Monday, October 14, 2019


August, September, and October

We hope everyone enjoyed their Summer as we are now gearing up for the winter season with overseed in full swing.

We are now a full week into watering after getting the course fully seeded and the temperatures have been ideal for overseed. The G&G department spent the week of September 30 scalping and preparing to seed which took place on October 7th.  We were able to seed the entire golf course in one day taking 10 hours to complete. This year’s overseeded areas will be very similar to last season. We overseeded all the fairways, tees tops, approaches, aprons, green surrounds, and the greenside bunkers. This year the intermediate cut in fairway’s has been expanded from about 4 feet to 7 feet. This intermediate expansion went further into the existing rough and thus the fairways stayed the same width and were not narrowed.

While the water is running through the day G&G is staying busy with many tasks in preparation for opening.  We are sand blasting and painting all the tee markers and yardage plaques. All tee accessories, trash cans, ball washers, sand bottle boxes, and coolers are being cleaned and re-conditioned. We are trimming, raking and cleaning deserts throughout the golf course. We will get a good start on the deserts, but it will take several weeks to get all areas cleaned up. The winter annuals around the clubhouse, #1 tee, #10 tee and the range house have been replanted. We will be doing some plant replacement around the clubhouse as well. The mechanics are busy sharpening all the mowers in preparation for the first cuts on the fresh rye grass. We also take this time to do a very thorough deep cleaning and detailing of all our equipment.

Overall the bentgrass collars were very successful this year. We had a couple of areas that still struggled during the stressful summer weather and we will be doing some plugging in those areas during the overseed closure. Also, while the course is closed, several members of our staff have been working on fixing ball marks and filling them with green painted sand mixed with bentgrass seed.

We also had a busy summer with multiple on-course projects.

The 12-day summer closure to perform all cultural practices was a big success. G&G was able to aerify and verticut every area of the golf course and apply 1200 tons of topdressing sand to the tees, approaches, fairways, and the first 10 yards of the rough. The continued topdressing is helping to create much better conditions for our players and the overall health of the golf course. Better drainage and soil help create firmer and faster conditions as well as helping to build a much healthier growing medium for the bermuda grass.

The 3 additional fans that were installed on #15, #16 and the practice area were also very successful this summer. The fans helped take the most troublesome greens and create a much more manageable environment for the bentgrass surfaces during our hottest months of July, August and September. With the continued success of the fans we anticipate adding them to several more greens next summer. The fans have been removed for the winter season and will be re-installed around the 4th of July next summer.

The north driving range tee was expanded in August. The bunker on the east side of the tee has been removed to create more teeing space with the rising demand of golf and our limitations of our driving range. About 200 tons of soil was brought in to fill and raise the area were the bunker was located. With the expansion we were able to add about 4 additional hitting stations on the tee.

The area behind #9 green was raised to match the changes to the cart path that took place with the clubhouse renovation. A 12” drain basin was added to the cart path to solve the water pooling issue that had been created with the elevated cart path.  A 6” drain line was also run into the small pond next to #1 tee. A small section of turf was removed and replaced with landscape next to the small pond. The raised area will help provide more space for our walkers to access the cart path directly behind #9 green.

May through August we spent a large amount of time trimming all trees as well as having a contracted tree company address the larger trees. During this time, we were able to trim every tree within the golf course property.

In addition to the tree trimming we added 38 new trees and removed 17 trees from the golf course. This was in accordance with the plan our golf course architect and arborist developed for us a few years ago. Both the architect and arborist make visits to the course each year to re-visit the plan and ensure we are meeting the needs of the golf course as it relates to safety, tree health, turf health, aesthetics, course design and playability.

We look forward to getting everyone back on the golf course very soon and to a great Winter season at Pinnacle Peak Country Club.

Regards

PPCC G&G Department

  

Cart path behind #9 Green - Cart path was elevated with the CRP

Cart path behind #9 green before


6" Drain line to drain pooling water on the cart path - ALOT of irrigation to go around or through...


Back filling soil to raise turf

New drain and turf line to match the cart path

New drain and tuft line to match the cart path
   
New landscape to replace steep turf from cart path to pond

Barry scraping the old turf out on the east side of the north driving range tee

East side of north riving range tee scraped and bunker partially filled in

Fill dirt being brought in to fill the bunker and level tee

Bunker and tee backfilled and sand capped

G&G staff laying new sod - Tee was was expanded about 6000 sq. ft.

New tee all sodded

Expanded tee overseeded - Little way to go yet

View of the expanded tee from the range house.