Driving around on Front 9

 Please try to avoid driving around the front 9 during the project.  We have a lot of things going on out there and we don't have areas roped and staked off.  These areas are freshly sculpted, maybe soft, watered, and have no root systems...    We ask for your patience as we work on the front 9!  

Bunker Update

Course Updates:

Back 9: The back nine is growing nicely as of right now.  The only reason we are keeping the ropes and stakes up is to control traffic on the newly sodded areas.  Traffic on these areas will not produce great root systems.  We will plan to update some of these areas in the next coming week or so.  Regardless, ALL of these areas can be played normally and ARE NOT Ground Under Repair anymore.  We will be pulling all of the ground under repair signs this week.  This picture below shows us where NOT to put bunker rakes.  We should be entering and exiting the bunkers on the low sides!!!

Front 9 Bunkers: As we sit here on 5/7, the front 9 is taking shape.  Hollembeak construction has worked on holes #2 thru #8 so far.  Most of the bluegrass sodding has taken place around the newly constructed bunkers and soon they will plan to start relocating bentgrass to these same holes from #2 through #8.  The front 9 definitely has had a lot of irrigation work done to it for these bunkers.  At the end of the project, I'll post some crazy stats on the number of feet of irrigation pipe we've used!  

Architect:  Rich Mandell has made 2 site visits so far this Spring while the project is underway.  He is expected to be here early next week too for his 3rd visit.  Here he is painting the bunker line for hole #3!

All in a days work:  Here are two photos of #8 in just a days work with Hollembeak.  The bottom photo is the start of the bunker and then a day later we have a new bunker built.  Yes, it will be nasty and all one bunker so don't plan to hit into it!

Rocks!!! - And you said it was just in the bunkers.... No, we have boulders in the fairways just 3.5" down from the surface.  This leads to major equipment breakdowns and not being able to manicure these fairways to the next level!  We've also found a buried dead tree in one of the banks as they have been shaping a bunker on #8.    

 

This one is from the bunker on #2.  Yes, we could shut down and be a Crary, i mean quarry at this point...

Bunker Shaping:  Here is a new bunker rough shaped on #8.  Once the architect comes in to make a few tweaks, it will be ready to start edging and spraying the liner.  After the liner goes down, sodding and sanding the new double diamond sand next comes into these sites!

Maintaining: This project has definitely pushed our limits on maintaining the course and also working on the project.  I give for credit for our staff in working tirelessly on the course to give the membership a great product.  This spring has been even more challenging as we don't have our peak staff until mid-June.  Which means everything will be already done when we finally get our full staff in.  This is also a big learning curve for us here at the G&G department, and also something that will take us time to mow.  Here is Adam trying out a demo unit but as you can see, these new bunkers will not be exciting to maintain on our end!

Shaping on #3 a week ago...

Shaping on #5 a few weeks ago...