Planning for the Future

Despite the 2' of snow on the ground, we made a road to get free fill in to the fescue area by the old 12th tees.  This dirt will be used to build our future practice area and driving range and we will also use it to screen off the practice area from the 12th tees.  If we wait any longer, the ground will be thawed and will not be able to get trucks in here.

Water Main Break Repaired

With all the cold and snowy weather this winter, water pipes have been breaking on a regular basis.  We were not immune to this as following the latest snow storm, the 8" cast iron fire suppression line cracked right inside the cinder block wall where the water meters and shutoffs are by the parking lot.  The water ran for a good 24 hours until we could isolate the pipe and United Water could figure out the problem.  Here you can see the company repairing the pipe which was about 6' down.
We are much more prepared if this were to happen again.

It Has Been A Long Winter

There is no question that this has been a long winter.  We had some decent weather right before Christmas to start getting ready to remove the bunker sand from some of our newer bunkers but since, we have had cold and snowy weather.  We have not gotten any significant work done on the course this winter because we have been dealing with snow cover or frozen ground for almost 2 months.  Come this spring we will be extremely busy getting all the little projects done that we were hoping to get done this winter.
How healthy will our turf be come spring?  That leaves a lot to be determined over the next few weeks.  We had some very iffy weather back in January where we had rain and light snow and 50 degrees followed by a temperature drop of over 45 degrees in almost 12 hours.  All the puddles that sat on greens from the rain the day before froze solidly when temps did not get out of the teens for a few days.  Plants can die if they take up water and then freeze and we are hoping that was not the case.  We will be keeping an eye on turf when the snow starts to melt to see how we fared this winter on greens.  Snow mold is going to be another issue and I am confident our greens and tees will be fine, but our fairways and roughs will most likely have snow mold with the prolonged snow cover.  This is more of an unsightly spring disease and usually grows out come May when temperatures start to warm up and grass can start growing normally.  Following a difficult winter like it has been, we can only hope for a warm and dry spring to allow grass to start growing normally.  As snow melts and we can get out to monitor turf, we will update our findings on the blog.

18th Hole Before and After

The large green is now well guarded with bunkers and a new fairway bunker was added to keep the longer hitters honest.

#9 Before and After

The approach to the par 5 is a little different than before.  We all know the green is the defense of this hole, but we also put more of an emphasis on the 2nd and 3rd shots.  The 3 cross bunkers now make the longer hitter commit to going for the green and the shorter hitter must now figure where their 2nd or 3rd shots will be laid up.  We also expanded the fairway to the right behind the bunkers and also created a larger chipping area left of the green so poor shots will funnel further away from the green.

12th Hole

This is the view golfers have playing their 2nd Shot.  The bunkers on the left along with fescue that runs up the left side of the hole will still force golfers still stay right on their next shot.  However, golfers have options now from the left side of the hole and can still hit recovery shots where before they really had no options left of the fairway.

12th Hole Before and After

There are significant changes to the 12th hole, including moving the tees to the right of the cart path, removing 10 trees and adding an additional 4 bunkers to the hole.  The hole still plays as a double dogleg, but now the bunkers frame the landing areas instead of the trees.