Course Update

The past few days have been horrendously cold and it has been a challenge to get tasks completed on the golf course. During the arctic blast we were able to organize and clean the nooks and crannies of our shop. When we were able to get on the course, we spent most of our time cleaning up falling leaves and we began our winter top dressing program for the fairways and approaches.  The drainage projects we have slated for this year will start on December 1st after the Thanksgiving Holidays. It does take a few days to complete one of these projects and we did not want to interfere to much with the play ability of the golf course during that time.  The area that we will go to first is #14 approach then followed by #12.

The bunkers this time of year will be a little rough looking, unfortunately when we have temperatures this cold the sand is frozen therefore making it impossible to rake out. We will rake them once an opportunity presents itself.

Course Update

To keep the course as clean as possible the staff has been busy and working very hard on blowing and mulching up leaves. In a week or two most of them should be all down and then we can switch into our winter projects.

First up for the winter is our annual fairway top dressing program. We plan to start this on Monday working #18 going backwards through out the winter. Most recently we are close to finishing up the soil reliever in the approaches. This pokes a solid tine hole about 6-8 inches deep.

The gas company has just about finished their repair on the pipe on hole #3. We should start to see soil going back into the hole today or tomorrow morning and then we will place the sod back over.  

Lastly, we have removed the 5 gallon water coolers from the course, if we would leave them, they would crack under low temperatures. We will leave the bottle watered stations up until sometime in December which then we will take down for the winter.

Soil reliever or deep tine in action

Prepping for the gas line dig on #3

I hear this natural gas pipe comes from Houston and feeds the gas
 companies up north, 

Seasonal Changes

This time of year the weather really starts to change and so does staffing, its part of the business. That is letting the seasonal staff go for the year, leaves falling and work load increasing, We struggle just a little when it comes to maintaining the course to an acceptable level and continuing our leaf clean up. With our smaller staff for the winter things tend to get completed a little slower than normal. For example we are checking depths on bunkers and this is taking us two days to complete, where in the season we could complete it in 5 hours. This is not something we do on a regular basis and it needs to be completed. As I am typing this we are mowing greens today and requires all hands on deck. After that we will return to the bunkers and finish our depth check.

Once we get passed last day to post scores it will get easier, leaves should have mostly been down, grass growth is growing even slower and winter rules are in affect.  I am sharing this with you all so that you can understand if some thing looks a little out of place or unkempt.  So please bare with us, our main concerns at this point are leaf clean up and bunkers. 

Here a few things to consider when playing this time of year that would help me out tremendously:

1. Please fix your ball mark plus another.
2. Replace your divot if possible or if you cannot, please fill it with sand.
3. This is a really big one, RAKE YOUR BUNKER, With a small staff bunkers will not be raked on a regular basis especially when we are battling leaves.