Skip to main content

Golf Course Opening 2014....

The golf course and practice areas will be opening this Saturday, April 26th. This opening date is a little bit behind our usual dates, but I think that after the winter we experienced we are fortunate to be opening before May!
For the first time in my Highland career we will be opening the golf course with some temporary greens. As mentioned previously on this blog we suffered a fair bit of winter injury to our greens. Holes #1, #4, #8, #10 and #12 will have temporary greens mowed into the approaches for an undetermined period of time. Restricting play and traffic on these greens will allow full recovery in a reduced amount of time. We have instituted a plan of recovery including weekly fertilizer applications, constant moisture monitoring, plugging and minor sod replacement as well as light topdressing to fill in any gaps. We are scheduled to core aerify our greens on Sunday, May 3rd and Monday, May 4th. During that process we will be incorporating a healthy rate of Creeping Bentgrass seed. Ideally warmer spring temperatures would aid in full recovery, but this season has brought near record setting lows and difficult weather patterns for growing turfgrass. Our Golf Course and Grounds staff is utilizing every resource available to get our members back onto the golf course with all greens in play. At this point the schedule (as always), will be set my Mother Nature. Patience is key in these situations. Rushing or jumping the gun to get back onto these fragile greens will only set them back well into the summer.
The rest of the golf course weathered the winter very well. Our drainage contractor is scheduled to be on site shortly to install drainage on holes 1, 4 and 18. This project will help with both access and the playability of these areas.
As a reminder please refrain from playing, walking or cutting across any of the greens that are out of play.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bunker construction on # 17

The past few days we have been able to make great strides on the bunker project on #17. All three of the new bunkers have been shaped and drained. Tuesday morning Ian Andrew our consulting golf course architect, will be painting the final contours in the bunkers. We will then install the bunker boards and back fill with topsoil to the new edges. Once the edges are established we will add the new sand and await sod. The rain and snow that we recieved over the last couple of days has had little effect on the rough shaping process. We are hoping for some drier days to complete the fine tuning and sod prepping.
2 comments
Read more

Greens Cultural Management Practices Schedule

The fall is a great time to perform a number of necessary cultural practices. Our goal is to amend the upper portion of the greens surface with enough sand to help insulate the crown through the winter as well as removing and diluting organic matter. Below you will find a schedule of cultural practices that we aim to complete before the covers go on and the snow flies!!! Wednesday, Sept. 30th- Light topdressing followed by a Cocoa matt Tuesday, Wednesday October 13/14-Course Closure full core aeration with heavy topdressing. October 19th- Light topdressing followed by a Cocoa matt October 26th- Light topdressing followed by a Cocoa matt November 2nd- Light topdressing followed by a Cocoa matt November 9th- Deep Verticut, followed by a sufficient topdressing. November 16th- Post Course Closure, Heavy topdressing followed by Deep tine aeration. Of course this is all in hope that the weather cooperates...happy fall!
Post a Comment
Read more

Golf Course Update

As our season slowly comes to a end our department has been working away at year end projects. We installed drainage in a few areas of the practice range and short game area. These areas were perpetually wet and caused turf and aesthetic issues. We have also been chipping away at the bunkers on #17, smoothing out the faces and recreating the grass edges. These bunkers suffered some severe frost heaving in the faces during the winter after they were built. Our team has removed a number of trees and brush from around our maintenance facility to allow some expansion of our operation. We are working away at clearing space to install aggregate bins and sufficient staff parking. This will also allow delivery trucks and semi's to access our facility without any issues. We are also removing the fallen trees and brush from the woodlot on the right side of #16 fairway. This is a challenging area to work as it is a peat bog and remains wet even in the hottest and driest of summers (like 2010)
1 comment
Read more