Beautiful week of weather!

 

After freezing temperatures and more rain last week, this week could not have been more perfect. The latitude on the Manakin got stung by the frost last weekend but as we laid down the first cut on Wednesday, it was easy to see it pushing forward with green up. With the first fertilizer application going down this week as well on the latitude, you should continue to see some progression.

The new black tee on 9 dried out nicely over the last weekend so we were able to tackle the new feature with sod. 

Latitude bermudagrass covers the top of the tee and fescue leads down to the existing native area. As we have discussed before, all of our current tee renovations are part of the Master Plan. 2 years ago as part of the Manakin re-grassing we were able to build 15 new tees to accommodate a wide variety of golfers. Last fall, the projects on 9, 11 and 18 Sabot were reviewed with the Green Committee and deemed priority for this season. We continually discuss improvements with our architect, Andrew Green, as they relate to the Master Plan and then continue those discussions on with the Committee. We are happy to get these new projects completed before the turf really starts to take off growing for the season.

With 9 finished we continued stripping the sod off 11 tees.

We used the sod from 11 to cover up a pine straw bed that was always susceptible to wash out from the rain on #9. Once rooted in, we will be able to remove the bluegrass (and poa annua) from the sod and it will match up with the rough nicely.

Back on 11 the ornamental grasses were removed from all around the tee. With the old sod removed, we pushed the blue/white tee about 10 feet backwards into the black tee which will give us more teeing space. The black tee was expanded backwards as well for more teeing space. The black tee was also tied in to the black tee for 2 Manakin. 

Here is what will be the new view for 2 Manakin black tee which will stretch back to 555 yards. The blue tees can now be optioned back to the old black tee which plays 532 yards. We will finish sodding the tees on 11 next week.

The guys love some sod work and seeing improvements go down! As these projects roll on we work inside of the quantities that the sod farm provides which is 10,000 square feet per delivery. We need about 3,000 more square feet of sod for 11 which will come on the truck next week when we start sodding the yet to be built tees on along the lake for 18 Sabot.

Over on 18, new irrigation heads were trenched in for the new tee.

The new black tee on 18 was sodded and is ready to be grown in. The soil around the sod was seeded with fine fescue. This area will be wet in order to grow the seed in so please yield to the ropes that will be up.

There is a zoomed in view from 18 black. It will play 445 yards. A 300 yard drive will reach the center of the fairway bunkers.

The bluegrass, Poa annua and bermuda continue to fill in on the Sabot. These fairways have been fertilized twice in order to keep them moving.

A reminder that the Manakin greens will be aerated on this coming Monday. The process will be the same as what was performed on the Sabot. Deep tine, Dryject, coring and solid tine aerations will all be accomplished inside of two days. The Sabot is putting well after two weeks and with continued pleasant weather the Manakin will be very similar. Enjoy Masters weekend!