New Items on the Course

With the extremely cold and wet weather we have had so far this year, we have had plenty of time to work inside on some items to make the course look a little better.

We made new O.B. stakes for the front 9 out of the old range net posts. They are clearly visible at 3' tall and 4" wide. They will be much more durable than the old 1" PVC and painted Grade Stakes. The Idea is to have the course marked more clearly with a product that we do not have to intensely maintain. I am hoping that we will be able to get to work on the back 9 stakes soon.

We have also made new Tee Markers. I wanted something that would reflect the course at every Tee. The old 4X4 blocks did not. We cut out an arrow head shape out of recycled plastic decking material, painted them and put a stake in the base. Hopefully, this will add to the character of the course.

We have also been working on new water cooler stations that we will put out in the spring. The old ones were permanently fixed on the course. They were rotting and falling apart from the continued exposure to the elements. The new ones are less intrusive, and movable. We can take them off the course and store them inside when they are not needed to prolong their lifespan.

Roundup Application

Finally, the cold weather broke last week. Now we can go out and start spraying roundup on all of the dormant Bermuda grass on the course. We do this every winter to kill any existing weeds from last year. We started spraying out around the Tees late last week when the temperatures broke the freezing mark. Today we will begin cutting in around the Greens. We will have to divert traffic on the course for about an hour or so to allow the chemical time to dry on the plant. If we have premature traffic, we could see transfer of the roundup onto the Greens surface. This should only take us one or two afternoons to complete.

Driving Range

On Monday, Dec 21st, we will begin the process of raising the height of the Driving Range nets. We are going to do this in stages. We are going to start on the left side of the netting. If you are planning on using the range and we are out there working, please use irons only off the practice mats. It will be really hard for us to do our job if we are dodging golf balls the whole time.

We are extending the netting because our range area is too small to fully accommodate our golfers. We loose a ton of golf balls to the river. Right now the tallest points of the netting are 9 to 12 feet tall. Through this process we should reach heights of 23 to 25 feet. This is a new project for my staff and I, but we have thought long and hard about it and think we have come up with the best possible solution for an in house project.

Hopefully this first part of the netting will only take us 2-3 days to complete. I apologize for any inconvenience.

UPDATE:

Unfortunately, the net that we installed on the range did not hold up to the 40 mph winds that we received over the Christmas holiday. The winds snapped all of the posts about 5 feet above ground, just above the rear supports that we put on every vertical member. We are currently looking into other methods of support for the nets. Hopefully we will have something in place soon. Until then we will be irons only on the range.