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.

Babying Fairway Expansions

 

The fairway contouring started in the summer of 2025 when we scalped down future fairway lines.  Here is the old 1st hole, which is now our 9th hole.  We basically scalped it from 3" to 1" in one mow, then got it down to 1/2" within 2 weeks.  Over the next 6 months, we sprayed out the rough grasses, leaving only some bent and poa.  We also seeded in some bentgrass to help fill in voids.

Fast forward to August 2026 and it is starting to look like a fairway, but the poa is under extreme stress right now after enduring 5 heat waves, drought and now a lot of rain.  Most likely some bacterial wilt going in on there as well.  The funny part is LaBar had to remove a rock from the fairway and sodded with bentgrass.  Look at how well the bent is and the poa is struggling.  This expansion will be fine by summer of 2027 and it takes a good 18 months for the grasses to get acclimated to being managed differently.