead of us! We hope everyone is staying dry and healthy!

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent

Heart of America Golf Course 

    Its almost time for summer and that means warm days and potentially dry days as well! Water is a big issue that we need to be constantly aware of during the summer time. We don't want our course to be super dry but we also don't want it to be super wet. Both can cause problems for the turf. So we are always watching the weather and reading the moisture levels on the greens.  If the greens get to dry, everybody knows what happens. The grass wilts and starts to die, which no one wants to see dead grass on the greens and the rest of the course.  However if the grass is constantly over saturated with water we could start to see a wide variety of diseases. Which in turn looks bad and can damage or kill grass. This is why you will start to be seeing us checking the greens more often. Also over watering can shorten the roots of the plant. This is bad because without deep roots it is only getting water that is near the surface and may dry out faster. 

    Different types of grasses is another factor when it comes to moisture.  For example our fairways are zoysia grass, that is a warm season grass.  It's grown in warmer climates and is made to withstand drying out and less water.  We are in a transition zone here in Missouri and Kansas. Which means we can grow warm season and cool season grasses. If you are trying to grow a great lawn this summer just be aware of what type of grass you have or want to seed in. If you have an suggestions about the course and or questions don't hesitate to ask the club house or the turf crew!! 

Hunter Hill

Assistant Superintendent

 Heart of America Golf Course

Spring is Here

 Spring has officially arrived and the golf course is starting to come alive.

The maintenance staff at HOA has been busy getting things back into shape for the spring and summer playing seasons. We put some fertilizer on the grass range tee to wake it up and get it growing, it has been mowed once so far and is looking great. I know people are itching to start hitting range balls off the grass tee and we are only a couple weeks from opening it back up. We have also done a few little things to make the course a little nicer. First of all we built a new scorecard and pencil box for the first tee on the river course, in the past we have used a mail box to house cards and pencils, the mail box never really worked very well and didn't look very nice. The new box is made from rough cedar and will match the other wood signs we have on the course. Speaking of signs, we completely re finished the sign at the entrance to the river course. Lastly we finally put out our new cups, flags, and flag sticks on the river course. We went with a new color combination this year, the flags are yellow and black checkered pattern instead of blue and white, and the flag sticks are yellow instead of white. We hope these yellow flags and sticks will be a little easier to see. 

We hope to see you out here, and never hesitate to stop and ask us questions or offer suggestions on how we can continue to try and make HOA the best golf course it can be.

Sam Marlin

Superintendent

smarlin@orion-mgmt.com

 

More tree work

If you read the last blog post you know that wee have started doing tree work on the river course. We started by removing some smaller trees on holes number Two and Four to open up the view from the tee on each hole, well the work continues to hole number Seven. I think we can all agree that number Seven is the most challenging hole on the course and possibly one of the most difficult tee shots in the KC Metro. The view of the fairway and landing area has become blocked by small trees that have grown between the forward tee and the river, and small trees growing on the river bank just in front of the blue tee have made the tee shot next to impossible if you cant get the ball up quickly. The work we are doing will address both of these issues.

We have cut down many of the trees on the steep bank just in front of the blue tee allowing shots that are hit lower to still get across the river. At the moment we have only cleared in front of the top tier where the tees are placed the majority of the time, we will continue to work on the left side to clear it out as well making the entire tee useable. The next issue we started to address is the large native area on the river side of the cart path, think of the left side of the path from the bridge around to the yellow tee. This area has become very overgrown with brush and vines as well as being littered with dead trees that have fallen over the years, we are in the process of clearing out all of the fallen timber and removing the under growth to open this area up similar to the section between the tees on hole Nine. Also there were a number of small trees growing behind the forward tee that were blocking the view of the right side of the hole, we have removed all of these trees and it has made the tee shot from the blue tee much more inviting while allowing golfers to see the ball land when hit to the right of the fairway.  

Some of the tree work we have done this winter may not be completely noticeable until spring and summer when the trees have leaves on them, but we hope that the effort we are putting in will increase playability, speed up play, and most importantly give golfers a more enjoyable course to play. 

Sam Marlin

Superintendent

smarlin@orion-mgmt.com

Tree Work

    Hello! We hope everyone is having a nice winter and hope that everyone is staying warm these past couple of weeks! When the weather is cooperative and warm we are open! So we encourage everyone to come on out and play a round with your friends and family!! 

    The course does have a bit of snow on the ground so sadly we wont be open for a few days at least but as soon as it melts off the course will be good to go for everyone that would love to play. If you have not been to the course for the past couple days, we have cut down a few trees on number 4 right before the  fairway.  Four on the left side and one on the right side.  We did this so it would open the hole up a bit more and be a bit easier to play. Now you can hit to the left side and not be in too much trouble.  Also we had found a boat load of golf balls down in that native grass just off the tee box so if there is anyone that wants some free balls go check that spot out!! Those aren't the only trees we will be cutting down though. There are a couple of trees in the range that have been sick looking and or just plain dead. So we will be taking a few trees out of the range as well. Also we took out the two little trees right out side the front entrance of the club house.  They were getting a bit big for their location so we took them out.  The next project we will be undertaking is the cart path on the rock course. It's over grown and it needs to be trimmed back so you aren't being hit when you drive on it.  So we will be cutting back along the cart path from nine green all the way to seven tee box.

    We have also been getting machines ready for this up coming season. Grinding reels on mowers, changing oil, oil filters and air filters on all the machines. But we have the machines pretty much finished up so we can focus on the golf course when the weather warms up so this season will be a good one for you! Stay warm and stay safe out there!

  

     Hunter Hill

    Assistant Superintendent

    Heart of America Golf Course

    Happy Holidays from the Heart of America crew!!  

This blog post will be a bit of an update as to what we have done so far to the course.  While also a bit of a step by step on the irrigation shut down for winter.  

     We do have our winter cups out on the River course and on the Rock course and will be changing them through out these next couple months so there will be some variety for you guys. The tee markers have been picked up so feel free to use the entire tee box to your advantage!! We will be sanding the tee markers down and repainting them so they are looking fresh and clean for next years play.  The exit posts were brought in from the course.  We have sanded them and put a nice new coat of paint and clear coat for moisture protection.  

    One of the big projects that we undergo every winter is getting the irrigation shut down and winterized.  During the winter we don't want water in the irrigation pipes or heads to freeze and crack to cause us headaches in the future and wet spots for golfers. This means closing the main line valves so that the water is not actively trying to move into the pipes. Once the water is shut off there is still water sitting in the pipes that can still freeze if or when it gets cold enough.  Now we can go around and open the drain valves throughout the system so the water can drain out of the pipelines.  But we have a bit of help to push out the water, we use big air compressor that has a special attachment that we can plug in to the irrigation system.  This will blow out any remaining water that is trapped in low spots that haven't quite drained out. We go around the course to every hole to make sure that all the water is out of the system.  Plug in and turn on the irrigation heads so we can blow those out as well, because the irrigation heads are the most susceptible to freezing and cracking. 

    Once again we are all wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

    Hunter Hill

    Assistant Superintendent

    Heart of America Golf Course

           

    

Seeded Range Tee

     

    Hello again! It has been awhile since the last blog post and we just wanted to give a little update on the range tee! As many of you have noticed already the range tee has been closed now for quite some time. We had reseeded the top section of the range tee a few weeks ago, and we are all thrilled with how it is looking so far!  We planted two different grasses this year a rye grass and a bluegrass blend.  We first aerified the top section of the tee to break up the soil and to make some holes for the seed to be planted into.  We then over seeded the rye grass, and then strip seeded the bluegrass all throughout the whole tee box. Lastly we dragged in the rye grass that we over seeded earlier. With seeding two different ways we can target a much wider area than just strip seeding row after row.  This means more areas will grow in fuller. 

    Here in the next couple weeks or so we will be starting to have people hit from the mats instead of in the front of the range tee.  We usually have the back lower section of the driving range tee open so you can still enjoy hitting from the tee.  But we decided this year to close that area off to save it for next year. 

    We want to thank everyone for staying off the tee so it has a chance to grow.  Once this winter is over and the warmer weather comes back we will be more than happy to open the tee back up so you may enjoy the freshly seeded tee box!  We also want to thank Tony Bertels for taking the time to help us during this whole process.    

     Hunter Hill

    Assistant Superintendent

    Heart of America Golf Course

      

Frost Delays

 Hello! Its been quite a long time since the last time we have posted on here and we are very sorry to everyone that reads these blog posts! We will try to have updates about the course work/projects and some further information regarding the course on here as well. My name is Hunter Hill. and I will be taking over these blog posts! I will try to have a post every two weeks or so, so I hope everyone that wants to learn more about the course reads these and gets a bit more information out of them!!  If you see me out on the course feel free to wave me down to ask questions!! 

    

    As we head into these winter months we are of course going to see a fluctuation of temperatures. Colder nights, chillier afternoons, and frosty mornings.  A big issue that arises during the winter months are those pesky frosty mornings.  Frost is a bigger deal than what people seem to believe.  It is essentially the water inside the grass freezing and becoming ice. That might seem like the grass is becoming stiffer and more solid to walk on but the opposite is in fact happening. Grass is very forgiving most times you walk on it, it bends and springs back like nothing ever happened. But when it freezes from the frost its as fragile as glass and if stepped on could break and possibly die. This leaves brown dead footprints where ever someone has walked. These footprints won't go away over night either. They will persist longer during the winter months because the grass is now shutting down and becoming dormant, cause of the colder weather.  Which means the grass isn't actively growing as much, compared to when it is summer time. This is why we have later tee times in the mornings and have frost delays.  It is to protect the grass and to make sure that golfers are given the best greens possible to play on! 

    

    Thank you for sticking it out and reading this blog post! This is the first time I've made a blog post so it will be a learning process. But I hope this helps people get to understand the maintenance side to the golf course industry.  But lastly from everyone here at Heart of America we wish everyone a Happy Halloween and a Happy Holiday's!!!

    Hunter Hill

    Assistant Superintendent 

    Heart of America Golf Course

      

Native Areas at HOA

Many of you who play at Heart of America have been asking when we would mow the native areas down on the river course. I am happy to say that over the last week of November, we have successfully mowed down all of the native areas on the entire property. We had to wait a little longer this fall to mow all of it because some of the lower areas that hold water were still muddy from rain and snow. We plan to do a better job of keeping the native areas under control next season to create a more enjoyable experience for our patrons. 

The Finished Product

Over the last month, the crew at Heart of America has made big progress on some projects, as well as stared getting the course ready for the coming winter.

As some of you have already seen, we finished the renovation of the cool season tee on hole number 9 on the River Course. It was a big project that we have wanted to do for the last couple of years. Although the tee has been completed we have decided to wait to open it until next spring, this will allow the new sod to knit itself into the soil and establish healthy roots before we open it for play.

This was after shaping the tee and prepping for sod. 

NEW Tee on #9

We have recently started renovating the cool season tee on number 9 on the River course. We attempted to rebuild the tee in the fall of 2018 to help with drainage issues and to re-establish grass on the tee. The tee struggled over the 2019 season and it has come time to give it another shot. Over the last week in September we began clearing the tee top of all unwanted sand and weeds to create the desired surface for the new tee box. The next steps in the process will be to level the tee and lay down bentgrass sod. We believe that bentgrass will survive better in the current location, and it will make for a much better playing surface. Also by using sod instead of seed the tee will be open for play much sooner.

Change of Management

There will be some changes at HOA in the near future. I have taken a new position out of state and will be leaving the course indefinitely.  The transition should be smooth, because in my place will be Sam Marlin taking over.

Sam has been with Orion for nearly three years now and is very familiar with the course. He served as my assistant for two years and has been the equipment manager this past season so he is well rounded in golf maintenance.

I have enjoyed my time here at HOA and I appreciate how great everyone treated me while I was here. I hope that the hard work I put in translated into some form of playability for our faithful patrons.

From myself, my wife Hannah, and my daughter Nicole, I want to say thank you for some great years here at Heart of America Golf Course and I wish the facility, the management, and the patrons well in the future.

River #7 Update

Here is a quick update on Hole #7 of the River Course:

I've had many questions about what are plan is for number 7 on the River side so I'll take this time to outline our plan.

Just a reminder of what #7 looked like a couple months ago and numerous times over the past couple seasons

The majority of our battle has been with the silt that the flooding leaves behind.

 After all of the silt and debris cleanup was done, we started putting together a plan for repairing the lower tee and fairway.

With Zoysia prices as high as they are and knowing that this fairway will go under water again at some point, we do not think it is feasible to resod the entire fairway to Zoysia.

#7 lower tee

 We will however be sodding the lower tee on #7 to make it playable as soon as we can. We will be borrowing sod from the far left side of the front fairway of the same hole to fill in this tee.

As far as the fairway goes, we have opted for a seeded-type bermuda grass variety. This is the reason the lower fairway is still roped off. The germination period for this seed is much longer than other seeds so even though we have had seed down now for a couple weeks we are just now starting to see some seedlings.

Tiny bermuda seedlings starting to find the light

Our goal is to push this seed along with spoon-feeding fertilizer and aerification to close in the bare areas and make the fairway presentable again.

 Much of these areas will fill in on their own when the soil temps are higher and the growing conditions are right for warm season grasses. In the mean time, we are doing everything we can within our budget to bring this hole back to life.

River Flood Update

The River Course has been closed for the vast majority of this month. I want to take a moment to explain why.

Most people are aware that the Blue River floods areas of our course during heavy rains. This month the course flooded numerous time and has taken a very long time to dry out.

This is a view down the fairway of number 7 River.

There are a number of problems that come with this flooding. One major problem is the silt that is left behind. Anywhere water from the river has sat for any amount of time there will be a large deposit of silt material.

This shows the amount of silt left behind by the flooding.

Another major hurtle we have to face is debris. Most of the debris washed up from the river ends up on the grass and must be moved in order to mow or allow play. In some cases debris will catch on the bridges rendering them unusable. 

The bridge between holes 1&2

A golf cart for comparison

Once all of the water goes down and we are finally able to traverse that side of the course, extensive clean-up begins. I know that this if frustrating for golfers that want to play the river, but it is equally frustrating for us as well. Having multiple days where we are not able to get on the course means we fall further and further behind and it is extremely hard for us to catch back up.

This is the overgrowth on #2 fairway right now as we are not able to access it.

Please be patient, the second we can get the River course cleaned up and open we will.

The Transition Zone

Why is some of the turf at HOA vibrant green while other areas are still yellow? I'm going to give you a crash course in cool vs warm season grasses as well as breakdown why the "transition zone" is a challenge to work in.

You can clearly see the contrast between the dormant warm season and the active cool season grasses

Let's start with the obvious: The fairways and tees stay yellow far longer into the spring than any of the other turf on the property. Simply put, that's because these areas are predominantly Zoysia Grass, which is a warm-season plant. In general, plants have two options of pathways to produce carbohydrates (food) via photosynthesis. These two pathways are known as C3 and C4. These are referred to C3 and C4 because of the number of carbon atoms in the chain produced by photosynthesis. Without getting into too much depth, for the sake of this document, you can just assume that these two processes differ in a number of ways. The broad way to look at this would be to say the two pathways produce energy in different ways.

C4 grasses (warm season) are actually a great sign of evolution. The C4 pathway is just an evolution of C3 that makes that plants water imput much more efficient. This also has had some physiological changes in the plants. C4 grasses, and the whole reason we call them warm-season grasses, thrive in much warmer environments than C3. For example, C3 (cool-season grass, greens, rough, etc.) have an optimum temperature to fix carbon dioxide the most efficiently between 60 and 75 degrees. On the flip-side, C4 is most efficient between 80 and 95 degrees. So when you look out at all the yellow zoysia in the fairways in early spring, it's just because its not hot enough yet for the grass to start its photosynthesis process.

In addition to the temperatures, there are other obvious differences between C3 and C4. C3 (cool season) likes low heat, can tolerate lower light, and needs high moisture. C3 (warm season) is the exact opposite, it likes high heat, high sunlight, and can tolerate much lower moisture. So in general, we will water our cool season turf much more regularly than our warm-season turf.

So what is the "transition zone"? Well, if you are reading this you almost certainly are living in it. Basically, our climate here in Kansas City (and many other areas on the same general latitude) has weather so extreme both ways that we can grow both c3 and c4 plants. Even though this sounds like a good thing, its actually extremely hard. Essentially what it means is that for part of the season one form of grass is struggling and for the other part of the season the other grass is struggling.

We have to strategically put the correct types of grass in certain areas to make for an optimum experience. C4 grasses do not hold up well in shade so you will likely not find much healthy Zoysia in shady areas on my course. Although C4 grasses excel in our hot summers here in KC, we can sometimes lose turf from out harsh winters. C4 grass goes dormant early and has to weather many months of cold while it survives solely on stored carbohydrates from the previous fall. C3 grass excels in the spring and fall, but struggles to stay alive in the harsh summer here. Much of the plants energy is being used to stay alive and effectively take up water, so it will often shut down other growth processes to simply not die.

In other words, growing grass in the transition zone is no picnic. Hopefully I didn't bore you with too many details. The overall takeaway is the difference in cool season and warm season grasses and a little bit about why we have both here in Kansas City. If you go very far north you will likely only see cool season grasses, and if you head south you will start to see only warm season grasses.

Hope you learned something,
Enjoy the season.

Fun fact: only about 1% of all plants use the c4 pathway, and 60% of those are grasses