Progress Update #3

#12 on a beautiful June afternoon

The putting green and #16 green opened on June 13th and seem to be doing well.

Greens 2, 9 and 12 will be back in play on Saturday June 21st.  This is 8 weeks to the day after seeding took place.  Please stay off all of the recovering areas to the extent that you can as this will help these areas continue to recover long term.  This includes the recovering areas in the fairways as well.  When these three greens open we will have 18 holes in play with temporary greens on 11 and 15.

The new #11 was seeded about 10 days after #12 and it is not quite as far along.  #15 was seeded on April 21st along with the other damaged greens but we had a difficult time getting the seed to germinate and it lagged behind the rest of the over-seeded greens.  About two weeks ago we started plugging fresh turf into the damaged areas on #15 and also seeded it again.  To date we have added over 4,000 plugs to the damaged areas and they are looking much better.  Repairs and judicious topdressing and fertilizing will continue with the target for opening 11 and 15 being the end of June.

We are going to be conservative with mowing heights and green speed for the foreseeable future. We still have a lot of young grass plants on the new greens and in the damaged areas and I want to be sure they can handle the wear and tear that golf creates before lowering heights of cut and pushing for green speed.  Our goal will be consistency and smoothness for the time being.  Below is a picture of the number of footprints created by ONE foursome playing a green that will give you an idea of why I am concerned about golfer traffic:

We are still behind on a myriad of jobs around the course like sodding of stumps, spreading of mulch, and general trimming and tidiness.  To date all of our efforts have gone into maintaining the main playing areas, cleaning up from the ice storm, and repairing winter injured greens.  As we get the course back into full play we can ramp up the labour on the rest of these tasks.  It's been a crazy spring but we're making progress every day and very soon the spring of 2014 will be a distant memory.