Day 13, 14 and 15 - Doak is Set!!!

(Tom Doak giving instruction to Eric Iverson on the 10th green)


For the last two days Mr. Doak has been on property reviewing the work of his shapers and fine tuning the green contours one last time. As of today, all of the green contours have been approved and have been released to the contractor for the building process. We all owe a great thank you to Eric Iverson, lead shaper for RGD, for all of his shaping expertise. I don't know that I have ever seen someone run a bulldozer as delicately and effeciently has Eric just did for the last two weeks.

We continue to make great progress. We now have 5 greens with the new mix installed and they will be moving to a 6th green (#12) this afternoon. The installation of drainage has moved to the 5th green and in total, we now have 8 greens completed. Irrigation is continuing at great pace as well with 4 green complexes complete and a 5th to be started in a matter of moments.

The application of glyphosate was made to the fairways on Monday and we are beginning to see the grass check out. In a matter of days the fairways will be completely dead and we will begin the process to prepping these areas for the new bentgrass seed. We are antcipating getting the fairways seeded some time around the 15th of August.

Day 11 and 12 - Progress

Trying to play a little catch up today and going to combine two posts into one.

The drain tiling of the greens continued on Saturday and Monday. We now have 5 greens(15, 16, 3, 2 and 18) completely drained and the work has now shifted to the 4th and 12th greens. These two greens should be completed by tomorrow.

There are now three greens with mix (15, 16 and 3) and they are putting the mix in the 2nd green as I type this. The 18th green is next and will be completed once #2 is done - this may even be started late this afternoon and will be finished by tomorrow.

Re-contouring or shaping of the greens to improve the surface drainage continues to press forward as well. At this time, all of the remaining greens, with the exception of 1, 8 and the practice green, have been rough shaped and are awaiting Mr. Doak's visit later this week for approval. I can't wait for the membership to get to play some of these new designs. They are going to be fantastic!!

The most noteworthy accomplishment over the last two days is that we have begun the process of re-installing the irrigation system. Leibold Irrigation has been contracted to do this work and are simply the best in the country at this task. With local offices in Toledo, OH they are excited about the opportunity to work so close to home. We have also contracted with local irrigation consultant, Mike Kuhn, to ensure the proper layout and design of the sprinklers during the installation process. Below are a couple photos of this work process:



This wire wagon is used to keep everything neat and organized for the contractor. With this set-up they are able to plow in the pipe and wires at the same time.



Near the conclusion of the irrigation work on any given green, this "jumping jack" packer is used around each and every sprinkler to minimize the effects of any settling that may occur.

Day 10 - A Little Rain (1.5 Inches) Can't Stop Us!

Late Thursday afternoon the course got blasted with a severe thunderstorm that delivered 1.5" of rain in only 15 minutes time. When I left for the evening, I wondered if we would be able to accomplish anything the next day. To my surprise, when I arrived at work the next morning you could find little reminder of the amount of rain the course received the day before. If it wasn't for the debris on the course you may never have know anything happened.

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.

Day 9 - Drainage Continues

There is not much new to report today other than continued progress. The drainage and gravel layer in the 15th green is about 99% complete and the 16th green should be completed in a matter of hours this morning. Once these two greens are complete the drainage efforts will shift to the 2nd and 18th greens later this morning. All and all we continue to make steady progress and everything is on time after the first full week of work.

The most noteworthy accomplishment yesterday was the installation of the new root zone mix in the 3rd green cavity. Below is a photo of that work in progress. Notice how the small skid steer works on top of the sand in order to not disturb the 4" gravel layer. As this process gets closer to being completed, members of my staff, including myself, will begin the tedious process of ensuring the root zone depth is installed to a uniform depth of 12 inches.