Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  After another half inch of rain on Monday, the sun came out and the temperatures shot straight into spring. We have been going hard after the bunkers this week. This week was the first week we have seen nighttime temps stay above freezing in a long time which means we are able to pour the capillary concrete. We finished excavating a number of bunkers and installed new drainage. Some of the bunkers on the Sabot, like on 7, are small enough where we are just digging the sand and drainage out by hand. The bunkers are increasing in size though, when we dig back to find the original edge from 30 years ago. Besides the sand being highly contaminated with silt, the old drain pipe and gravel was not well suited for moving water through a bunker for 30 years straight. New pipe and gravel is installed in all the bunkers before the capillary concrete goes down. Two concrete trucks carrying 9.5 yards of capillary concrete each showed up on a bright and sunny Thursday. Our guys lay the permea...

  We don't have a lot of room to complain about the weather. Richmond and southward along the coast has fared far better than the rest of the country. We haven't lost power here and no one has put their car in a ditch yet. The golf course however is amazingly wet and soft. We did have some damage from the ice storm last weekend but this tree on 15 was about the worst of it. Another cold weekend is on tap now but the forecast has the sun and some 60 degree temperatures in store for next week.  Our dry ground list is running short these days. Trimming up the hollies along the club entrance road was an interesting chore. We plan to rent a lift that can get us all the way up to the top of these trees next week. We put a new Mig welder in the hands of Dunstano and Carlos this week and they could not be more excited. They love fabricating solutions for us. In addition to hanging a new net at the end of the driving range, we are extending the poles (and net height) up 5 more feet. Ca...

  The snow and rain has kept us close to the cartpath this week but we are still moving along. The large fairway bunker to the right of 9 fairway has been cleaned out. We will need two dry days in a row in order to install the new drain that goes underneath the capillary concrete. The bunkers on 7 green are being cleaned out currently as we wait for more snow to show up tonight. The paver walkup patio for the bathroom on 4 Sabot has been completed. We will polish off the landscaping once it gets a little warmer. This project has tapped us out of pavers for the time being. It may be 6 weeks or so before we can get any more in because of supply issues. Tree work in some drier areas has continued this week. The pruning operation was out every day elevating and cleaning up trees as necessary. We removed some smaller trees in between 17 and 18 Manakin here. This gives a chance for more air and sun to move through to 17 green and 18 tees. Jacob and Grant have been playing in the slop her...

  The snow came down pretty hard on Sunday morning. There were a few places that easily saw 5 inches of accumulation. The snow is pretty but wow is it wet out there. There are a few greens left with snow on them today but most everything should be open for golf (and more rain) tomorrow. All wheels will have to stay on the path through the weekend. That means power push carts as well as manual carts. It is just too wet for anything other than foot traffic. This week was also the week of our national conference. You know, the one where the national championship golf tournament was supposed to be in Palm Springs and the education event was supposed to be in Las Vegas. But here we are doing virtual education looking at snow from the window. The virtual education is actually working nicely however. We are able to access way more updated content than before. The main downside being not seeing our friends across the industry but that can wait. It was great to see a common phrase used arou...