The off season...

Things around here are finally coming to a still...
It took all week for us to plow the cart paths and chip ice while mother nature worked her magic with her warmth.  We reopened the golf course the day after Thanksgiving to happy crowd of 105 guests.  We remained opened for several weeks until our most recent snow storm.  The extended forecast has 2 more possible storm, one being on Christmas day!
While the days are slowing down, the maintenance team is hard at work installing the snow fence around the course, watering greens and tees and working on the routine winter equipment maintenance.  We have several project planned for the cold winter days both inside and out.  Here are a few pictures I have taken recently.

Hammilton posing for the camera

Snow fence on #2 fairway

Most recent storm!

Fall Aerification

We started Fall aerification in September.  We chose this time to skip tees and approaches to concentrate on the fairways.  We were able to complete all tees and approaches in the spring but had to cancel the fairways due to our tournament schedule.  All but 3 fairways were completed by the time we had to start our greens aerification.  The fairways were aerified with a 2.5" x 3" spacing, 4" deep with 3/4" hollow tines.  We interseeded all the fairways with Perennial Ryegrass.  This was the first time since I have been on property that we were able to aerify the entire fairway.  Most of the areas had over 1.5" of thatch build-up.  We will finish the remaining fairways in the spring and then start all over again!

On Monday and Tuesday, October 6th and 7th, we aerified all the 18 greens.  It had been 2 years since we deep tined the greens due to equipment failures.  Ryan Vrooman took control of the tractor and deep tine to make sure we were not going to have any problems.  We deep tined on a 6" x 3" spacing 8" deep with 3/4" solid tines.  We followed the Verti-Drain with our a walking John Deere aerifier.  The spacing was at 1.75" x 1.75" by 5" deep with 3/8" quad tines.  We lucked out with the weather this year as each day was in the high 60's. Normally going this late in the year is a crap-shot but mother nature was on our side, like she was all year. Within 2 weeks, all greens were completely healed in.  Having the open holes closed up before winter will help out fight our winter wind and decrease the amount of winter desiccation.  

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.