We have been extremely busy this off-season putting together some small details that I hope will create a clean and noticeable impact. We built brand new red and white hazard stakes to mark the course with. These will totally replace the ones on the course now, which are all different lengths and pretty worn out, if they are there at all. We also built a new style of traffic stakes with color combo to match our tee markers and logo. These will be placed along path edges to protect worn out turf areas from cart traffic. They are quite a bit larger than the little black and white ones we currently use so I would strongly suggest not to drive over these haha. We also built new brackets for the trash cans at each tee area. These should be much stronger than the last ones so that the can will actually stand up straight.
We have also repainted the tee markers and are applying a clear coat to them now. I plan on having them back on the course this upcoming week of the 16th.
The drain work on #8 tee boxes is just about finished. We lack placing the sod back on the black tee trenches and rolling everything smooth. This should also be finished the week of the 16th. I will inform the pro shop when I will be allowing golf back on them. It won't be long, I would really just like to clean up the mud and loose pea gravel before they got used. We went big with this project and did 10 foot centers, which is the smallest distance between trenches recommended. Its a huge pain in the rear with all the hand work involved shoveling everything out and shoveling the sand and gravel back in, but those tees needed some major help. Plus my anxiety levels were through the roof seeing all the mud on the tee plus all the foot traffic through the sloppy conditions, but I think its really going to help the playability of those tees through the season. The drainage trench we did on #7 around the tee complex is working for sure, but we will need to monitor it through the season before I can say those tees won't need the same treatment we are doing to #8. One last drain I would love to get to in the next month is #9 fairway. We have got to get rid of that birdbath that has formed in the fairway. We still have one possible path in order for it to be a non-intrusive project, but if that doesn't pan out then we will need to trench all the way across the fairway towards the fairway bunker and then run the pipe into the creek. Not really what I want to do, but we have to make that playable turf again! Below is a photo I took with my drone to show the the full pattern of the drain lines.
A couple weeks ago we were able to team up with a couple members and do a small project that produced a huge impact. I want to send a big thank you to Chris Brown and Jim Asher for their help with placing rip rap along the cart path edge going from #1 to #2 tee. It looks fantastic and will help keep the cart path from eroding and falling into the pond.
And one final thing to mention. This is the month where our team performs everybody's favorite thing........Greens Aerification!
We will be aerifying all the greens on March 30th and 31st with 3/4" solid tines. We will do 9 holes a day in order to keep 9 holes open for play each day. The week before this, I plan to aerify collars and approaches with 5/8" hollow tines plus the areas of greens where we struggled at the end of the year. This would be left edge of 11, front and left edges of 12, left edge of 13, and the small bowl area right of 17 greens. This process will be done with no course closures. I have a quick release fertilizer that I plan to apply to all greens the week of the 23rd that should get the greens growing which will help in healing the holes quicker.
That is about all I have for this month. I hope you all got a chance to play some while the weather was unseasonably nice. If not, i'm sure it won't be much longer before the season really gets going.
