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.

Growing Pains

 

On the left side of 5 fairway where some contouring was done, we noticed a bare spot.  Upon opening the sod, we saw it was a rock.  We figured lets go get a shovel and dig it out.

2 hours later with an excavator we were able to finally get it out.  The funny thing is irrigation went around it as you can see in the top picture where the head is located and how the pipe coming across the fairway turns around it.  These are all the imperfections we will continue to find over the next 6-12 months.

Watch What You Wish For!

 For April, May and June our staff worked extremely hard to keep new sod and seed alive, with high temps, low humidity and almost no rainfall.  I remember hoping for a few downpours to help us keep new grass alive and help germinate the out of play fescue seed.

The rains came and havent let up for almost 3 weeks.  Creating playability issues and hampering maintenance.

Once the humidity kicked, grass has been growing like a weed, leaving clippings everywhere.  Regardless of growth regulators and frequent mowings, once the natural rainfall releases all the nutrients in the soil you are fighting it until the humidity and rainfall subside.

When it Rains it Pours!

 As if torrential rains of late havent been challenging, this large Tulip fell in the pond on 14.  A big machine will be needed to pull it out of the pond once they are able to cut it up.  With limited access this will be a challenge to get this removed without making a complete mess!

This is not the lake on 7 but it is the puddle in front of the range tee.  When we built the range back in 2016, we identified this problem and added drainage.  With the renovation, the drain pipe was cut and not repaired and we are back to square one.  The contractor will have to dig in the berm you see in the backdrop to connect the pipe back to where it drains to.

After a significant rain, we noticed the bunker on 3 was full of water.  How can that be, it is brand new with new drainage.  The outflow pipe under the fairway was inadvertently cut by the irrigation crew and not repaired.  After some digging, we found the issue and resolved it.  

While a golf course renovation and irrigation system replacement projects are stressful enough and once the contractor has left the course, we all assume everything is going to be great.  It took extreme heat and drought this summer to identify irrigation shortcomings and now heavy rains in July and August to find drainage issues.  It will be a good 12 months until we feel we have everything under control.