Member Guest Course Update

The number 1 question I got in September was "what kind of conditions can we expect for member guest?" My answer was always a cheery "we'll be great" but inwardly I was wondering if we could actually pull it off. Well, it looks like we'll pull it off.

Our greens have been running at or above 12 consistently for the last 2 weeks, sliding past our target number of 11. They slowed down in August following greens aerification and then our collar renovation, which in truth, was a bit intentional. I didn't want to dial in the greens and complete all the maintenance that that involves while the sod around the collars was still tender. I let them grow and heal and focused on having healthy turf that could withstand the abuse we were going to put them through to get there speeds up. The plan worked beautifully and honestly better than expected, if you recall, in a post the beginning of August I warned that conditions were going to be less than optimal in August due to the amount of work we were undertaking with our small staff.

I also want to highlight that the conditions we have on greens right now are a product of the work we did the last 2 years. Looking back, this time 2 years ago half of the greens only had 50% turf coverage, couldn't accept any water, and were in very poor condition with 90% poa. I developed a plan for the long term success of the greens and implemented it. We now have 50% bent across all 18 greens, a soil profile that allows the roots to grow deep which allows us to hammer on them in the shoulder season to have faster greens. Restoring conditions is never an overnight process and requires constant work, but we should be able to settle into more of a maintenance mode moving forward.

All that to say, the greens will be awesome for member guest.

Fairways are recovering very well from the summer aeration. We spot seeded thin areas this week ahead of the rain and also fertilized the fairways and rough. I expect to see marked recovery in the next 10 days as we prepare for member guest. I feel confident the fairways will be conditioned as well as any previous member guest. Tee boxes are holding strong, we'll be removing all but the white tees for member guest and utilizing different tees to give the course a different look across the 2 days. We'll be keeping the total yardage as close to the score card as possible but some holes may play longer and others shorter to create shot variety. Total yardage will still be very close to our scorecard. We are bringing in 2 loads of bunker sand this week to freshen up the bunkers as well. I'm hoping to avoid having any soft faces and will be spending the week working on the bunkers to avoid that.

Collars are progressing very well following our sodding. The areas where we are expending the greens are a little slower as we try to drop the height of cut down to the greens. To be honest several of those areas are having a hard time keeping up so we are nursing the gingerly getting them down to height. In all likely hood those areas wont be perfect till the spring, the sod we got was not mowed as tight as expected and that's caused some delays in the process. They are fully puttable and should be treated as the green there just not quite perfect.

Finally, our tree work. I've been hammering on Davies to remove the rest of the logs prior to member guest. There's still 7 trees on the valley that need to be removed but of that doesn't happen till afterwards that's fine. Right now I'm trying to get the course as clean as possible from the 50+ trees we had removed. They bring in a small logging truck to remove the logs which is why its taken so long to get them off. They want to pick up as many logs in one load as possible. Once there done will all the removal they'll grind all the stumps on property and we'll back fill with soil and sod them. There's still a decent amount of work to do on the ridge on holes 1, 2, and 9 which we are trying to complete when the course is to busy for them to work on. I never would have imagined when we started this in July that we would still be dealing with it in October, I've been staying on top of them as best I can to get the project completed. Its also important to remember that we are not there only client and there's been several other storms since July that have dropped trees on houses, which obviously would take priority.

All in all I believe we are set for a great member guest conditions wise and I look forward to showing off our course to your guests.