5 days to open Manakin

If you were looking for a lull in the action in the past 115 days you would be hard pressed to find it. Our staff has really worked tirelessly to get this golf course back into shape and give it back to you in just 2 and half months after the first truck of sprigs hit the ground. It's not prefect out there but it is very good. If you can look into the future for the next growing season, the Manakin will be spectacular. There are some bumps and patches here and there but we are ready to get some golfer traffic back on this piece of property. We are officially opening on time and on budget.

We are through the final hurdle with the bunkers. They have been scraped clean and are now getting their depths checked, faces smoothed, sand fluffed and raked.

Around the edges we are really grinding on getting the pine straw and mulch beds tightened up.

Temperatures are dropping and while the bermuda is slowing the bentgrass is going to try to drop some roots down for the fall. We continue to work on grooming the texture of the greens by lightly verticutting, topdressing and brushing the greens. The mowing height is dropping and we will see if we can have the greens at a respectable speed for the fall.

While we deferred the major cartpath work to next year on the Manakin, we still wanted to get a few club rattlers out of the way. The bumps are cut out and replaced with hot asphalt mix straight from the plant.

The latitude has grown over most of the 2,000 irrigation heads on the Manakin. We are flagging and edging the heads out for opening.

When the Manakin opens Tuesday there will be a variety of new items out there including flags. Starting next week, all the flags, on both the Manakin and Sabot will now be red. Red flags are the most visible and are not stained by the iron in our irrigation water. In addition, changing the flags out each day between red, white and blue takes our staff time and the flags get dirty much faster.

With all the flags being the same color, we will be supplying a simple pinsheet each day for both courses. The pin positions are predetermined and rotate through 31 days of the month. The goal is to create more variety with the pins and help us shake up the distances, especially on the par 3's. Look for these pinsheets on your cart each day or grab one from the starter.

The bluegrass is starting to pop on some of the tees on the Sabot. We know the surrounds are getting wet but it is prime time for germination now. The bluegrass will be slow to fill in but once we get it established it will give us a relatively consistent surface through the off season, year after year. Fairways will be seeded with bluegrass on Monday the 30th. Last week we talked about the benefits of switching to the bluegrass as opposed to rye. We will continue to talk about expectations and timing as we move forward.

Enjoy the Manakin, fix your ballmarks, and have fun!