With the unseasonably warm temperatures and the additional moisture, the golf course feels more like April then December. The greens are growing slowly but require us to cut them a couple times a week. The overseeded Rye Grass in the fairways, tees and approaches has come in really nicely and is growing rapidly. Normally this time of year we've done our last cut on everything and were just focusing on winter projects but we've had to spend a couple days a week this month devoted to making sure the turf has a good cut on it and is playable. Below is a shot of number 2 fairway.
Even though we've had to devote time to keeping the course mowed we've also begun some of our winter projects. One of them that I'm really pleased with has been trimming the trees that have been blocking 14 fairway. Over time the branches on the right side of the hole going down the hill have almost completely blocked any shot to the fairway. This has created an unfair shot from the tee requiring golfers to take a blind shot over the trees or use an iron and try to lay it up on the fairway. Both shots required perfection and the dogleg style of the hole meant that you spent a good amount of time searching for a ball that may or may not be in play.
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| As you can see the trees are blocking nearly half of the fairway |
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| Thats me in the tree, you never know when training will come into play |
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| You can see the huge improvement the removal of those limbs make. You can see almost all the way to the green now with a clean shot for any level golfer. |
One of the other projects we tackled was locating and cleaning out the drains on 14 green. This green sits in a bowl of sorts and is the lowest point on the back nine. All the water drains towards the green and it stays pretty damp throughout the entire season. We were able to locate one of the outlets and after running a hose up it found 3 more outlets and 2 vents on the high side. While I wish we could've found more this is a huge success since we didn't know where any of the drains were when we started.
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| Carlton running water down one of the vents clearing out all the debris that have been building up over the years |
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| As is usual out here we found more oddities in the ground. This looks like its an old school style drain line, virtually useless at this point. |
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| Water from the hose clearing out the lines |
We're continuing to improve the course as we can. We made leaps and bounds this year not only in our turf quality but also in our rounds. As we wrap up the best year for the course since 2010 were looking forward to 2016 and hoping for another fantastic year.
