3 green freshly cut and set-up
Since my last blog post we have been very busy. We began removing all the snowfence from the greens and tee boxes the last week in March. This job took almost two weeks to complete. Once the temperatures had warmed up enough we then matted and cleaned up the fairways from any debris and the cores that were left remaining from last falls aeration.
14 fairway being matted
We also completed the construction of a new cartpath around the clubhouse going towards 10 tee. We have now routed the cartpath in-front of the clubhouse, behind 18 green. This is much more attractive then the old path which went behind the building and right by the kitchen door. It also makes accessing the patio to pick up food and drinks after the front nine easier and allowed us to create more room for parking the golf carts.
The new clubhouse cartpath
We will now be continuing with the addition of more cartpaths throughout the course for the rest of the spring. We have currently began work on hole #2. We are hoping to receive some rain the rest of this week. This will be a great thing for the course and with the combination of some heat, it should really get the entire course growing. We are hoping to be able to fire up the irrigation early in May but it will all depend on the frost in the ground.
We have a different routing for the course again this year until we can get the flooded holes 4,5,6, and 7 back in play. We will no longer be playing hole 4 green. Instead we will now be playing the tee shot from 4 tee boxes down to 7 green. Hole 8 is finally back in play as of this year for the first time in 2 years. It will currently be playing as hole #5. We have put a lot of sod down on the fairway on hole #8 this past two weeks in all that areas that had lost turf in the past from the poor and saturated conditions. So as a result for the time being hole #8 will not be in ideal condition but once the frost leaves the ground and the run-off soaks in things will be greatly improved and very playable. From hole #8 (currently playing as hole #5) we will continue to the three practice holes and finish the front nine on hole #9 just like we have the past two seasons. This routing will allow the traffic to flow much better and will eliminate all backtracking that had occurred in the past.
We will continue to be very busy in the month of May. Between irrigation fire up, cartpath construction, construction and preparations on the flooded holes and our regular daily maintenance we will have a very full work schedule. We have many huge projects planned for this year and hope to complete them all and once again see a major improvement overall on our golf course.
A view under a tarp on April 7
