Sunday May 18th

First off, my apologies for not updating this in over a week.  It has been a mad dash to get the course in shape for the coming season. 

The course is coming around really nicely.  We were able to verticut and topdress the greens last week and that helped them so much with respect to quality, ball roll, etc.  They are still a little slow as we are taking our time bringing our height of cut down due to some of the areas that were affected by ice over the winter.  We will be progressively step the heights down starting on Monday and should have speeds closer to were everyone wants them by next weekend.  That being said, the greens are coming along wonderfully, as is the rest of the course.  We will have the bunkers in shape this week as well.  The weather has slowed us down, as it normally does in early May, but we are making really good progress.  There are no "cold" storms in the forecast so we should see progressively better conditions from here on out. 

I want to thank everyone for following our signage and staying away from high traffic areas and green surrounds.  I attached a picture below that illustrates how compaction not only affects conditions during the playing season but the affect is has on winter kill.  It is easy to see on #2 were golfers leave the cart path early, and consistently, how much more damage we sustained from winter kill this last year.  So again, thanks for honoring our directional signage and ropes.



An update on the goose that took over the osprey nest on #11.  This morning the mom kicked the young out of the nest..literally.  The little ones are pretty resilient considering they fell from nearly 30 feet.  I have never seen anything like it!?!  I got some pictures once they were all together on the ground..pretty cute!  Be aware that they may be around the bike path the leads past #11 for a while.

 

Successful opening to our 2014 seeason!!

We had a great opening week for the golf course.  We opened the course for play on Wednesday the 30th and have had great weather for the last 5-6 days..a little windy over the weekend but beautiful non the less.  We opened with the bunkers falling under our local rule due to the fact that they need cleaning and conditioning before we put rakes out.  The driving range is opened and the tee deck is restricted to the mats for another week or so until we get more active growth going.  So no irons on the grass, only drivers.

The course is coming along slowly but surely.  Conditions are still reflective of early season but things are greening up and filling in.  We have been concentrating on getting the mouse/vole damage cleaned up first so we can get seed out to fill in those areas.  We will be starting on the bunkers this week and focusing on greenside first then make another lap to address fairway bunkers.  The greens are coming along and will be improving daily.  Our goal is to have them up to expectations by the 15th or so. 

We also received our new golf cart fleet yesterday and are so excited about that!  On that note please be respectful of your travels around the course and adhere to our signage and ropes.  This time of year is typically wet and things are just starting to grow.  It is more important than ever to not drive on approaches, around greens, tee decks and other "playable" areas.  We are going to be seeding and aerifying (punching holes) in high traffic areas, cart path ends, etc. over the next several weeks and our ropes and signage are in place to help us recover those areas more quickly going into summer.

There are bison on the course, as is the case this time of year, so we caution everyone especially walkers to be vigilant of them.  I hope everyone has a great week and look forward to seeing you on the course this summer.

Andy Erskine, GCS

Bison hanging out on #9