Golf Course Update - July 17

The tees were sprigged approximately 4 weeks ago and are progressing nicely. We have fought a few washouts from rain along the way but continue to fill those areas as needed. This week we began to roll, mow and sand topdress the new tees. This helps not only to smooth the new tees but also encourages lateral growth of the young grass plants. I am sure many who are looking at the tees could be concerned that they are not filling in fast enough but we are exactly where you would expect to be at the 28 day mark for the majority of the tee boxes. A few, like 12 and 13, seem to be a few days behind the others but we will continue to push those along. Don't forget, it took the first 10-14 days for the sprigs to start growing. Now they are in the phase where the development and spread will be exponential.

Sand topdressing being applied to #4

Notice the new lateral growth of the sprigs

This photo was take a few days later zoomed out. Notice all of the lateral runners.

I have had a few questions about the standing water beside some of the new tees like 10 and 16. The plans called for drains to be installed in these areas. We chose to wait to install drains in order to not delay planting. Our priority was to get the grass in the ground as soon as possible. Over the next month we will work to install the new drains.

We are scheduled to complete the lake bank by the 13th tee the week of August 12th. We will do a finish grade and sod in order to stabilize this bank. 

We are getting rave reviews on the changes made to the bunkers and green surrounds. What a difference it is to have new sand that is not contaminated with seashells! The surrounding sod continues to mature and the aesthetics are greatly improved.

New greenside bunkers on #16

We continue to mow the green expansions from last year's project at the lower height. The transitions are smoothing out and the expansions are matching the green surfaces better each week. Each green gained close to 1500 square feet in area.

The greens from last year's project have been expanded onto the paspalum sod

 
As you can imagine, this time of year can be challenging to keep up with the everyday maintenance of the golf course when we still have focus on projects. We spent last week and continue to use our time this week to catch up on some of the details that are a little behind. We worked at tennis and the clubhouse on landscaping and also edged all of our new bunkers last week. We gave some attention to the greens with a vertical mowing which is intended to thin the canopy and reduce thatch. This week we are working to weedeat around the trees and lakebanks on the golf course, as well as spray the weeds out of the waste bunkers on 1, 3 and 10. Next week we will finish edging the old bunkers and remove the dead weeds from the waste bunkers that were sprayed this past Tuesday.

The crew edging the bunkers on #13