Pin Locations: Slope and Green Speed

This is interesting...I've always tried to keep hole locations in areas that are 2.5% slope or less.  According to this graph I found on Twitter, green speeds in the 11ft range can accept hole locations in the 3.5% slope range. That seems a little steep to me and most golfers couldn't stop a golf ball at that speed on 3.5-4% slope.  Slope is determined by rise/run. 4% slope would be a 4' drop in 100 linear feet.  In 10 feet, it's approximately 5" of fall. 

Brook Trout

This native brook trout was caught this evening on #10.  This is a great sign of excellent water quality and great to know we continue to have a population of native trout in many of our streams. 

9 Interesting Facts about Liberty National

CLICK HERE!

Click above for an article on Liberty National, the site of the 2017 President's Cup.  The course cost $250M to build, mostly because of the environmental issues they faced.  The course was designed by Bob Cupp.  Billy Fuller worked along side Cupp at the time and I always enjoyed hearing about the construction of Liberty National when Billy would visit Highlands CC.  LN was an incredibly complex project, one that has a view that no other golf course can ever match!

Leaves

Now that leaves are falling most of the day, we assume the role of gutter/roof cleaning in addition to blowing leaves on the golf course.  We make every effort to have at least one team member blowing greens in the afternoon on a daily basis.  However, with trees growing over top of many greens, it is a loosing battle at times, especially on a breezy day.  We have many job tasks to complete; it's hard loosing a crew member or two for the entire afternoon.  Keep in mind, our summer help -3 students- are also gone for the year, leaving us with a slightly lower staffing level.  Leaves usually aren't an issue but your patience is still appreciated!

"The Suffering Surface" from Golf Digest

 

The following list was developed by Golf Digest based on superintendent responses.  Supers were asked what the main causes of damage to greens- in the three categories of mild, moderate and severe.  It's interesting to see what some deal with... 

 

 

 

Paving Update:

Below is an email to POA general manager, Dan Marshall from the outfit (Harrison Construction) doing the paving work on state owned roads around the Club:

 

Dan,

 

Just thought I would update you on the latest paving schedule. Harrison Construction has indicated that they intend to move a crew to Highlands on October 2 2017 to begin patching operations. They are going to start that day on Poplar St. and if all goes well they will probably move to Cobb Rd on the 3rd.. We will try to keep you updated as closely as possible. The patching operation will consist of moving from one patch location to the next and I would anticipate that when the Cobb Rd patching is complete they will move to either Moorewood Rd or Hudson Rd. Another crew will come on site at a later date to do the resurfacing operation. Expect a lot of noise and large construction equipment. Gregg Wallace (Assistant Resident Engineer) or myself will keep you notified as work progresses. 

 

Thanks, Shawn

Virlina Cup Venues

The 2017 Virlina Cup presented by Syngenta, will be held at Highlands Country Club in North Carolina on October 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

The Virlina Cup is a Ryder Cup style competition between 10 superintendents from the Carolinas GCSA playing 10 superintendents from the Virginia GCSA.   The event, started in 2010, has been played at the following venues:

2010:  Salisbury CC, The Foundry GC and Kinloch GC (VA)
2011:  Chechessee Creek Club and Secession GC (SC)
2012:  Goose Creek GC (VA)
2013:  Forest Creek GC and Old Chatham GC (NC)
2014:  Primland Resort (VA)
2015:  Berkeley Hall Club (SC)
2016:  Belle Haven CC (VA)
2017:  Highlands CC (NC)

7-day Forecast

It's wouldn't hurt...

Johnny Miller's commentary is notorious for bad information.

The 2017 Virlina Cup

I can't express how excited I am to host the 2017 Virlina Cup, starting this Sunday at Highlands CC.  This event puts the best superintendent golfers from the Carolinas against those from Virginia.  Hence the title, Virlina Cup.  Each region has a fairly intense tournament schedule to allow players to qualify for the team throughout the year.  Here is the event overview and teams:

Team Virginia:  

1. Jeff Holiday.......................Salisbury CC

2. Mark Cote..........................Pete Dye River Course at Virginia Tech

3. Chip Bass..........................Falling River CC

4. Scott Cornwell..................River Creek CC

5. Brent Graham, CGCS.......Two Rivers CC

6. Garrison Fowler................Two Rivers CC

7. Trevor Hedgepeth.............Kinloch GC

8. Jeff Whitmire, CGCS........Williamsburg Club

9. Jeff Yarborough.................King Carter GC

10. Matt Zarnstorff.................Creighton Farms

Team Carolinas:

1. Tim Kreger.......................Carolinas GCSA

2. Trent Bouts......................Tee Media Consulting

3. Steve Agazzi.....................Kiawah Island

4. Riley Boyette....................Golf Club at Briar's Creek

5. O'Neil Crouch...................Old Town Club

6. Rob Daniel, CGCS...........RiverTowne Club (nephew of LPGA legend, Beth Daniel)

7. Barry Graham, CGCS........Wildcat Cliffs CC

8. Tripp Morrow....................Meadowbrook CC

9. Bradley Pope......................Prestonwood CC

10. Charles Sheffield..............Croasdaile CC

Players will arrive Sunday and have 12 noon practice rounds. After checking into Old Edwards Inn, HCC will host a formal dinner and reception Sunday night. Monday, four ball matches start at 8am followed by foursome matches at 1pm.  Monday night our event sponsor, Syngenta, will host a casual dinner at the Hudson House. Finally, the singles matches will be held Tuesday morning. The winning team will be announced at lunch on Tuesday after the conclusion of the event. 

Again, what an honor to be able to host this event at Highlands CC!  I am grateful for the membership supporting this event as well as my fellow department heads who are going out of their way to make this a first class event. Nikki, Chef, Ken, Tara and Marty (of course Greg, too!) are second to none! HCC is an incredibly special place to me and being able to allow my peers the opportunity to experience the Club will definitely be a career highlight for me. To the HCC members reading this post, Thank you!

Numbers on Cobb Rd.

By now, you probably observed the signage and road markings that indicate some sort of paving project is about to start on Cobb Road.  Wednesday, I spoke to two individuals from the NCDOT who said patching areas on Cobb Road will begin next week followed by paving (overlay) the entire road a couple weeks after that. 

Given my always curious nature, I wondered what the numbers on the road, applied with white spray paint, indicated.  Obviously, it had to be some form of measurement but I didn't know exactly what.  So here you go:  Add two zeros to the end of each number.  Above is the number 75, painted adjacent from the Highlands CC farm, is 7,500 feet from the entrance of Cobb Road.  For whatever reason, they used the west end entrance of Cobb Road as the starting point.  So above, this is 7,500 feet or 1.42 miles from the start of Cobb Road.  I knew it had to be something very simple...I also assume they save taxpayer money (in paint) by not adding those 2 extra zeros!  The measurements are then used for planning and budgeting purposes. 

The entire Cobb Rd loop is about 1.5 miles long for those who enjoy jogging or walking.   

Golf Balls...

My latest creation that sits next to the ProV1 on the Highlands Tee on #1 is the infamous 'Flying Lady' from the 1980's and 90's.  I took it a step further by adding the X-OUT marking in addition to personalizing the golf ball with the name of K.MATTIS.  Could this be a new sponsorship? 

Final Ladies Day

 

For the closing Ladies Day of 2017, pink flags, flagsticks and cups are placed on #9 and #18.

Science of Leaves

More tree planting #1

 

Six 'Green Giant' arborvitae were added as more buffer to screen the Golf Maintenance Building.

Forecast

Aerify #12 Fairway

 

We are embarking on an aggressive cultural practice program on the 12th fairway.  Our goal is to alter the growing medium over time to that of a better draining sand mix.  Unfortunately, the mix is too shallow (4" in many places).  Drill and Fill aeration will be our best chance at improving this part of the fairway without rebuilding from the subgrade up.  Drill and Fill will be done over the winter.

Boxwood Blight continues...

 

Another case of Boxwood Blight- at a residence on North Cobb Road.

Safety training

Here is one example of club wide staff safety training. This map is used to educate staff on all the location of propane tanks. It is critical to understand where the tanks are located and what buildings they provide service to. In the event of a leak, turning of the fuel source and knowing where to go could prevent a dangerous incident. 

Planting Shrubs

Staff is planting several Rhododendron behind the 5th tee box.

Traffic Studies

By now, you've probably driven over the traffic strips on Hwy 106. This is a State project, not the town. Here is a brief rundown on why these are used:

They're very simple and cheap methods to gather traffic data for road and traffic planning. They're generally put down by local government and/or highways agencies, or companies working under contract to them. Potential questions they could be asking:

• There are planned road works on this road. How much traffic will we need to account for to divert on to other roads?
• There are high rates of accidents near this point. How fast are people generally driving?
• The signals down the road are often getting jammed up. How many cars regularly pass this area?
• Are large numbers of people using this side street as a cut-through to avoid a main road?
• Are the traffic signals further down the road creating enough natural gaps for pedestrians to cross, or do we need a specific pedestrian crossing here?

In short, those tubes are an extremely cheap and effective way of measuring lots of things about traffic for planning purposes. There's also no potentially  identifying information collected, so nobody tends to care about being monitored by them.

*To answer a very common followup question, these lines are usually put down in pairs a few yards apart so that speed can be measured. Measuring speed with a single line is indeed very unreliable because of varying wheelbase lengths, but with two lines you're literally measuring the time to travel between two points which is exactly what speed is. 

Traffic analyst for the NC DOT said: It's part of my job to determine where to lay these tubes throughout the state. In North Carolina, at least, most of those tubes are put down by the state DOTs or contractors working for the state. Every state in the country is required to annually submit a report to the USDOT through HPMS (Highway Performance Monitoring System). The HPMS report can determine the allocation funding to each state from the federal government for highway improvement and maintenance. Traffic counts are about half of this report. The tubes can also be put at specific locations that are being studied for possible improvements. The tubes and system that runs them can actually differentiate 19 different types of vehicles including: motorcycles, cars, light trucks, and all the different varieties of single-unit trucks (dump trucks, box trucks, wreckers, etc), and combo-unit trucks (tankers, logging trucks, and all varieties 18-wheelers). The way you can tell if they are counting solely volume or volume and vehicle type is if there are one or two tubes laid across the road. 

Another traffic analyst commented:  If you see two of these spaced only a few feet apart they are actually taking speed data as well.  In my experience they are primarily used for two reasons. 1. They are expecting to start construction and need data on how many vehicles pass through. 2. They are considering changing the speed limit.

Lightning Discussion

Click on the image to enlarge. This discussion came from Club and Resort Business magazine. 

Water Fountain #5

 

The water fountain at the rain shed on #5 is temporarily out of order until we get the valve at the road repaired.  We will have the repair made in the morning.  As you can see by this photo, Matthew is the one doing the work while Chad is playing and telling jokes.  This tends to be the case in most work scenarios.   

ProV1

 

This is my kind of pumpkin!



Hudson House Fall Decorations

 

The Pumpkin Tree.

Be advised that our greatest Halloween decoration has yet to be put on display.  It will make its debut on the weekend of October 7th/8th in front of the Clubhouse!

 

Rita (right) and Cindy (left) model off another Team HCC creation at the Hudson House!  Rita and I continue to field calls from big league scouts wanting us to bring our autumn decorating game to the next level; we don't answer the phone as we wouldn't want to be anywhere else but Highlands CC stacking pumpkins!

Manual Aeration of Greens in India

This is pretty impressive.  This course aerifies all of their greens manually like this, using this metal template. The plug is pulled and and disposed of in the blue bucket. This is a golf course in India, where labor is paid very poorly and the modern equipment that we are accustomed to in the US is not available.  It's pretty impressive that this particular course does this despite how big of an undertaking it is. I didnt get to see how long it took to finish 18 greens- obviously that would be dependent on how many workers they could put towards it.  

Tuesday

 

The fall color has started and many of the Maples are starting to change.  If I recall from planting this tree on #1 about 15 years ago, this is an 'Autumn Glory' variety of Red Maple.

 

A major priority that Mr. Davis and I are talking about is ways to improve the turf conditions on #12 fairway.  Our biggest challenge on that fairway is the root zone.  The river sand base is very compacted and very shallow.  Water doesn't move below it as the subsoil is black in color- meaning it is severely anaerobic- lacking oxygen.  Without replacing the entire root zone with a good growing medium (which would be very expensive) my hope it to continue to chip away at with cultural practices like drill and fill and other forms of aerification and quality sand incorporation.  I took the above soil profile and needed a hammer to get below a 3" depth.  When I hit the sub soil, it sunk right into it, because it's mud.  You can see above, this fairway is growing on about 4" of a river sand base which is placed on top of a muck-like soil.  This doesn't make for healthy turf. 

 

You can we are continuing to work on cutting back the wildflower areas to improve them for the coming years.  This is the bed at #12 tees.

Staff working side jobs

In the last week, the calls I've been receiving from members wanting staff to work after hours has been immense.  Please allow me to take a minute to explain the situation and background.

 

Our staff is comprised of about 18 people and of them, only about 4 are able and willing to work after hours.  The H2B visa staff are not allowed to work after hours because it violates the terms of their visa.  Therefore, these 4 individuals that want to work on the side, are in high demand.

 

These guys are not allowed to use the clubs tools.  Additional wear and tear on things like mowers and chainsaws isn't fair to the Club because we don't get reimbursed for that.  Paul and Kevin keep chainsaws sharp and gassed/oiled.  It's frustrating to come in a grab a chainsaw only to find the fuel tank is empty and the chain is dull because it was unknowingly used the night before.

 

These guys are not covered under the Club's liability insurance policy.  When they clock out, they are on their own.  You as the homeowner, assume all the risk.

 

It can become incredibly time consuming for me to try to line up workers for a member.  If something happens to the employee and they decide to go home after work rather than work a side job, it comes back on me.  In no way do I want to supervise jobs outside the golf course.  That puts me in a no win situation and I simply will not do it.  Often times, it's extremely time consuming just trying to find someone who can work in the time frame the member wants.  The added stress of working on this detracts from the job I should be doing...making the golf course the best it can be.

Side work for those staff members who want it, can be very valuable and it is looked at as a benefit.  The most successful cases are when the member and staff person develop their own relationship and can communicate as needed, leaving me and the club out of it. 

 

Please consider these points next time you are looking for help around the house  The Highlands CC Community Owners Association is willing and able to help as are one of the many landscape contractors in Highlands.  In the long run, I think you would be more happy with the service and reliability of using a professional outfit who does this for a living.   

Huge Party at HCC!

 

A massive celebration took place at the Club last night- one you probably didn't get an invitation to.  When the dumpster doors are left open over night, this is what we come into each morning and it requires about 10-15 minutes of our time to clean it up.  The dumpster doors are heavy for good reason which leads to members setting their trash bag on top of the dumpster.  If you drop off trash behind the maintenance building, please take the time to properly dispose of your trash.  When staff cleans the mess up each morning, it's easy to figure out who leaves their trash outside the dumpster because your mail and other trash is thrown everywhere.

 

The seasonal bear situation is only now starting as black bears are preparing for the winter.  A bear will consume on average 4,000 calories a day during the summer.  However, this time of year, they consume as much as 20,000 calories a day in order to pack on some extra pounds leading into winter.  Acorns are also now just starting to fall, which becomes a popular food source for bears.  Be smart with how you dispose of your trash so it doesn't become someone else's problem.  

Americans Love Mulch- from the Washington Post

Click immediately below for an interesting article on Mulch!

CLICK HERE!

Update on the golf course...

With the storm cleanup finally behind us, we are focused on getting the greens smooth and fast again.  Greens were triple cut today and tomorrow we will triple cut and roll.  Wednesday, we will triple cut again.  With the Tartan Classic being played on Thursday and Friday, we want to give the participants a good challenge!  During the storm clean up, all labor was devoted to cleanup rather than mowing.  It's time to get back to where we need to be. 

Hudson House

 

When you see the apparatus at the Hudson House...it is the base for another fall decoration idea that Rita and I will complete tomorrow.  As you can tell from the Clubhouse, we are trying some new creative ideas this year.  Stay tuned!

Be Careful with Yellow Jackets!

 

Please be careful on the golf course and select areas that are prone to the nesting of yellow jackets.  This is the prime time of the year where the tend to be angry with the world.  We've treated numerous areas on the course and around the clubhouse but unfortunately, there is no preventative treatment for this pest.  If you see a specific area where they are entering/exiting, please let me know and my staff will address them.

Wildflower bed clearing...

 

This week, we are cutting back the wildflower areas on the golf course and giving them a major overhaul this year.  Wildflowers always start out spectacular with a colorful mix of annuals and perennials but by year 3 or 4, they tend to become a monostand of one type of perennial that outcompeted the other species in the mix.  In addition, weeds become an issue and detract from the areas.  Therefore, we are cutting the areas back and applying a non-selective herbicide to kill everything.  This winter, we will get in these areas and till the soil; really turning it over.  Next spring, we will hydroseed with a new wildflower mix and by early summer, we should have a really nice stand of color. 

HCC Annual Meeting

Immediate Past President, Mr. Shurling (right) thanks outgoing President, Mr. Benedict at the 2017 HCC Annual Meeting Sunday afternoon.

Moose Damage...

Fortunately this isn't something we deal with in North Carolina! This was posted on social meeting from a club in Canada.

Forecast

Looks like a nice week, with a slight chance of rain Wednesday-Friday. We are back to double cutting greens as of Saturday and will be doing a few things early this week to get the greens back up to faster speeds.

Working in the dark...

Where do Birds Go In a Hurricane?

CLICK HERE

This is an interesting article from Forbes.com- something you wouldn't normally think about.

 

Solutions for Boxwood Blight