On The Course November 9th

Our first snowy sunrise!

 The crew made some progress on getting the course closed for winter. We have been delayed by the snow this week but it finally melted last night and we were able to spray the greens and cover 1-6 and 9 greens. We will be working on the rest tomorrow and should have a couple of nice days later in the week to finish up. Monday and Tuesday do not look like they will get above freezing.

The leaves are coming off of the trees and we should be able to get most of them cleaned up late in the week. It has been a pretty good golf season despite the late start and the recent weather. I am very happy with the condition of the golf course as it goes into winter. We just need a few more days to get everything wrapped up.

The crew was able to shovel some of the snow off of the greens before it melted to help with them drying out.

Corey spraying greens after the snow had melted.

The crew working on covering #3 green

Mechanic Shaun Hill giving a helping hand mulching leaves

On The Course October 28th

Gabriel isn't dressed for Halloween! He's Cold!!

 We had very nice weather this past weekend and we are looking at a couple more nice days in the forecast. The practice range has shut down for the season. Pete is aerifying the range floor and we have pulled the covers off of the turf tee to allow it to harden off for winter. All of the golf course accessories have been pulled from the range tee and stored in the shop.

Corey is deep tining the tees on the Championship Tees today after they were mowed. We will begin to pull some course accessories later this week depending on the weather. We are planning on closing the Championship Course on Sunday, November 3rd. This will allows us several days next week to get the Snow Mold Protection applied and get all of the greens covered. We are looking at a couple of rainy/snowy days this week and will be working on getting leaves cleaned up and mulched. There are still a lot of leaves hanging on in the trees.

Jd had a great idea last week of making the course a little "Tough". We let Troy have at some interesting pin locations and it sounded like everybody had a great time.. We found out that you can't enter 0.5 paces from the left edge on our pin locations sheets. We will be keeping the Executive Course open as long as possible as we do not cover those greens. We will be blowing out the irrigation system starting on November 4th.

Superintenden't Revenge pin location on #8 Green

Corey deep tining #10 tee

On The Course October 17th

We have had a rainy couple of days this week and ended up with a total of just over 2 inches. The course is draining and #18 fairway with the XGD drainage installed last week is draining very well. I have included a video above that shows one of the catch basins that was tied into to help the fairway drain. If you cannot see the video you might have to access the blog from a browser. I am very happy with the drainage work and can't wait to see how it performs in the next few rain events that are in the forecast.

We are going to be rolling greens and blowing the leaves off. We will be spraying our first preventative application on greens for snow mold today. Pink Snow Mold can be a problem in cool wet weather and that is what is forecasted for the next couple of weeks. This will set us up for our final snow mold application right around November 1st. We will be watching the forecasts very closely over the next couple of weeks to make sure we have enough time to get the course ready for winter. We are planning on covering greens again with the excelsior mats and will need 3 good days to get that accomplished.

XGD Crew working On #18 last week

On The Course October 10th

XGD began work on the drainage project on 18 fairway Monday morning.  They are currently working on the approach area and from about 150 yards and in.  They should have this area wrapped up by this morning and will then move on to the remainder of the fairway extending back towards the tee.  We will be temporarily making 18 a Par 3 while the guys are working in the landing area from the regular tees.  Thanks for your cooperation while the project is ongoing.  Below we've added a video to get an idea of what is going on.

The crew backfilling trenches.

This is a new main line for the water to gather in the catch basin.

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On The Course October 5th

We are mowing greens this morning. The course received another 0.4" of rain so we will be unable to roll the greens. We will be cart path only today with spotty showers forecasted for most of the day. Corey is changing pin locations and Rubiel will be running the Sand Pro raking bunkers. Fernando will be blowing leaves with the John Deere tractor. The range tee will remain on the turf for the weekend.

We have XGD drainage systems starting the work on #18 fairway on Monday. We will be playing #18 short on certain days this next week to accommodate the work that needs to be done. We are looking at a pretty good stretch of weather this next week and will be trying to get a lot of work done before winter sets in. We are going to start to deep tine fairways next week and will be working on other small projects throughout the golf course.

Weidenmann XF6 deep tining #12 fairway.

On The Course October 4th

Troy and Corey working on the rough grade for #18 Tee

 We have had 2.5 inches of rain this week with a little more coming later today. over the last 24 - 36 hours we have seen almost 2 inches of rain fall on the course. We will be cart path only this morning and if the back nine fairways drain enough we will open it up to 90 Degree Rule. We have had some decent weather to get the Green Tee on #18 graded and grassed. The banks of the tee were sodded and the tee top was seeded. We will see next week how much of the seed didn't float away with the rain. We have a couple days next week forecasted to be in the low to middle 70's. We should see some germination by Thursday of next week. The tee on #3 is growing very well under the Evergreen Covers. All of the new tees should be ready by June of next year.

The Board has approved some drainage work to be done on #18 fairway. We have XGD Drainage Systems coming in on Monday, October 7th to start installing drainage tile on #18 fairway. The project should take 5-6 days to complete and it looks like the weather should be pretty good. Below is a link to the XDG blog that has a couple photos from Minikahda where they are working on some internal green drainage.

http://blog.greensdrainage.com/

We have the Ming Scramble Shotgun at 12pm today. We are mowing greens, raking bunkers and blowing leaves. We are setting the range on the turf for the weekend. Next week we are planning on covering the range tee to promote recovery and we will hitting off the mats the rest of the season. We are looking at a couple more weather systems moving into the area over the next couple of days.

The Tee Project on #3 is growing in very well.

On The Course September 26th

Troy mowing the new Green Tee on #3

 We have had a great stretch of weather so far this week and the golf course is shaping up really nice. The course has bounced back from aerification very well and we should have a great fall. Corey was able to get about 125 tons of sand spread on fairways 14 through 18 yesterday. All of the fairways have been topdressed and we only have a couple of approaches left to do today. If the budget allows we will be topdressing fairways once more this season right before we shut down for the season. We will begin deep tining fairways the second week of October.

The new tees on #3 are coming along very well with some positive growth on the bentgrass tee top. We have mowed it for the first time this week and will keep it covered to push growth for the next couple of weeks before we let it harden off for winter. We made a little progress yesterday on #18 by removing the existing sod and we will start hauling fill material later this morning.

We have replaced a couple spruce trees in the bottom part of the parking lot that were blown over from the storm in June. We also added a screen planting along the north side of the tennis courts that will help screen and block some wind. We will be working on planting some more trees later this fall as time and weather allow. There are a couple of Spruce trees on #2 that need some to be replaced as well as adding some trees to the right of the cart path on #13. We will be marking some trees for removal this winter. We have a elm tree on #18 that is standing dead and needs to be removed. We have done some work on a couple of the perennial beds around the clubhouse this week and will be working on getting them mulched later this week or early next week.

Spruce tree screen planting behind the tennis courts

#6 fairway with a good layer of sand waiting to be brushed into the turf canopy

We are working on some perennial beds this fall to add some color and variety

On The Course September 19th

Troy and Pete working on the practice bunker

 It has been a pretty good week to get some work done despite the misty wet weather. We are going  to continue topdressing fairways when we have time and will be working through the back nine next week. The middle of September is a great time to get some perennial flower work done. We have pulled plants from a couple of the perennial beds to help improve the look and growth of the plants. The golfer turf bed has not performed very well over the past couple of years so we are amending the soil and will be replanting the bed next week. Every couple of seasons we try to rework a couple of the beds. We pulled the plants and will be dividing and replanting most of the material in the beds. We will be adding some different species and redesigning the layout of the bed.

Troy and the crew worked on fixing the face of the practice bunker that has had a lot of sand build up on the face. We cut the sod back and removed the sand material down until we found the original soil base. The entire bunker was edged and sand depth fixed. The face was sodded and most members will not even notice that we had done the work. Over time when practicing in the bunker the sand builds up quickly on the face making the turf struggle to grow.

The tee project on # 3 is growing in very nice. We had germination in 5 days and we might even be able to get a mower on the tee top this week. The tee will not be ready for this season but should be open close to the beginning of next spring. We have growth covers on the tee to keep the tee from cooling down during the evenings. This will help with growth to get the plants to mature quickly.

We are rolling greens this morning and working on the flower bed around the clubhouse. We have a chance of rain moving into the area later in the day. Bill is mowing intermediate rough and Sheldon is mowing rough areas through out the course.

Over the last 2 seasons 8-12 inches of sand has built up on the practice bunker face

We had germination in 5 days on the new tees on #3.

For the first time in a while the course received a good amount of rain overnight.  We ended up with .8 inches total and the nice thing was that it was a slow soaking rain which some areas of the course needed.  We will be cart path only today to keep the fairways from tracking and rutting up after last weeks aerification process.  Greens are being rolled this morning and greenside bunkers are being mechanically raked.  We are also cutting cups and doing tee service.  It should be a nice cool day for golf.

On The Course September 12th

Corey topdressing #1 fairway

 It has been another very busy week on the course with a couple of outside events. We are getting closer to finishing the fairway aerification. Corey started topdressing some fairways yesterday after Shaun was able to fix the shuttle linkage on the tractor. We are going a little heavier on the sand rate this time and will try to get all of the fairways done by early next week. We are brushing the sand into the turf canopy and they are looking very good. Today we will be working on 9, 3 and 7 fairways. Pete has the fertilizer spreader going on tees and we will be watering those in this morning.

The weather is changing as we are looking at a high temperature in the middle 70's for today. The greens have healed in very nicely from aerification and we are dropping the walk mowers today. They are getting a lot of clippings and the greens will be noticeably better today. We are also rolling the greens this morning and will be firming them up the next couple of days. We will be making more frequent posts over the next couple of weeks. The seed on the new tees on #3 has germinated and we will start some work on #18 Green Tee next week.

Gabriel pulling cores on #12 fairway

We can see the different soil types on #11 fairway with the cores that were pulled.

On The Course September 5th

Aerification on greens Tuesday, September 3rd

 We have had a busy week with aerification. We only had a couple hiccups in the process but I think overall it went very well. Monday night we were able to get 6 greens aerified and fertilized. Tuesday, the crew kept the pace going and were able to get the rest of the Championship greens aerified by 12:30pm. Corey and Sheldon were topdressing greens from 7 am until about 5pm. They moved over 100 tons of sand onto the greens and we were able to get almost all of the sand worked into the greens. We were not able to finish a few of the practice greens as the dew was forming making it too wet to drag. These greens were finished on Wednesday and the crew worked on getting the sand worked into the aerification holes and turf canopy. We were also able to aerify all of the tees and start on the fairways on Tuesday. We were able to finish 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 fairways on Wednesday and will be working on 5, 7 and 10 today.

Pete Maiers fertilizing greens

Corey Heasley topdressing #4 green

Brushing the sand into the aerification holes and turf canopy

Fernando and Gabriel rolling with Gustavo and Rubiel blowing sand

On The Course August 29th

Corey Heasley laser grading the White tee on #3

 We have had a interesting couple of weeks with the most recent stretch of heat and humidity. We have been cutting back on the normal stress that we can put on the golf course from a maintenance standpoint. We have been mowing or rolling greens but not both on the same day. With the high heat we want to limit the stress and abuse that we put on the greens daily. This will ensure they survive the heat and we will be able to enjoy them the rest of the season.

We were able to get the new tees on #3 laser leveled but will be waiting on sod until next week after the heat wave has passed through. We have sod scheduled to be delivered next Thursday, September 5th. We are starting our fall aerification process late Monday afternoon and the golf course will be closed Tuesday to complete the greens aerification. We will also be working on tees and fairways. Some of our staff has left for the season and are starting school but we still have a very good core group of employees. Greens will be aerified with a 1/2" tine which is slightly smaller than what we have done in the past. Our goal with the fall aerification is remove as much organic matter as we can and fill the holes with sand. Below is a video of the process from last fall. Most of the process will be the same but we have added a few wrinkles that should help with our productivity.

Gabriel and Guillermo blowing acorns into piles to be picked up.

Troy Tschida hand watering #12 fairway

Senior Men and Women's Club Championship Photos

Mr. Soule, Mr. Sage and Mr. Helmer in the final group of the Senior Men's Club Championship

Jill Reynolds, Jennifer Mendel and Kelly Judd walking down #18 fairway during the final round of the Women's Club Championship

Terri Doolittle with a putt on #18 to finish as the Women's Club Champion

Lana Bixby, Terri Doolitle and Steph Heiring were in the final group.

Terri Doolittle 2013 Women's Club Champion

Dr. Stoltenberg 2013 Super Senior Men's Club Champion

Billy Soule out of the bunker on #18

Billy Soule 2013 Senior Men's Club Champion

Welcome to my OFFICE!!

Corey Heasley changing the hole location after Gabriel rolled the putting surface

 I do not know what your office looks like but here are a couple pictures from mine. One of the best parts about working on the course in the morning is the sunrise. It only lasts a couple of minutes but if you are in the right areas of the course you just have to be amazed of sights. The crew has been working hard keeping the course is very good shape and sometimes you just need to stop and watch the sunrise for a couple minutes.

Heavy dew on #8 green

Dick Brunfelt on the triplex approach mower

Sheldon Pigeon mowing #6 Fairway