HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

Challenging is the word that I would use to describe 2013's spring weather. Our staff has barely been able to get around the golf course, let alone prepare and groom it to our standards. We have been unable to mow tees, approaches and fairways on a regular schedule. The rough is out of control, literally. We are hoping to get the mowers out into the rough by the weekend. We will begin our annual bunker sand shifting and addition once the golf course is able to handle traffic. Bunker edging has continued and we will also be removing some of the grub damaged sod around some of the bunkers shortly. Grub numbers were way up last fall in our bunker surrounds, the damage is evident. Once repaired, we will be treating these areas this spring to control grub populations. As part of our cultural program we will be aerifying our greens very shortly. Starting on Sunday (May 5th) afternoon at 4pm we will begin aerification on No. 1 g...

In another step towards enhancing the appearance of Highland as a Classic Stanley Thompson golf course we have replaced our previously used colour coded flags with a new Black logoed flag. It has often been said that "our greens are so small that if you hit to the middle of the green, you can two putt to any hole location". It is this theory that we have used to adopt the use of a one flag colour for all hole locations. As always, the pin changer will continue to rotate locations to ensure that we have 6 easy, 6 medium and 6 difficult pins on the golf course each day.

Usually at this time of year we are out on the golf course, open for play and enjoying some sunshine...not this year! In a timely manner, we put our rain gauge out last week just in time to collect a reading of 106mm (just over 4") from Monday to Friday. Obviously with our clay soils the golf course is very wet and our staff has been unable to travel around to perform any work at all. As you can see from the picture of #9 fairway, our drainage project scheduled for this spring could not be completed soon enough. We have had a day or two to be able to get some general clean up and cultural work done on our greens, but have not been able to fully prepare the golf course for play. We will continue to evaluate conditions and assess our ability to complete the necessary work and then determine an opening day.