Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

We are locked in on our sand and moving forward! This sand is as white as it gets and should play nice and firm. It was held up perfectly after another wet week. We have charged along in the bunkers on the Sabot. #10 greenside bunker is ready for capillary concrete and we have excavated the right bunker on 11 as well as the bunkers on 12 and 13. We have loads of capillary concrete set up for Wednesday and Thursday next week. Sand is in the lower parking lot ready to go. As we excavate, we are searching for the original soil shape of the bunker edge. In most cases these edges are coming back 2-3 feet! The old drainage is dug out and the trench is widened and dug deeper. A gravel layer is laid down in the trench and then new pipe is installed. The pipe is covered in gravel and the trench is filled. The capillary concrete is then laid at a two inch depth across the entire bottom of the bunker. This is the ultimate way to drain a bunker! Hunter got his bridge finishe...

In addition to the prep work going on around 10 and 18 Manakin, we have prepped the gravel road behind 7 green Manakin and connected it to 5 tee. The paving company is scheduled to be on site this coming Monday to mill down a few more spots around the golf shop and on 1 and 9 Sabot. Depending on the weather we will be paving these areas after the milling work is done, it may be next week, it may be the following Monday or Tuesday. Prepping these areas in house reduces the overall cost of the paving work drastically. Hunter has his team out on 8 Sabot bridge. They are stripping the old lumber all the way down to the steel I beams and rebuilding the bridge with fresh treated pine. The guys plan to be very close to being finished on Friday. We worked around the weather this week to make some big spray applications for both courses. We applied a variety of pre and post emerge herbicides to the bermudagrass surfaces. Taking advantage of the bermuda being dormant should help fin...

This week was pretty wet with an inch and a half of rain coming down just like a wet blanket. On Monday we ran out a got a number of things accomplished before the rain. The deep tine aeration is now complete on all 39 greens and a light dusting of sand was laid down. Our new topdresser and Progator knocked this task out very quickly. With two of these rigs now we can get sand out in a very timely and accurate manner. With a quick turn on the digital dial the topdresser is fitted to spread compost. Our goal is to compost all the roughs on the Manakin and Sabot, as well as some wetter fairways on the Sabot over the next 2-3 weeks. This is weather dependent of course. We started digging out a cartpath extension past 18 Manakin on Monday as well. This path will take golfers to the parking lot more comfortably and our staff to our service road. The paving improvements are set to start on Monday February 24th. This road and the gravel road in front of the bathroom behind 7 Mana...

The weather has been pretty favorable over the last two weeks. This red sky morning hauled in a pretty hefty storm that will soak us down for a while now though. The rain will force us off the turf for a few days which is a good thing in order to get some winter detail work done. Jacob and Julio got their shoe air station finished up by the golf shop. We plumbed the air from the compressor that was already in the cart barn and harvested the old fire pit in order to make a nice bench for cleaning off your shoes or push cart. We hope to add one more station by the water machine outside the grill in a few weeks. With the shoe station complete Jacob moved on to adding a bridge at the end of the stream on 14 Manakin. There will be one step to get up on the bridge but it is wide enough for push carts. If we can dry up enough in the coming weeks we hope to get the excavator over here to clean out the bottom of the stream and maybe toss in a natural waterfall. We were able to...