Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

Hermitage has Ryan Montgomery out here this week for a couple of days, working on some photography for us. Check out some of his work on Instagram at ryanmontgomeryphotography . Here is some of his work from earlier in the week. We can’t wait to see some of the stuff he captured yesterday evening! Fall decorations are getting ready to go out next week. We’re still waiting on some more flowers and a few other things, but we’ll be getting ready for Halloween and moving toward Thanksgiving. Another productive week of maintenance! This year we have really put a focus on concentrating on maintenance and not as much on constant projects. We will focus on as many projects as possible November through April. We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty with staffing this time of year. Some of our seasonal employees have already left, and a few more are leaving shortly. The staff is doing a great job maintaining our levels of maintenance without being anywhere near full staffing levels. We were abl...

 Monday started with some sod prep and dead tree removal around the Club and on Sabot #9. We still have a few more trees to take care of over the next several weeks, including Sabot #2 and #3 and Manakin #2, just to name a few. The team hammered out quite a bit of work before the noon shotgun, so it was a productive start to the week. Fall is definitely in the air! We’ve had a few nights in the 40s this week, and the bermudagrass has noticeably slowed down. In fact, we mowed fairways for the first time this week today as we prepared for the Senior Member-Guest.  Quite a change from the 3-4 mows a week we were on not too long ago. As we transition into fall, we’ve raised the height of cut and reduced mowing frequency to help put the bermudagrass in the best possible position heading into winter. There isn’t much time left for these warm-season grasses to grow and build the strength they need to withstand the traffic that comes with perfect fall golf weather and a busy tee sheet...

 Monday started off the week with the Lunch Pail Monday outing, and it was great to see a lot of smiling faces really amped up about VT football for the first time in a long while. There were people walking around here in VT gear looking like Conor McGregor walking into the ring — that kind of swagger walk. It’s refreshing to see a little swagger returning to Blacksburg...even coming from a Buckeye! Before the outing, we were able to squeeze in a mow, topdress, drag and roll on the Manakin greens. They are still not 100% back from aeration, but they are getting pretty close. We were also able to complete some fall fertilizer tie-ins around the greens on Tuesday. The cool, overcast weather we had during that nor’easter really stunted some growth over the last week. A little sunshine and warmer weather should get some color returning to the bermuda. It has been interesting to see the difference between the two grasses. The Latitude on Manakin really did not like the cool, overcast we...