Course opening

The golf course will open Friday April 1st with carts.  This looks to be the best time to open with current night time temperatures being well below freezing.  When the temperature drops below freezing we get frost forming in the ground. In order to open we have to wait for the frost to melt, the past few days this has not occurred until late afternoon. With the low temperatures most of the course is still in dormancy.  Turfgrass still in winter dormancy has difficulty recovering from mechanical damage like cart traffic, meaning we could cause damage that we may not fully recover from by the summer season.  In order to prepare for the upcoming season it is best to wait for some growth to enhance the plants ability to handle foot and cart traffic. I think a few more days will be the best time for all of this to come together.

Tree Work

Some tree pruning and removal was done this winter to improve the playability of the course.  A major part of tree removal is stump cleanup.  We go through a long process of grinding the stumps, cleaning out the grindings and then filling with top soil. As you can see from the pictures this is no small task. 

 This was a large oak left of 13 that was damaged and rotting, was removed for safety reasons.

This is what is left of the last elm tree on 14. The green committee felt it was well past its life and also posed safety concerns.

Course Conditions

Course cleanup is progressing very well and should be completed by the weeks end. The course continues to dry and we are slowly starting to green up, we will be ready to open with the next break in the weather. You can see below 10 green looks great with no signs of ice damage or snow mold.

In the picture of 11 green you can see the small amount of damage that occurred from water ponding on the green.  The area is small enough we should be able to recover quickly.

Course Clean up

This week has been pretty busy with course clean up; we have finished up flood debris and are now working on sticks.  We will spend the better part of two weeks on clearing sticks off the property. This does not include the past three weeks spent clearing the larger damage from the ice storm.

Overall the course is is good shape with only some small winter issues on the front of 11 and 12 greens. Most of the course is still soft and with the rain in the forecast we may be looking at a few more weeks until the course will be ready for traffic. The past two years we had warm springs and were able to open mid to late March, with the current forecast it looks like we will not be opening until the first part of April.

Flood Clean up

With all the flooding last week we spent all day Tuesday trying to clean up the debris left behind. The early spring floods always seem to bring large amounts of silt and sticks for the crew to remove. Unfortunately  the way the weather looks today we will probably be flooded again for the rest of the week.

You can see the silt and leaves left behind

This is a huge pile of brush we had to remove.

Here you can see silt deposits left on 2 fairway.

The Melt Round 2

With the warm weather and rain we are seeing the second flood of the season.  While many areas are hit with major flooding this one looks to be rather mild by our standards.

This is a picture of hole 1 looking over the blue and white tees.

This was taken standing on 2 green, not a lot of room to land your second shot!

Flogton

Flogton-(notgolf)

Is an interesting new concept that may be worth checking out.

Flogton