Before and After #5

 

An Improvement That Most Likely Will Go Unnoticed

 

This cart path looks no different than any other out on the course.  However, this improvement is so much more than what you see in the picture.  In this location there were 4 asphalt paths going left to the range, right to the dump and a dead end piece in the rough.  All of these were eliminated and sodded over and this new crushed stone path now connects to the path on the hole.  A simple fix, but a lot of work for Pedro and a crew of 5 guys who finished it in about 6 hours.  Sod was taken from the range where we will convert an area of maintained sod to fine fescue, so the cost was minimal.

Planting New Trees

Our tree replacement program continues into 2022 as we have selectively replanted a few lost trees from the past few years.  Here this large London Plane will replace the twin oak that split last year between 16 and 17.  While the oak was in the middle of the rough it did protect from the wayward tee shot and this new tree will do the same, as it was planted within 10 feet of the oak.  We also added a large red oak to the right of #8 that will also protect the wayward shot on a short par 5.  Over the next few years I believe this trend will continue at Arcola as many of our older trees are beginning to decline and in some cases fail.

Improving 5 Tee Area

 

The 5th tee area is shoe horned between boundary fences.  The area above is along some neighboring houses.  You can see honeysuckle vines have choked out the spruces that act as screening, plus the burning bushes that were planted underneath the spruces are now growing sideways.  We originally were going to plant a few spruces in the gap, but decided to just rip out all the thinned out spruces and re plant the area.  A small job but a big improvement when done.

You can see the vines we pulled above that were just in this area and tangled inside some of the spruce trees.

Storage Area Improvement

 

With the recent addition of a new storage building and above ground fuel tanks, we had to pave the area to tie it all together.  Before, all the water pitched into the storage bins, creating saturated materials and no access to get to the materials.  After the recent paving and a lot of work on grading, the water now runs through this area and allows us to function normally for the first time.  This was a great improvement!

Bunker Sand Replenishment

 

The crew spent a good week adding sand and adjusting depths to the greenside bunkers.  For fairway bunkers, we went in and topdressed the surfaces of them and used a sand pro to work the sand in.  The fairway bunkers we want to play firm and avoid any plugged ball issues which is why we keep sand at minimal depths.  

Much Needed Paving Happening

 

Paving taking place around the club in the next week or two.  While most of the clubhouse area was paved a few years ago, we did not address my shop areas and a few needed service roads on the course.  This will be done over the next week or two depending on the weather.

Sodding by 10 Green

 

This picture says it all on 10 green.  The rough was sodded back in 2011 and you can see the morning sun is already behind the trees on 11 tees.  This rough will get no sunlight for most of today.  Add into it the tight space and the rough was starting to thin out the past year or so.  Best bet is to install a tall fescue sod that is more shade tolerant and try and limit equipment traffic behind the green.  Removing trees along 11 tee to improve sunlight is not an option as we need that buffer from the property along the fence.  Eventually this green should be relocated more left of its current location to alleviate all the issues we face in this area.

Greens Aeration Completed

 

A successful spring aeration on the greens.  Greens were deep tined in December, followed by Ninja tine aeration in early March to generate poa plugs for our bentgrass greens.  Following that, we drill and filled, followed by 5/8" solid tine aeration and then a verticutting application with our new Sandfiller machine.  This sets us up for the busy season ahead and will help in firming up the greens.   We purchased the Sandfiller in 2021 to help save on labor and it has already paid dividends.  If we were to verticut using walk behind machines, it would have taken us almost 2 days and almost our entire staff to complete.  With this machine we were done in 9 hours and used about 5-6 guys.  We will incorporate this into our program moving forward.

Spring Bunker Maintenance Beginning

 The process of detailing bunkers begins today and included in this are creating new edges where needed, checking sand depths and fluffing the floors to alleviate compaction.  Once edges are completed over the next week, we will then supplement bunker sand in all bunkers for the season ahead.