Winter is on the way

We started the week off at the Goochland high school career day. It was great to get in front of over 1,000 middle school and high school students and give them some idea of what we do on the golf course every day. Our job pool is thin and not many people know how involved and fun working on the course can be.

The guys jumped into the left bunker on 11 Sabot on Monday as well. The forecast was warm early in the week but we needed to get lucky with the rain. Unfortunately an inch of rain came down hard and fast Monday night and halted out efforts for the week. We need a stretch of 2 days above freezing to get the capillary concrete floor installed here on 11 to finish it up. This may not happen until February! We will not be digging out any more bunkers until the weather shapes back up.

With cold weather on the way a big priority will be working on trees. The 3 bald cypress left of 10 Sabot were removed this week as well as a few pines behind 1 green Sabot. Our direction with the trees for the most part is based on agronomics. Besides these cypress (and their above ground roots) not many tree removals will be impacting the flow of golf play. We are looking at trees that block sunlight from greens and tees and negatively impact the cartpath. When play picks back up in the spring not much of this work will be noticeable. However, the impacts of better turf will be realized as well as a cleaner and more more well kept look through the Sabot.

Clean and well kept is something we are also striving for at our maintenance facility. The wash pad was expanded this week with 10 yards of concrete. The white posts will turn into spigots fed from our irrigation system. This area will allow us to clean up equipment faster and have more room to move around the fuel pumps and wash area in general.

Dunstano and his team continue working through our equipment fleet with winter maintenance. Included in that is tearing down our older greens fans and replacing bearings and belts as needed. These fans are a massive benefit for our greens and we want them working properly.

Wave goodbye to the pleasant end of fall/start of winter. The freezing temps will keep us off the greens next week, with maybe just a roll for the weekend if the weather looks good. We need some cold weather to really send this Latitude into dormancy!