On The Course February 1st

Never thought we would be setting pin locations on February 1st, on ice, with an ice auger and at minus 15 degrees.  

 We have been out on the course looking around over the past couple of weeks. We are seeing some porous ice above and within the excelsior mats. The soil temperatures have not thawed out enough to get any ice formed on the surface of the greens. I think the greens are still in great shape for this point in the winter. The fairways have a few solid ice areas in some of the low areas. We have a lot of winter left before the big spring thaw and we will be monitoring the course very closely over the next couple of weeks.

Tim's Tree Service has been in a few days this week getting some much needed pruning done on some of the larger trees. We will be working on clean up and trimming more trees over the next couple of weeks. We have done a couple of tree removals and will be taking care of several trees that died this past season.

We will be making more blog posts as we get closer to spring to keep everyone informed on the conditions of the golf course. We had a Grounds Committee meeting this past Tuesday to discuss winter projects and to start the discussion on spring projects. We are also updating our Standard Operating Procedure Manual for the maintenance of the golf course.

Troy putting the finishing touches on the pin locations for the first annual MGCC Bockfest

Bockfest Hole #1

Tim's Tree Service trimming on #1 fairway

On The Course January 15th

We ventured onto the course today to check the conditions after last weeks warm up and rain.  Temps reached to the 40 degree mark and according to our weather station we received around .2 inches of rain.   Unfortunately we lost a lot of the good 6 to 8 inch snow pack that we had but the good news is that there is still about 2 inches of snow remaining.  It seems like a lot of the snow that melted last week did make it into the drains,  but some did pool and freeze on the course mostly in the rough areas.

 All of the greens surfaces currently have snow cover.  They all look like the picture above which was taken in the middle low section of 16 green.  There is hard snow pack on top of the covers with a layer of frozen snow/slush on top of the covers directly.  All of this slushy ice was porous and broke up easily which is what we like to see.

This picture was taken from #10 approach.  You can see like on the greens covers there is some lite slushy crystallized snow.

 There are some fairways that have some ice build up like the above picture of #11.  The color change in the middle of the picture is the ice.  It is normal to see some of these low areas on fairways build ice during the freeze thaw cycles during the course of the winter. There were some other low spots like this one that also had some ice build up but most of them are small.

There are some parts of the course that have become a little exposed from the warm temps but they are mainly on high teeing areas and bunker banks.  This picture was taken on #7 Black tee.  Most of these areas normally lose the snow cover over the course of the winter due to the wind and melting.

On The Course December 18th

The rain over the past weekend has left a layer of porous ice on TOP of the Excelsior Mats.

 I walked out of my house Saturday morning and was greeted by rain falling from the sky. I never get a very good feeling when it rains in the middle of December. We have been out on the course looking around and I am pleasantly happy with what we have seen. With the big snow we received before the rain it has helped keep any major ice from forming. We do have some porous ice just above the turf surface and in several low areas on some fairways some thicker spots of ice. As you can see in the picture above the ice layer is on top of the Excelsior mats and the moisture did not reach the surface of the greens. This should help with any blowing snow issues we could face in the coming weeks. This rain event has help set up the loose snow and we have a good blanket covering the entire golf course.

#1 Fairway has a porous ice layer above the turf canopy.

 The tees and fairways look really good under the blanket of snow. We do have some small pockets of ice in some low areas but nothing to be too concerned with at this point. We have much colder temperatures in the forecast with the night time temperatures in the single digits and the daily highs in the low 20's and Upper teens.

The screening slats are being installed today along CR 116 and should help with some of the road noise and traffic distractions. Should look really good when the new trees leaf out in the spring.

Screening slats are being installed on the new section of fence along CR 116.