New Tee Signage

I am not sure how we made it soooo long without proper tee signage.  When I arrived here as the Assistant Superintendent in May 2007, we had only a few fake tee rocks (made out of expensive Styrofoam) indicating the hole number.  Over the next 6.5 years, I watched the remaining rocks get destroyed by golf carts and the occasional rough unit.  How can you have a golf course without tee signs?  I was pretty embarrassed by our display.  By the end of the 2013 season, we had leftover funds from other project that come under in price to purchase the needed signage.  We explored all options that might fit best with our course layout and the experience that we deliver each and every day.  Being an avid golfer both on the course and laying on my couch watching the professionals play, I always notice every golf courses signage and accessories.  We ended up purchasing signs from Prestwick Golf  Group.  I wanted a hanging sign, just like what you see on TV at the tournament course.  We host over 13,000 tournament rounds each season, so I knew we needed to head in that direction.  I hope you like our new display.  I smile each day as I drive past remembering what use to be there...nothing.

2014 Bunker Renovation

It took a while, but the 8 bunkers we recently renovated have turned out great.  With many years or decades of neglect, we are heading in the right direction with our bunker renovation.  I would like to have all of them renovated at once but unfortunately the monetary funds are not there.  We will continue to renovated as many as we can do each off season until all 68 are finished.  Then repeat...

Here are a few pictures of the finished products on the course.

Where has the time gone...

As I look back at my last post date, where has the time gone?  It seems like yesterday that we still had snow on the ground and we were gearing up for the season.  Everywhere I looked we had projects going on, we were figuring out our seasonal staff, fine tuning our chemical and fertilization plan and mowing grass.  The weather has played an huge factor this year with our normal watering schedule and pesticide plan.  I can not remember the last time is was this wet for so long.  I recall the floods from last year and how strange that was, but all the rain this season has been a little peculiar.  Normally, Arrowhead will "brown out" due to the hot windy weather in the summer, but this year we have been green wall to wall.  I am not complaining at all, its been a great year for both golf and the health of the turf.  Here are a few pictures of the course from a local photographer, Jim Bennett.

Bunker Renovation: It's about time...

As everyone knows, the arch nemesis of Arrowhead is the out dated irrigation system and the current bunker conditions.  I found out it has been since the early 1990's that some of these bunkers were last renovated. While some bunkers were renovated in 2005/2006 while American Golf ran the property, many still had severe problems.  This year we attacked the 8 worst bunkers on the course.  All of these would have standing water in them daily and they were filled with the most contaminated sand/soil/rock mixture.  We here in the turf care department were embarrassed about these bunkers but we did all that we could to make them safe to play.   We contracted Landscapes Unlimited to come in and renovated these bunkers.  Our first goal was to pot hole each bunker to find and flush out the out flow pipe.  The out flow pipe carries the water away from the bunker and it should daylight somewhere out of play.  We knew coming into this project that we had a failing drainage system somewhere.  The question was where?

#1 Fairway: Exit pipe extends 10 feet into clogged sump pit.

#13 Green: Removal of sand/soil mixture.  Reestablished original edge.

#3 Green:  Removal of 18 inches of contaminated material.  Adding soil to rebuild grass finger

#12 Fairway: Removed 12 inches of sand and 6 inches of soil on top of exit drain pipe.

Due the snow storms we recently had, we had to change our approach on the renovation.  We decided to shell out all 8 bunkers at once.  The ground was to wet for us to trench to add the new internal drain pipe and gravel. Every bunker so far does not have any internal drainage only a stinger in the edge of the bunker to carry the water to either a sump pit or it was day lighted somewhere.  Other problems we found was they installed only a 3 inch out flow pipe in a few of the bunkers.  We will be adding 140 linear feet of out flow pipe to #1 fairway bunker and another 240 linear feet to the bunkers at #13 green.  Keep checking back in on our progress as we should be done in the next week and a half.  They are going to look and play great!

Another round of the course directional rocks!

We installed another 5 directional rocks to help assist our guests navigate the course..  These rocks we finished this winter but we had to wait till the ground unfroze this early spring to install.  Ryan Vrooman did an excellent job again with the work.

A little TLC for the shop

The maintenance shop has been getting some needed TLC every winter.  Over the past several winters, we have installed insulation in the ceiling to help keep the warmth in during the winter and try to make it a little cooler in the summer. It still get over 90 degrees in the summer months.  We have repaired the roof so it stops raining inside.  We have upgraded the lighting so we can see what we are doing. and we ran air lines to the work benches.  This winter during the cold spell, we decided to paint the walls.  It probably has been over 20 years since anyone painted and you could tell!  We had to move a lot of equipment and parts to access the walls but it allowed us to go through and throw away a bunch of junk.  It feels real good walking into the shop and seeing everything have a place and how clean it is.  I always felt embarrassed when anyone would enter and I did not want anyone to think that we were unprofessional.  The shop now stands up to our standards and I believe everyone will feel the difference.  

Snow Fence

Due to our high winds everyday, winter desiccation is our arc eminences.  After the snow falls, keeping the snow in place is a daunting task.  For the past 6 years, we have been putting up snow fence to "trap" the snow in place.  The original use for snow fence is to keep snow from gathering on roads, highways, etc. by placing it 40-60 feet into the wind.  We use the same concept but to keep the snow in place covering our greens, tees and fairways.  This year we have installed 1.6 miles of snow fence.  As you can see in the pictures above, the fence has trapped the snow on the lower half of the fairway while the top half has blown off.  The snow is covering the turf, insulating it to decrease the chance of desiccation and over time with the sun, the snow melts, hydrating the turf below.