Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  An inch and a half of rain and then a dusting of snow solidified our plans to stay mainly inside this week. The courses are once again soaked! Last year the warm winter keep us moving outside for the most part. All of our course "furniture" needed some TLC and that is what we set out to do this week. All the cart posts were sanded down and stained. The bunker rakes came inside for an inspection and a fresh coat of polyurethane.  The cart signs were painted black and then we just sanded the letters down to get a nice black/silver finish. The signs were clear coated and are ready to go. All the penalty area stakes found their way through the table planer. Previously the stakes were painted. Paint on recycled plastic doesn't work too well. The planer stripped off the paint and any other weather discoloration and the stakes look brand new. We did make it outside in early in the week. The excavator gingerly entered the pond on 16 Manakin in order to clean out the silt island...

  The Sabot team went right back to #8 fairway on Monday, putting in more drains around the forward tee as well as the beginning of the fairway. The water wick cut in lines of sand to help dry out around some of the existing surface drains on 8. Once the bermuda starts growing, any issues with this fairway being wet should be a thing of the past. We even cut out and filled in a low depression that held water more towards the cart exit and the bridge. After 8 was complete we went over to #1 and put a nice deep trench through the wet swale by the normal cart exit. After #1 the guys traveled out to 13 to put a herringbone drainage system on the right of the fairway just past the pine tree. Manakin managed to steal the trencher for a few minutes to cut a drain into the pine straw bed between 17 tees and 16. Water always washed down here quickly, taking the pine straw with it. This drain should slow the water flow down some so that this bed can look respectable more often. The white tee...

  Amazingly enough the rain skipped us last weekend and we are in week two of not having to deal with any moisture from the clouds. This is the longest stretch in at least 4 months that we have not had rain inside of a 7 day period. The graph above (here is a link to make it bigger)  shows us getting pummeled with rain every week, most of the time with 2-3 inch events. We made the most of this dry week by putting over 1,000 feet of drainage pipe in the ground. The sun has been nice enough to come out as well but we are still seeing temperatures in the 20's overnight. The greens have been freezing and thawing and the bentgrass is as close to dormant as it is going to get. Putting quality is at a premium right now as mowing or rolling when the green is frozen is impossible and very detrimental to the health of the turf. Even as the green thaws through the day, foot traffic plays a negative role, let alone driving a mower or roller across the turf. On warm days we will continue t...

  The past few Monday's we have been working on the wettest part of our property, the middle of the driving range. Our 2020 rain total ended with almost 25 inches more rain than normal. This of course has not held up play very much and everyone continues to pound range balls. The main part of the range has been impossible to pick with the cart so we have been adding true French drains in to try and help dry things up. Each week has been very similar, with rain on Friday, soaking everything back down for the following week. Just as we try to dry out, more rain comes. We don't mind making a mess here on the range, which isn't really visible from the tee, but out on the course we need it a bit drier to get back into serious drainage work. Julio and Raul have finished up their paver project along the path behind the Clubhouse. The edges of this path were seriously deteriorated and we were able to remove the landscape timbers from the clubhouse side. Paver work will continue thi...