Back to the Drawing Board

 

After the recent heavy rains, this area "popped up" in the left rough of 17.  We noticed some thinning last week and then today the area was saturated with standing water.  Once we dug up the area, we found an active drain that was cut and continued to bleed out onto the surface.  We removed the old section and actually drained the entire area and tied into a drain we installed within the last 5 years.  Unfortunately, the saturated conditions will create a rehab of this area with leveling and sodding.  The only positive is that we can still see sodded main lines and laterals that makes digging much easier.  These little issues will continue to arise after each significant rainfall unfortunately.

Building New Turf Nurseries

 With the collection of green cores, we will now build a nursery for greens.  This will be key in the future for repairs or expansions.  We are also building a nursery on the side of the range for fairways and tees with the cores we collected from both.  During the renovation we pillaged all our nurseries and had no source finishing up the summer.  We will be in a good spot in 2027.

Final Steps

 

With the sudden addition of heavy rains this afternoon, it was all hands on deck to blow off, sweep and get the remaining fairways topdressed and brushed before the 2pm rain arrival.  Crew absolutely crushed it in 4 days.  Only have some plugs left in the rough to sweep and remove.

Tees Thrown In the Mix

 

Another long day of pulling cores and shoveling off tees.  

No Rest For the Weary

 

While the crew was working on greens, we had another crew starting on fairways.  This is more simple with pulling cores, dragging, sweeping, topdressing and brushing.  Of course Monday was not a great beginning but the weather turned in our favor.

All In A Days Work

 Step 1 is to core aerate all the greens on the course.

Step 2 is to bury greens in sand and then solid tine on top.

Step 3 is to deep tine all greens except the new greens.  

This entire process started at 5:30am and finished at 5:30pm.  We used approximately 100 tons of sand on the greens.

The Rehab Begins

 Like most renovations and irrigation system installs, growing pains will follow.  Drains get cut, veins in the soil get opened or closed etc.  Now that we have endured drought and extreme rainfall, we are identifying areas that need attention.  Each week we try to pick off an easy fix.

The area between 15 and 16 is suddenly wet and thin.  Our staff went in and installed some drainage and resodded using sod from our old par 3 tee surrounds.  Little expense, huge improvement.