Well it looks as though Mother Nature is finally letting loose on winter. After a cold March, it looks as though the temps are starting to get back to normal. March has been a slow month as far as the golf course goes. It took us 3 weeks to get greens and tees aerified and topdressed due to many of the areas being frozen for a few days at a time. I usually perform 2 aerifications in the spring, one in mid-March and one in early April. With the cold temperatures this year, I will only be doing one core aerification on the greens since they have not started growing yet. Skipping the second aerification will allow them to be mostly healed by early May and will not be detrimental to them in the long run. One must never forget that Mother Nature is always in charge, despite what I want to do!
Rebuilding the greens creates some tasks that need to be done which many people may not think about. This spring we have gone around the course and remeasured all of the yardages. I want to thank our pro Bill Glenn for coming on the mountain during some cold weather to assist in this process. Changing the green sizes also changes the center points of the greens. We had to find the new center points and remeasure to all of the yardage bricks in the fairways which then needed to be moved. Tees were also measured and will be getting new yardage bricks. This had to be done prior to the Carolina Golf Association's visitation to re-rate the golf course which will be done in April. All new scorecards also need to be made. Yardages were also measured from the sprinkler heads. Markers have been ordered and will be installed on the sprinklers which will help golfers during their round.
Now that the ground is thawing we can really get going on some of the other projects that we need to get done. One project that we are working on is preparing and seeding where the cartpath was removed on hole #8.