Course Update 3/21/19

It's been another busy and productive week for the maintenance operation.  Seasonal staff have started to return and they've been performing winter cleanup of the golf courses and grounds.  Greens were double rolled yesterday to smooth out frost heaves and other imperfections in the surface, then mowed today.  They look great and have more color now that the old leaf tissue has been removed.  We anticipate mowing approaches, fairways, and tees next week, but that's all weather dependent.

In addition to the turf maintenance activities, a few of the staff continued with tree work, a contractor started grinding stumps on Lakes #4, and a tree company felled the large Oak near the gold and blue tees on Lakes #9.

Rolling greens is always the first thing we do in the spring.  It smoothes the surface prior to mowing, which minimizes the chance of scalping the sensitive turf.  The color variation is normal for us this time of year due to our mixture of grasses.

Stump grinding has begun on Lakes #4.  It will take several days to complete all the stumps on this hole.

The staff is removing the dead/undesirable trees to the right of Lakes #7 fairway.  This ties in with the work we did to the left of Lakes #8 tees.

Here's the finished product on Lakes #7.

It's been two years trying to remove this enormous Oak tree on Lakes #9 near the gold and blue tees, but never found the ideal time.  Well, this year we hired a professional tree company and got it done!

The lead cutter for the tree company is cutting a notch to determine the direction of fall.  Just above his head is a heavy duty chain that is tightly wrapped around the the trunk to keep the tree from splitting while cutting.  Large logs were placed on both sides of the cart path to support the heavy trunk and keep it from damaging the path. 

This is the stump with a rotted, hollow center just as we expected.  The hand-held radio is 10" long so you get an idea of how big the tree was.

These are the anchor roots for the tree on the slope of the blue tee near the cart path which made it impossible to keep grass alive.

The roots were also starting to heave and crack the cart path.

Only one log from the main trunk could be hauled in our trailer at a time.  It measured 40" in diameter.

This is the current view from behind the gold tee on Lakes #9.