The Child I never wanted

Anyone that knows me knows the frustration I've experienced over our 17th green here at Rock Creek Golf Course. We began the renovation last September and its been nothing short of a disaster ever since. From digging out drain lines in the rain to not being able to establish the bent grass seed as we planned, its been nothing but pain and agony for me and our staff.

We eventually sodded the entire green in May only to lose 65% of it in July. We decided to cut the damaged areas out and re-sod them, bringing in 1,500 square feet of sod. We lost about half of the new sod in 8 hours one Sunday. After trying to recover what we could we ended up takin plugs from our aerification of the other greens and putting them down on about half of the dead areas and sodded the rest from the nursery green at our "mother" course.

Its been a long process, 14 months to be exact, and we still don't have a playable green. However, I'm happy to say we are close to being able to open the green. Right now we're just waiting for a few areas to fill in and to bring the height of cut (HOC) down to our other greens. We are at about a 1/3 of an inch on 17 right now and we need to be down around 1/8 of an inch.

Below is a video of us sodding the green for the 3rd time as well as a photo of what the green currently looks like. We currently have put down over 4,500 square feet of sod on a green that is just barely 2,500 square feet. Here's to the insanity of golf course maintenance and hoping that we have a playable green prior to the season end.