Tuesday

Sod is being installed on bunker faces now that sand edges were painted last night.  We laid a truckload of sod today and have a truckload coming tomorrow.  Getting sod has been somewhat of a challenge.  It's not because of a shortage in sod, its more of a shortage of qualified commercial truck drivers.  Two loads a week is about the maximum we've been able to secure when some weeks, we'd rather have 4 or even 5 loads of sod delivered.

What a great day in Highlands with high temperatures approaching the mid 60's!  Ron Forse wrapped up his architectural visit at noon, before heading to the airport to travel to New York to look at another golf course.  Here's a nice recap of the day...

The front nine greens were aerated with 1/4" hollow tines.  The back nine greens will be aerated tomorrow.  Starting next week, we will begin to Graden Verticut the greens which means slightly faster than normal healing times compared to years past.

One of the things Ron Forse and I looked at was the expansion of #14 fairway.  The fairway, from the hillside down to the green, will be extended right (towards Hummingbird Lane) approximately 16 yards or more.  The reason for this is solely architectural.  The way the green is aligned, a golfer would need to be in this area to attack the green straight on.  Historically, if you played the hole this way, as Ross intended, you were penalized by being forced to hit from the rough.

Given that all of the rough is comprised of creeping bentgrass, I feel that we'll have success if we slowly lower the height of cut (HOC) down to the level of fairways.  Today, we used our intermediate rough mower to mow the turf down to 1".  Over the next couple weeks, we'll notch it down to fairway height, which is .475"

The photo immediately above give you an idea of this expansion.  Doing it this way saves a lot of money compared to re-sodding this portion of the fairway.  We are spending nothing but our time to make this improvement that I really feel will be appreciated by most of the membership.

Ron and I looked at the 16th tee box, which is now HUGE!  We gained a tremendous amount of space on this tee, shortening the shot from the front of the tee by about 8 yards!

Below, you can see the new elevation of the tee, looking back at it from behind #16 green.  Hap took some time to study the new tee and the bank, in particular.  After deep thought, he concluded that he'd rather run down the slope to chase his ball as opposed to having to run up the slope. 

 

Thanks to the above normal temperatures, the golf course is coming around nicely and we're teed up for a great year!  The following photos show you how good things look.