Drainage and Renovation Underway on #5

 

Work has begun on the 5th hole this past week.  Our goal is to drain the fairway, rebuild the bunkers and tie those drains to our new trunk lines and to change the fairway contour lines.  The biggest problem with #5 is the amount of runoff from the hillside so we must divert water to drain basins to prevent the runoff from entering bunkers and ending up down by the green.  Phase one is to catch the upper portion of the fairway on the left side and phase 2 is to divert the water on the lower portion of the fairway toward the cart path and drainage ditch.  While this is good sized project it will address all our issues on the hole while improving the playability and strategy.

Screening the Maintenance Facility

 

Phase 1 of screening the maintenance facility area is completed and we will finish the remaining screening plants in the spring of 2021.  We will remove the dawn redwoods that run along the new putting course this winter and replace them with green giant aborvitaes.  This will improve the turf on the putting course and actually free up some more space in the maintenance area.

One Step Closer to Our New Storage Building

 

The materials for our new 3000 sq ft cold storage building arrived this morning.  The site work is ready so the next step is to have Morton come and put it up.  We are hoping to have everything done by January.  This will take the burden off of leaving equipment outside in the elements all season long due to our current lack of storage.

Hydraulic Leak

 

Unfortunately we had a hydraulic leak this morning on our practice area.  It basically goes around the perimeter of the practice area and then several passes were made along the fairway area until it was noticed.  While this will look unsightly for a while and we can seed it out, lucky it was not on one of our fairways as we use a fairway mower to mow our range area.  This is one of the downsides of mowing in the dark every morning where things like this do not get noticed right away.  

Aeration Week Coming to a Close

The first mowing on the greens since they were aerified on Tuesday.

The fairways were verticut in two directions and even with the unexpected rain on Tuesday we were able to get most of the debris off the fairways.  For the next few days we will vacuuming the debris that was blown in the roughs.

While we had almost 2" of rain to start the process this week, everything has cleaned up well.  Having the course closed during the process allows my staff to work without interruption which leads to more productivity, especially with 20% less staff this season.

 

The Cavalry Has Arrived!

 A sight for sore eyes.  These line crews from Pennsylvania arrived last night at 6:45 to put all the power wires back up to our pump house.  Lucky we had a generator to run one pump for the last week but it presented its own challenges.  Now we are fully operational!  The little things in life we take for granted.

New Path

We are rehabbing the old path by the alternate 6th tees.  Pedro widened the path a bit and then added the new crushed stone to match the rest of the paths on the course.