Plan and execute!

 

After 3 inches of rain last Friday, some humid weather moved in and kept the clouds at ground level early in the week. We got a break today and both courses are finally drying back out. Despite the fog, our entire week was dry which allowed us to accomplish all of our projects on Sabot as planned.

The team started on 5 green surround. All 20,000 square feet of turf was stripped up and moved out of the way. There was a pretty ugly mix of cool season turf, warm season weeds throughout this area. Previously we had planned to re-sod this surround in the spring but thanks to Covid we had to hold off. With things back in line we were also able to reshape the entire area.

Last year we had sodded out 5 approach to Tahoma bermudagrass. That sod did not go to waste and has now replaced the bentgrass that used to exist on 6 green tee and 8 black tee on Sabot.

An operator from the golf course construction company Landscapes Unlimited camped out in our mini excavator all week. His first task was to smooth out the grass bunker here on 5 and help us eliminate the in play drains around the surround by getting water to move all the way to the creek.

The new shape is much more calm and fits into the natural landscape. You have to see it in person to get an appreciation of how much better the area is now. 

Up on the fall line we found a french drain that had been installed a few years ago. We cleaned a lot of built up soil and organic matter off the top and replaced it with sand. This drain will do a nice job of catching water that runs out of the woods before it can get to our new fairway/approach area.

Let the sodding begin!

The entire crew worked to lay down 45 pallets of sod today to cover up the new area. Once grown in much of this Latitude36 bermudagrass will be mowed at approach height in order to invite second shots over the creek and to run up to the green.

There is only one drain left in the green surround in order to maximize playable area. Again, you can thank Covid for having to do this project later in the year. It will be tough to determine exactly when we can open the sod for play and it definitely won't be mowed down short this fall. For now, there is a drop area marked behind the green if your ball ends up in the sod. Try to limit your foot traffic on top of the sod and we definitely do not need any push carts or robots tracking through here. A small sacrifice this fall for big new improvement!

While we were sodding our shaper kept moving. 5 blue tee has been moved over slightly and expanded. This tee was previously bentgrass and had an odd shape that limited hitting area. Latitude will go down here on Monday.

The tee in front of the blue tee was used to supply soil to expand the blue tee. We were just going to eliminate this tee but we ended up just dropping it 3 feet and shelfing it back into the hill. This tee will be a good rotation for the white tees.

4 Black tee was also covered up with Latitude bermuda this week. In total we laid down 54 pallets of sod this week. We are in a sweet spot with the weather since the bermuda isn't growing and the leaves and just starting to fall. This work will be finished up early next week and we will be on to fall maintenance and some smaller projects.

And with any luck this view may improve even more next week!