All that said, we got back at it yesterday and continued to make steady progress. We did have to deal with some small issues related to the weather event the day before. Below is a photo of the 2nd green - Notice the silt that accumulated in the low area of the green. All of this silt material had to be removed and replaced with fresh material before any new drainage could be installed or you run the risk of plugging up your new drainage system.
We continued to install drainage in the new greens. The 15th and 16th greens were completed yesterday and the process moved to the 2nd and 18th green last yesterday afternoon. The "rough" installation of the new root zone mix on the 3rd and 15th green was also completed. By "rough" I mean that there is enough material in the green well, but there is much watering, settling, hand raking, and depth checking yet to be done. We must wait for the irrigation around the greens to be re-installed before much of this work can be done. The good news is that Liebold Irrigation is ready to tackle this first thing Monday morning.
One of the exciting things we decided to do with this project was "core-out" the existing approaches to the green and replace the native soil with a sand based material. The goal of this effort was to firm up the approaches in hope of allowing more creative play into the new greens. When completed, you will now have the option to land the ball short of the green and be able to chase the ball up to the green surface. Below is a photo of the 15th approach being filled in with the new material.
One of the things I learned early on in my career in Golf Course Management was never to waste a good opportunity to get something done. During the course closure your current golf course maintenance team has been hard at work getting to those items you never seem to have enough time to accomplish. We have been installing additional drainage all over the course in an effort to continue delivering the most outstanding golf experience possible. Many of the areas that are being drained are the fairways and specifically where significant winter injury took place last winter. With the additional drainage now added to these "low" areas we hope to minimize the amount of winter damage moving forward. Below is a photo of some of the CCD staff back filing one of these drainage areas.
