Greens Complete!

I hope that everybody had a great Thanksgiving! The Spence crew has gotten a lot of work accomplished since I last posted 2 weeks ago. Greens #3 and #4 have been completed and they are working toward wrapping up their work for the winter. Below are a few pictures of #3 and #4 Greens.

#3Green

#3 Green

#4 Green

#4 Green Complete

 



Along with getting the greens completed, the crew has begun working on a few of the other projects that needed to be completed. The first project that they began working on was the driving range tee. I'm sure everybody knew that the quality of the turf on the tee was poor. We had also lost a lot of teeing area due to topdressing which caused a crown on the tee which limited teeing space. In light of this the golf committee thought improving the tee was a priority. With the work that has been done, we have come close to doubling the amount of teeing area available. I'm sure everybody will appreciate this improvement!

 

The other project that has been undertaken was to adjust the teeing area on hole #4. The back tee and cartpath locations on #4 created an area of congestion and poor turf. As many of you have experienced, carts would be parked in #3 fairway to putt out on #3 and then would remain in the same spots while the group teed off on #4. Often times groups would wait to hit their approach shots to #3 until the group cleared from #4 tee. To alleviate this problem, the back tee and a portion of the cartpath on #4 have been removed. The middle tee has been extended as far back as possible and the cartpath has been re-routed to start on the left of the tee. As a trade off, we only lost approximately 5 yards. The back of the middle tee now extends all the way back to where the front of the back tee was formerly located. This also provides us more options to move the tees to change how the hole plays.



#5 Green Complete

#5 green was completed by the Spence crew on Friday of last week. At the beginning of the week we had some rain but not enough to slow down progress. #4 green should be finished sometime Saturday. The Spence crew also got the sod installed around the bunkers that have been rebuilt around the greensides. These bunkers include the greenside bunkers on #5, #6, #8, #12, and the small greenside bunker on #17. Here are a few pictures of what has happened over the last week of work.

#5 Finished

New Sod #5 Bunker

  #12 Rebuilt bunkers with new sod

Drainage work on #4 green

 





#6 Green Complete

Despite Hurricane Sandy's attempt to halt progress last week, we still got some work accomplished. The crew couldn't work on Monday and Tuesday but made up for it later in the week. #6 Green has been completed and the crew is about halfway through working on #5 and should be finished by the end of the week. If the weather continues to cooperate, we are hoping to have the greens completed by Thanksgiving or December 1st at the latest. Below are some pictures of 5 and 6.

#6 Green and New bunkers

New Back Bunker on #6

 

#6 Finished Sodding

Coring Out #5

 

Stay tuned for further updates as there is still a lot to do!