After nearly 3 months without internet at the maintenance facility, we are back online. Sorry for any inconvenience you endured without information from our blog. We have been busy since the last post on September 6th. Super storm Sandy came through and uprooted 15 trees. We lost four maples and eleven pines. We were able to get the course cleaned up and back open for play pretty quick compared to some other local courses.
We also rebuilt the regular black tee on 13, tripling the square footage, and raising it by 6 inches. This will allow the blue tees to be played from this tee on a more regular basis. If you notice a difference in the sod on the tee, we used sod from the putting green to expand this tee. The turf from the putting green is a mix of bentgrass and poa annua, while the existing tee surface is a pure stand of bentgrass. We will be able to slowly eliminate the poa in this tee using growth regulator, and eventually the turf will all be pure bentgrass.
Once we finished the tee, we put our focus on leaf clean up. Super storm Sandy was actually a big help in this task, as it knocked many of the leaves out of trees for us. After the storm passed we experienced a long period of dry weather that allowed us to do a complete clean up of all the leaves. It is rare to have the course as dry as it was this time of the year, and be able to run equipment over the entire course without worrying about causing damage to the course.
As the leaf work wrapped up we began putting together a drainage plan for several of the fairways. some fairways needed just a few drains installed, while others needed more extensive work. We added drainage to the left side of 13 fairway near the bunker. This was an area that would lay very wet after rains, and force us to skip it when we mowed fairways. We should be able to get equipment on this fairway much quicker after rain now. We also added several runs of drainage to 7, 11, 2, and 9 fairways, picking up some problem areas. All these spots are now dry after it rains instead of puddles. Several hundred more feet of drainage was installed on 6 fairway next. We still have two areas on 6 we hope to get addressed before the start of next season. With the drainage added to 6 in spring of 2012 and what we did this fall, this fairway has gone from a real problem when it rains, to seeing minimal standing water after heavy rains. The finale and largest drainage project came on 8 fairway. This fairway has problems from the beginning all the way to the approach. We installed over 400' of drainage to this fairway, and still have several areas to finish. The difference already though is night and day. 8 would be covered in puddles after rain, and we have now narrowed it down to two areas. While there are still many areas that need drainage, we are very excited about the progress that has been made this fall.
