The winter season to date has been pretty well ideal. Timely rains have allowed us to keep the course mowed, make our product applications and complete a few course projects in between weather events. As you can imagine, following the last stretch of wet weather, the course is saturated and winter conditions exist throughout. The staff worked hard to repair bunkers and clean debris from the course yesterday. We are out setting up the cups and raking bunkers today but many greens still have standing water on them and are too wet to mow or roll. Rain total for the week was 4.13 inches. February rain total is now 6.53 inches. Season to date rain totals are now 18.38 inches!
Winter Projects
The breaks in between storms have allowed us to pick a few winter projects off the to-do list. The collar around 3 green was stripped, bunker sand build up removed and new sod was installed. Its hard to believe this collar had almost 12 inches of bunker sand built up after just three seasons. While working on 3, we went ahead and stripped the collar around the practice putting green as well. This collar had a mixture of different warm and cool season grasses and did not blend well with the new sod that was laid as part of the new Golf Shop and 1st tee project. The staff did great work on the areas as seen below.
For some time now the retaining wall on 16 has been in a state of disrepair. The two sections that have been repaired over the years were out of necessity. The wall was damaged as a result of a tree falling tearing out a section of the wall and a car crashing through the fence and out onto the course. Not wanting to wait for the next incident we went ahead and replaced the remaining sections of wall. Again, kudos to the staff in the Turf Department for working on this over the last few weeks!
New Penalty Areas
