Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  We have seen another handful of nice days this week and save for some kind of Nor'easter on Friday, the weekend looks ok. Both courses look as good as they ever have and the greens are in great shape. Another chapter of improvements starts Monday! A few pieces of our greens sod were hand delivered today. We used them to set our sod cutters at the proper depth so that we can stay ahead of the sod deliveries and limit the time the sod sits on a pallet. On Monday, the practice greens and front 9 will be dryjected as well as have the drill and fill machine run across them. The drill and fill machine has a 1 inch diameter drill bit that goes down 8 inches and then dry sand is dropped into that hole. A process golfers would throw a fit over if the green was going back into play! After those two processes, the sod cutters come out and we go to work.  Installing the new sod will of course depend on the weather, not only here but at the sod farm 4 hours away. The plan for next week i...

  Just a quarter inch of rain last Saturday set up a beautiful week of weather this week. Placing a stage on 10 Sabot blue tee in the dark on Sunday morning was new but painless experience. The Bone Frog Open was an impressive event and the club hosted it well! The bermudagrass continues to slow down growth but this time of the year that just means even better playing conditions. The soil temperatures are now warmer than the air in the mornings so there is no threat of frost just yet. We are only about 9 days away from closing the front nine of the Sabot for our greens resurfacing and irrigation renovation projects. The bermuda on the edges of the Sabot greens is dinged up pretty nicely. We will use some old sod from the front nine greens to touch up a few edges on the back nine greens in order to stay ahead of the bermuda encroachment next year. A nice dry week gave us a chance to knock two more drainage projects off the list on the Sabot. A new drain was put here by 16 tees and t...

  Mother Nature has been behaving this week, finally giving us some sun on Wednesday and some pleasant temperatures. The ryegrass overseed on 14 fairway Sabot is going crazy and the bluegrass on the rest of the back nine is not far behind. As the bermuda continues to slow down, other projects on our detail list get going. Trinidad and Jose cut out a bad edge of path here behind 18 Sabot and put in some new pavers. The fine fescue seed between 7 and 12 Manakin is starting to come up in the native area that we scalped down last week. The area between 5 and 7 Manakin as well as around the tees on 18 Sabot were sprayed, scalped and seeded this week. Both crews continue to check bunker depths going in to the fall. Our last two bunkers to be renovated on the Sabot are the fairway bunkers on 9. Once those are complete we will be finding time in the early spring to start up Manakin bunker renovations. Our big project for the week was building a level surface for 12 Manakin gold tee. This h...

  We are happily impressed by what the bluegrass is doing out on the back nine of the Sabot. It has come up pretty consistently thus far. Being able to control the water over the last two weeks along with some heat has helped things along. The first cut will happen early next week as we now taper the water back off. The ryegrass on the range tee is mowing out nicely already. It will continue to fill in over the next few weeks. For now we will stay on the hitting mats from Monday through Thursday and then go to the bermuda Friday through Saturday. The rye should be ready to hit off of by the end of the month. The remaining benches have arrived and are now out on all the par 3's on both courses. Our next set of seeding projects moved into the native areas. Here around the new tees on 18 we sprayed out and scalped down the warm season weeds and sowed in more fine fescue.  Over on the Manakin we are experimenting with thinning out the current tall fescue native areas and incorpora...