On The Course May 31st

Very nice sunrise this morning

The course is drying out very nicely and we are getting caught up on mowing. We had a couple of light sprinkles of rain move through this morning but not enough to get the ground wet. We are expecting another cool day today and should be able to get some projects done. We had a swing joint on an irrigation head break overnight near #3 fairway. It didn't create too uch of a mess and most of the water went right into a nearby drain. Jason will be working on that irrigation head and a small pipe leak near cart staging. Greens are being rolled today and Brandon is moving pin locations. Rubiel and Gustavo will be working on tee and fairway divots today. Troy will get most of the finish grading done on the forward tee on #14 and we are hoping to have it seeded and sodded tomorrow.

We have roped off a couple areas on #15 that we have aerified and seeded. We will be adding some fertilizer to these areas and once they start to fill we will pull the ropes. We want to keep some of the cart traffic off of these areas that have been worn down by cart traffic. With the amount of heavy rain we have been receiving we have notice a few of the drain basin covers have disappeared. Jason has replaced some of these and has added some screws to help keep them attached.

Roped off area on #15 rough that has been aerified and seeded

We are allowing carts off the paths and will continue to ask that everyone use the path as much as possible. There are still some wet areas that we want carts to avoid. Please use caution in the wooded area to the right of #14 fairway. There are some spots that are dry and then other areas that are still pretty muddy. If you are not sure about an area just keep the cart on the path.

On The Course May 29th

Greens are being mowed today

 We are mowing greens this morning and will be spraying them with a fertilizer package. The course is still draining fairly well but we still have a lot of standing water in the rough areas. We will remain cart path only today. The bunkers have been full of water and are starting to dry out. We will have a crew working on bunkers today pushing the sand back up and raking them. Collars and approaches are being walk mowed this morning. We will try to get out on the fairways and get them mowed in the early afternoon. The weather forecast is looking pretty good for the entire week. Slight chance of showers on Thursday but cooler weather. We will be working on the forward tee on #14 this week. We need to haul a little topsoil to the tee and finish grading the slopes. We have a lot of mowing to catch up on once the course dries out.

We will be working on bunkers later this morning

We are Spraying Greens Today

On The Course May 28th

The pumps are out!!  We received another 1.5" of rain last evening which brings us to a 4 day total of 6 inches.  Jason and Brandon are out on the course this morning pumping water in an effort to get things to dry out as fast as possible.  This is a picture of our 3" trash pump between holes 6 and 7 pumping down the lake that has formed there overnight.  The good news is that as of now the rain should be done for the day and most of the week.

Greens and bunkers are still very wet this morning with a lot of standing water in a majority of the bunkers.  We hope the greens will drain enough this morning to allow us to open the course by noon.  We will reevaluate the course conditions with the Pro Shop this morning at 11 a.m to decide on the best course of action for the day.

The fairways are completely saturated and will most likely have standing water on them all day.  Conditions will be the same in the rough, the ground is just to wet to take on any more moisture. 

#15 approach is also covered in water this morning.  Fortunately this is an area we will be able to pump this morning to get most of the standing water off.

On The Course May 27th

It is a cloudy morning here on the course.  Yesterday we received another .5 inches of rain which was more than enough to postpone golf after our 4 inch rain out last week.  The ground is completely saturated right now and there are more storms forecasted for today and tomorrow.  Despite the rain we were able to get out and mow greens and tees this morning.  The putting green by #1 tee however will not be mowed today, it is very wet and the mowers could damage it if we were to try.  We will be cart path only today with many puddles still in the fairways and just about everywhere in the rough, so please try to keep all 4 tires on the path at all times.  We will also be hitting from the range mats again today.

On The Course May 25th

Gustavo Mowing Greens Today

 We received over 4 inches of rain in the last 24-36 hours. The course is still really wet but we are managing to get the walk mowers out to mow the greens and will be getting all of the bunkers raked. There is still a lot of standing water throughout the golf course and Jason and Troy are moving trash pumps around to try to get some of it off the turf. We will be cart path only today and will be using the hitting mats on the range tee. We did have lightning strike several trees on the course and will have to test some irrigation controllers later in the day. If you see some irrigation running it mean we are just testing a few things to make sure everything is still working. I did run our variable frequency drive motor this morning for a little while to make sure our pump was still working. We will be getting the system charged back up later today. We should not need to irrigate for some time but we might need to fix some wiring on the system with all of the lightning we had over the last couple of days.

It is a nice sunny day today and the temperatures should be perfect for getting outside. Please take some extra time with your ball marks today as the conditions are extremely soft.

Most of the crew is working on the bunkers today

Jason and Troy are running the trash pumps getting standing water pumped to the drainage system

On The Course May 24th

We have received a lot of rain overnight and will getting more as the morning goes on. At 6:55am we have had a total of just over 3 inches of rain. Currently the golf course is closed and will remain closed until later in the day. We will re-evaluate the course between 9am and 10am for possible opening times. Right now with what the radar looks like we could be shutdown most of the day. The above video shows some of the course and the Ash tree behind #1 green that was struck by lightning. There are several other trees that have been struck and we will evaluate these over the next couple of days.

Ash tree behind #1 green that was struck by lightning

On The Course May 23rd

New Forward Tee on #14

We had a busy day yesterday working on getting the course mowed and fairways sprayed. The greens have healed in nicely over the past week and are ready for the walk mowers. We will be walk mowing greens this morning and hopefully will get them all done before the rain gets close. They are predicting some storms later this morning but at this point most of it is north of the golf course.

Mary Pat will be out this morning planting the remainder of the flower beds. Troy will be out working on the new forward tee on #14. We hauled some root zone mix out yesterday and should have it ready for seed and sod later today. Really windy most of the night so the turf is really dry this morning. Jason will be moving pin locations and spot water areas that are too dry. We are going to be watching the radar close over the next couple of hours to determine our irrigation needs.

On The Course May 19th

 It was a very windy and hot day yesterday. We were out in the afternoon hand watering greens and spot watering the fairways. We ran a very heavy cycle last night and most areas are still pretty dry. We will be running some more water this morning to make sure we can keep up with the forcasted evapotranspiration rate (ET). The ET is the amount of water that we lose accumulated over the day and yesterday it was at 0.29. That basically means we would need to water the golf course with about 0.29 inches of water. We typically want to replace at least 80% of the ET value on any given day. Depending on the forecast and what our soil moisture levels are we might water more or less. The weather is going to get interesting later today with the cold front moving in and the high temperatures for tomorrow only in the low 60's. Hot, humid air in front of a colder system typically means we are in for some thunderstorms. The storms missed us last night.

We are rolling greens this morning and will me mowing greens on Sunday. We did not see enough growth in the greens yesterday to justify mowing again today. The greens have healed in from aerification very well this week and we will back into our normal mowing and rolling schedule next week. The crew will be working on hand watering the flower beds around the clubhouse that were planted this week. We will be finishing planting the flower beds later next week.

We have finished mowing most of the native areas for the first time and will be mowing some areas a second time before we spray them with herbicide. I was amazed yesterday that after we had mowed a couple of the areas that golfers decided it was OK to drive their golf cart through these areas. We still want all cart traffic to stay out of these areas and allow them to grow back tall with no tire tracks running through them.

Sheldon mowing greens with the triplex. We will be back to walk mowers next week.

 Troy was able to haul a couple loads of sand mix out to the forward tee on #14 and we should have it finished and seeded by the middle of next week. We will finish all of our aerification of fairways early next week and then will start working on some rough areas that need some attention. We will also be seeding some thin rough areas on the back nine.

Most of the fairways have been solid tined this week.

On The Course May 17th

We are mowing greens this morning for the first time since aerification. The healing process has been going very well with the weather conditions and the hard work from the Grounds Staff. Yesterday we sprayed greens with an anthracnose preventative and some fertilizer. The crew was able to get a few more fairways on the front nine aerified with solid tines yesterday and will finish #2 and #5 fairways today. Fernando and I were able to get most of the native area between #11 tee and #18 tee flail mowed yesterday and we started on the area behind #10 green up to #5 Tee. We will continue this process later this morning.

We will be finishing the structure for the comfort stations this week. The portolets have been moved into place and we will be working on the screening structure later today. We will be mulching the path to the facility to provide a walkway from #4 tee and #11 fairway. Troy has moved some fill material into the new forward tee on #14 and will be working on grading later this morning. We are hopeful to complete this project early next week. Brandon was able to get the new fairway on #1 of the Executive Course seeded and fertilized yesterday. We have seeded the area with 2 different Bentgrass varieties and several different fescue blends. We want to be able to test a few different varieties on our property to be able to identify some strengths and weaknesses. Our overall goal for the area is to give the Junior Golfers a little easier area to hit from than the thick rough that used to be there.

Comfort Station will be finished this week

On The Course May 15th

 Greens aerification went very well yesterday with near perfect conditions. High sun and low humidity allow for the sand and aerification plugs to dry quickly. We were able to get all of the greens and most of the tees aerified. We will be working on the last few tees we have on the front nine this morning.

Greens were topdressed, aerified, brushed and cleaned up. We will continue to work some of the sand into the aerification holes and turf canopy over the next couple of days. We are planning on mowing greens Thursday with triplex mowers and are hopeful to have the walk mowers back on them by the weekend. Tees were aerified with the tractor and the plugs were worked back into the tee. The thatch that was remaining was cleaned up and we will be topdressing some of the tees on Wednesday. After Sheldon was finished with the tees we were able to pull some cores on #4 and #13 fairways. The aerification cores were then busted up with a drag mat and blow together before being picked up with our new Vacuum.

Cristian aerifying greens

 We were able to get the Executive Course Greens aerified and topdressed yesterday. Jason is adding a little more sand today to make sure the aerification holes get filled.  We will get the sand work into the greens and get the pin locations reset later this morning. We will be running water throughout the golf course this morning and into the afternoon. The crew is brushing the back nine greens and Troy is dragging the front nine greens. We will have all of the tee markers and pin locations reset today for normal play and Ladies League.

Sheldon aerifying tees

Final brushing of the greens late in the day

On The Course May 13th

Finally a nice weekend day for golf yesterday.  Today looks like it may be even a little nicer so come out and play.  We are single cutting greens this morning and touching up greenside bunkers from play yesterday.  We are also resetting tees and cutting cups.  Just a reminder that the course will be closed to play tomorrow due to spring greens aerification.

On The Course May 12th

Jd, Kathy and the Grounds Crew during the Friday Golf Lesson
PUTTING!  Tick Tock

 Today we are mowing and rolling greens. The greens mower lights are still working and we needed to use them for the first couple of holes this morning. It is still really dark at 5:00am with the cloud cover.  We received a little rain yesterday afternoon but will remain 90 degree rule for carts today. Fairways are being mowed and Sheldon will blowing some of the tree seeds off the fairways.

The golf course will be closed on Monday for Greens Aerification. We will have the crew working late into the evening to make sure we have the greens puttable for Tuesday. Aerification is a necessary evil that we must do each and every year to make sure we have a healthy turf system going into the summer. This spring we are aerifying with a small coring tine that will pull a 0.2" plug from the surface of the green. The hole created will be then filled with sand giving the green a lot of new channels for new roots to grow. This will also help firm up the surface of the green. The greens have been a little soft over the past couple of weeks due to all of the rain. The topdressing sand will help the greens firm up over the next couple of weeks and if Mother Nature cooperates we should see a great benefit to this process.

Jason, Fernando and Joel worked on the irrigation leak on #14 approach

 Jason worked on the small irrigation leak that was on #14 approach. From the pictures here this small leak turned into a larger project. When the course was built in the late 1960's the irrigation systems were installed with steel pipe. The steel pipe rusts over time and this creates little pin hole leaks as pictured below. Unfortunately for Jason and Fernando this pipe was over 3 feet into the ground and if you add water to clay soils you get a muddy mess. They worked hard on it Friday and were able to get it put back together quickly and you will barely even notice as you play this weekend. We will be marking the sod cut over this leak as ground under repair.

Pin hole leak on #14 approach 3.5 feet below the turfgrass!!!

On The Course May 11th

Windy conditions overnight have dried the course out very well. We have some spotty showers fore casted for later today but the weekend is looking to be really good. Today we are mowing and rolling greens. Carlos and Roque are mowing collars and approaches and Dick is triplexing approaches. Jason worked on a couple irrigation issues on #12 yesterday and will be fixing the small leak on #14 approach that appeared yesterday morning. I played the front nine yesterday afternoon with Mr. Turnquist and was very surprised by the fresh ball marks left on most of the greens. We discussed a few different options for getting everyone to fix all of the ball marks on the green.

Cristian working on green surround rough

We will be working on the Executive course greens again this morning getting our aerification equipment set up and ready for Monday. Troy will have a crew out finish grading the new fairway on Executive Course #1. We are looking to seed this area next week. Next week we will be really busy with aerification and with the fore casted weather we should be able to finish a few of the projects we have stalled on with all of the rain over the past couple of weeks. Once we are finished with greens aerification we will be moving on to tees and fairways. Our plan right now is to solid tine some of the fairways to help work in some topdressing sand.

Joel mowing our fairway nursery

On The Course May 10th

Ron and Bill Mowing Fairways Today

 Today we are mowing greens, tees and fairways. The course continues to dry out but there are still some sneaky wet areas in the rough. We will be 90 degree rule for today and we ask that you use the paths as much as possible. We are going to be working on #7 of the Executive course getting our aerification equipment ready. We will be pulling very small cores on the greens next week. It is the same process we have used in the past and disruption should be minimal by the weekend. We are looking to have perfect weather this weekend and into next week.

Gustavo and Fernando Mowing The Chipping Green ( Sunny day for a change)

We will be aerifying greens Monday, May 14th

On The Course May 9th

 The rain totals over the last couple of weeks has been over 5.5 inches. We recieved another 0.25" last night in some of the very spotty showers. The course is still very wet with saturated soils but the forecast is starting look better. We are hopeful to get a little break in the rain to finish up some spring projects. We have graded the new fairway on the Executive course but need to let it dry out enough to finish it and get it seeded. We will be working on the forward tee on #14 this week are hope to have that seeded next week.

Rain event Sunday, May 6th

Today we are mowing and rolling greens today. Jason will be setting pin locations for the Guest Day and Brandon will be moving tee markers. The rough areas and fairways are still pretty wet and we will remain cart path only this morning. If it starts to dry up enough we will let the carts off the path later today.


Rain event Sunday, May 6th

On The Course May 3rd

Troy has been working on the new fairway on the Executive Course

We have received another 0.2 inches of rain overnight. The course is holding some water and we will be cart path only. We are going to be mowing tees, raking bunkers and changing pin locations today. We will try to get out and mow greens later this morning or early afternoon depending on the weather and how the greens dry out. The range tee will be set up on the artificial mats today and we will begin to utilize the mats at different times over the next couple of weeks. This will give the turf portion of the tee a better chance of making it through the entire season.

On The Course May 2nd

Wednesday we had over 1.5" of rain overnight and some of the bunkers needed some extra attention. The above video is of the process of pushmowing the bunker bank, string trimming the edge and then fixing a couple washouts. The bunker is then finished raked and the crew moves on to the next.

On The Course May 2nd

Jason and Fernando planted all of the Columnar Oaks yesterday and they look great

We received over 1.5 inches of rain overnight and are currently really wet on the golf course. We have the crew heading out to fix the bunker washouts and get the course ready for play. We will be cart path only today! We will be running some trash pumps trying to get some of the standing water out of some of the low areas. We do not have any wind damage or hail damage from the storms last night. Most of the really heavy stuff missed the golf course.

The course is too wet to get any mowers out other than a few push mowers that will be mowing bunker banks. We have been trying to keep the course as dry as possible so I think this rain will soak in fairly quickly. Driving around this morning we can see the areas we have sprayed with wetting agent that is helping get the water off the surface and into the soil. The Vertidrain aerification holes are also helping get some of the water off the surface. With over 1.5" we still have some really wet areas.

On The Course May 1st

Javier "Maestro" Sanchez

 Monday we were able to get all of the greens sprayed with fertilizer and a wetting agent. The wetting agent should help keep the surfaces of the greens drier with the forecasted rain over the next few days. Brandon will be finishing spraying fertilizer and wetting agent on all of the fairways this morning. He was able to get through most of the course yesterday and will be finishing 15 and 18 fairways today. Sheldon was able to get the fairway clean up pass areas Vertidrained yesterday and Ron is work on rolling out any tufted areas.

Jason, Fernando and Joel are working on planting the Regal Prince Oaks along the entrance road. The American Linden that are currently along the entrance will be overgrowing the driveway over the next couple of years. We want the Oaks to get established and growing before the need comes to remove some of the Lindens. We have removed some trees over the winter but are always looking for good areas to add trees that will not affect the playability and agronomics of the golf course. We want to remove a few in areas that we have trouble with turf conditions. On the left side of #14 fairway we removed several trees this past winter to help get some turf established in the areas where it is currently bare soil.

Jason, Fernando and Joel planting Columnar Oaks on the entrance drive

 We have started to work on finishing the bare soil area on the Executive Course. The soil has been too wet to work on this spring. We are going to try to get most of the finish grade done today and hopefully get it seeded later this week. This all depends on the weather and how much rain we get this evening. We will be moving the tee markers on Holes #1 and #2 to areas that will make the bare area out of play for several weeks. Once the area is seed we want to keep all foot traffic off of the area until we are able to get the grass mowed and grown in.

Brandon has finished spraying herbicide on most of the larger areas on the course

The bare soil area on the Executive Course is dry enough to work on today