January 2018,
We hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. With the colder
temperatures, finally here the growth of the grass has been slowing down. This
has allowed us to get some tasks and projects done in other areas of the course.
The week of January 8th the
greens and grounds department spent the week checking all bunkers depths in the
greenside bunkers. Water, wind, daily maintenence, and play can move the sand
over time. G&G staff checked all depths in the bottoms and faces and will
re-distribute as necessary. We go through great lengths to make sure the faces
have the proper amount of sand for balls to bounce back to the bottom. We also
check the depths of the bunkers in bottoms to ensure consistent depth relative
to the liner. While checking depths and redistributing the sand we use
aggressive hand rakes to loosen and flip the sand. This will help to
reduce the harden packed sand that can develop about an inch down due to the
daily hand raking. To reduce the potential of damaging the liner we do not use
a motorized sand rake in the greenside bunkers.
The week of January 15th the fairway bunkers were
also checked. We can bring the motor sand rake into the fairway bunkers to push
and cultivate the sand. Due to the fairway bunkers having older sand we do use
the motorized sand rake 1x per week to help cultivate the sand.
We recently made some changes to the north driving range tee. The
sod in the corner of the tee next to the half-way house was removed and
replaced with pavers. This area was difficult to grow healthy turf due to the
excess traffic and shade from the half-way house roof.
Vegetation is being added to the retention area between the 10th tee
and fairway. This will help to hide the retention and soften view from the tee
and the practice green area. In addition, we hope the addition vegetation will
help with erosion control. Unfortunately, only some of the desired plants were
available at this time of year. There will be some additional plantings in the
area in few weeks
when the remainder of the plant stock is available.
Pavers extension at half way house
Plants and irrigation being
installed on #10 tee retention
More plants and irrigation on #10
Great striping from the new heights.