Week of Feb. 25 and March Begins
- matthewbehl
- Mar 1, 2024
- 3 min read
The past two weeks and moving forward my focus and the team's focus will be strictly on golf course preparations. It is hard to believe, but we are on the third cleaning of the golf course since our final cleaning in December and the course is still very messy. This is largely due to the large amount of pine cones and pine debris that has come down. Once again we experienced heavy winds Wednesday night into Thursday. Luckily this time the winds where only a minor setback in the cleaning process.
The short game area was prepped this week and is open for your use after 10:00 am daily. The short game tee will remain closed at this time, but please utilize the short game fairway and the provided divot mix. Short game greens are open. All other practice greens will remain closed until the golf course is open. Bunkers on short game where frozen and sand has not been prepped yet.
The temporary course is available daily as well. The temporary course holes are scheduled to be worked on next week and cleanliness of the temporary course will approve. Our large wintering flocks of geese are starting to disperse and we will also be cleaning up feces on 10 and 18 fairways soon. All in all the temporary course should be a more enjoyable playing experience before next weekend.
All of the stumps where ground on the first hole this week. I plan to contract out some of the landscaping work in this area. While the majority of this work will be done by my team, I plan on contracting out the bigger shaping portion for my team and I can concentrate on the course. Weather permitting, I hope to have the large area prepped and ready for seed or sod in early April.
The rest of the week was spent cleaning the golf course. We spent a good deal of time on 12,13,14 creating piles and staging debris for chipping.
Some pictures of this work below and the shear number of pine cones: (mind you this is round 3 of cleaning)
At times when temperatures or wind conditions where not conducive to blowing the agronomy team was busy picking up piles. Due to the amount of pine cones we where using our tractor bucket to scoop them and dispose of them.
A day was also spent cleaning the clubhouse grounds
Above is a picture of an exit stake we will be utilizing to manage cart traffic on the golf course. As we get closer to opening, look for a dedicated blog post on the exit stakes.
All turf looks very good at this point especially greens, but we are not fully out of the woods yet. I was very surprised to receive a few pictures this week from other courses of some winter damage. This was a little surprising as this winter has been relatively benign. This is definitely not a winter I would want to have turf covers on greens. I personally found it interesting that both pictures of the damage where on covered greens. I believe this is due to how awake (not dormant) that covered greens currently are. I know of a few instances early this week where covers where pulled, greens mowed, and covered back up. Those greens will be very susceptible over the next few weeks.
I have received a lot of questions on the golf course and a time period for opening. I have target dates that I am working towards, but it is way too early to set a date at this point. I will have a much better idea of where we are at the end of next week. As stated earlier we will be full bore on course opening preparation from here on out.