Week of May 29th

This was a very busy week with the range project, golf course maintenance, some heat, and the persistent dry weather we have been experiencing.

A lot of my focus this week needed to be on the range. Which took me away from the course a little more then I would have liked, especially with a couple of days in the 90's. Most of the course watering was left in the hand's of assistant Michael Curtin with Marcelo, Juan, Jim, and Alex all spending a considerable amount of time hand watering. Our greens and tees need a lot of hand watering as well as the drainage lines on fairways. In order to achieve the moisture percentage we want to start the day at we need to supplement by hand watering. As you know our greens are very undulated and use of strictly overhead sprinklers would cause low pockets to become too wet and mounds or ridges to remain without adequate moisture. My team and I take a great deal of time going through moisture each morning especially on greens. Often times we dedicate 18 man hours each morning to just greens moisture and hand watering greens.

Range project update:

This week:

• Irrigation was installed to the tee and the entire range field. Heads have been pressurized and can be run manually at this point.

• Final shaping of target greens and surrounds of the target greens

• Range tee root zone hauled in and spread with a portion of the tee being leveled and sodded

• Target greens sodded

• Surrounds around targets were sodded

• Loam was hauled in and spread to areas that needed it.

This coming week:

• My assistant and I will be adjusting all the irrigation and doing the wiring so we can run heads from the controller and central computer

• Range tee will be finished and sodded

• Additional blue/fescue sod will be brought in to wrap the range tee and extend out a little farther from targets

• Range floor finish work completed to prep for hydroseed.

While this weekend's forecast and the upcoming week's forecast may not be ideal for the membership. It will really help us in getting the sod established and rooted with minimal water use. It will also give the crew and I a much needed break from watering and allow more focus on our course project work and detail work.

A gallery of range pictures from the week:

Also this week we continued work to the project on the third hole. A area down along the lower portion approximately 1,000 sq. ft. was sodded.

Some pictures of the work:

Saturday, June 3rd the new tees on 4 and 7 were opened for play

Very happy with the end result of both tee's

Also this week we received a new rough mower and new tee tri-plex. The new tee tri-plex couldn't have come at a better time. I will be dedicating one of the older tee mowers to the green targets and range tee and will make the additional maintenance of the range easier to manage. Invited has made a strong commitment to equipment capital the past two years and has delivered.

New rough mower

New tee mower

Other golf course work completed this week:

• Creek area on 8 sprayed with non selective herbicide as we begin to prep for seeding

• Right side of 12 wood line sprayed with non selective herbicide

• Fairways sprayed with two different types of fungicides, fertility, and plant growth regulator

• Full divot to golf course tees

• All fairway drainage trenches hit with wetting agent

• Fairway bunker nose maintenance

• Yardage marker plates on tees have begun to be detailed

Also this week my twin's graduated from high school. I was starting my journey at Ipswich as they were in their first year of high school. It is amazing how fast 4 year's goes by!

My daughter Marisa graduated third in her class form Whittier Tech on Thursday night. She will be entering the honors program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the fall and majoring in nursing.

My son Mason graduated fourth in his class from Georgetown High on Saturday morning. He will be entering the honors program at Bentley and majoring in Actuary Science. He will also be competing in cross country and track for Bentley

They certainly didn't get their "brains" from me, but I am extremely proud of both of them!

We will close this week's post with a picture of a snapping turtle laying eggs. We do our absolute best to mark the areas where eggs are laid to not disturb them. I suspect to see a lot of snapping turtle activity over the next 2 weeks.