Finally...Warmer Weather On the Way!

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.

The Pack is Back

Today was the first day with my full staff again. After being laid off for 3 months, the guys were definitely ready to get back to work. Although it was cloudy, we decided to take advantage of the warmer temperatures and get going on cleaning up the course. Unfortunately we did have some tree damage from the ice storm the other week. We have been cleaning it up as the weather permitted but having the entire staff back helped to speed up the process. Half of the crew spent the entire day cleaning up limbs. Below are a few pictures of the damage we incurred.

Every branch on the above tree was broken and had to be taken down. This was on the left of #11.

The other half of the crew got going on taking the green covers off.

As you can see, the covers make a big difference in getting the grass growing!

 

After we got the covers off, we began aerifying the greens. The greens are rooted enough where they can handle this process. While there are many steps and reasons why we do this, the ultimate reason is so that we can have them smooth for the season. After we aerified them, we picked up the plugs and then rolled the greens. Later this week or early next week we will topdress them with sand.

 

 



Ice Damage

Some of you may be wondering how the course and club held up with the passing of the most recent storm that came through. We did have some ice damage throughout the club but it was not nearly as severe as we saw in the winter of 2009. A few trees did come down on the roadsides. Below is a picture of a big oak that came down across club drive, not far from the entrance.

 No trees came down on the course but there are quite a few limbs. We had 1.8 inches of precipitation with the passing of this storm. The course was too wet to work on today but I did drive around to look for any major damage. When it dries enough we will get to work cleaning up and assess any trees that may need additional work as a result of this storm. It's easy to spot what is on the ground but we must continually look for broken limbs that may still be in the tree which could be a hazard in the future. In the mean time, you can see we have plenty to clean up!

Picture Problems Resolved

I'm sorry for the long delay but I think I'm finally up and running again. I can finally post pictures again so here we go. As I mentioned in my last post, the driving range tee has been completed and sodded.

 

This is the area behind #17 green. It was getting grown up again with little trees that would eventually block our beautiful view so we went down the hill a bit and cleared what we could.

Thanks again for your patience while I got these problems resolved. I'll keep you all updated as we work on some winter projects and get ready for another great season at the Gap!