Seasons Greetings

From all of us on the grounds crew, we'd like to wish you and yours a spectacular Holiday Season, and look forward to seeing you in 2015.

All the Best...

-Grounds Crew

Time is Fleeting

The 2014 Golf season has come and gone as quickly as the latest social fads pop up and fade into trend purgatory.  It was again a very successful season, where we felt we had built upon the foundation from years past and streamlined our operation to continually improve.  We continue to progress and grow, and will continue to offer conditions that suit our golfing membership.  That being said I hope you enjoyed golf this year as much as we enjoyed providing you with great daily conditions.  So we leave 2014 and welcome a new season, with new challenges and new goals of which we intend on exceeding, we will see you in 2015.

Throughout the week we will be going through our standard procedures to close the golf course.  These steps include closing the holes in the greens, removing all tee markers, bunker rakes, benches, as well as the remainder of garbage cans.  We will be placing the flags in the temporary greens in those holes that have them, keeping in mind that most par threes are lacking a temporary cup.  We understand that sometimes the turf may resemble a healthy actively growing stand, but this time of year does not offer much latitude for recuperation.  By that we mean that although green and healthy, the turf is not growing at this time (and if it is, it's growing at a negligible rate).  Also with a great reduction in solar radiation and it's strength, normal rain events that would typically dry in a 12 hour period during the summer take a couple days this time of year, leaving a saturated profile not capable of withstanding golf cart traffic.  Not to mention excessive water, with freezing temperatures pose a problem as well.  As you're all aware ice is simply water with a crystal lattice structure, that lattice structure is created when the water expands as it freezes.  Now if it expands in the plant and fails to rupture the cells in the plant, chances are your golf cart will rupture the cells rendering the plant dead.  We tend to err on the side of caution, because everything takes place much slower this time of year, and that includes recovery if it is even possible.

COURSE UPDATES

At this point we have completed the renovation of the 2nd blue tee, 7th water tee, 10th ladies tee, and 18th blue tee.  Each tee involved the stripping of sod, regrading of base material (Which was added), followed by the eventual resodding.  We have also begun the renovation of the seventh hole configuration.  If you are not aware the new design will bring fairway height turf right to the green itself, the front left bunker will be removed to accommodate the new fairway, and the bunkers on the far right and left will be renovated to breath some new life into the hole.  We are very excited about the project, and after getting started last week we have made good progress until getting stymied this week with wet conditions.  To this point we've stripped all the sod from the area being transitioned to fairway, the front left bunker has had all the sand removed, and the original fairway on seven has been halved from its original size.  We will continue to update you on the status of the project as things progress.  Apart from projects, the leaf cleanup has kept us quite busy as I'm sure many of you can attest to, while over the past couple weeks we wrapped up our final chemical applications as well as our final cuts to all areas.  That being said we are excited about the prospect of our ongoing projects and hope everyone has been enjoying the holiday season.    

Stripping nearly half of existing fairway on seven, and  salvaging quality sod to be reused

Resodding what use to be fairway with quality rough sod harvested from what will serve as
the new fairway expansion 

A look at the transition from fairway to rough, and the beginning of the transformation from
rough to fairway nearest the green.

Resodding the seventh water tee following the final grading of the surface.

The seventh tee following sodding

Adding an additional irrigation line to accommodate slightly larger teeing surface on ten
ladies tee.