Leaf season is here! Say goodbye to this perfect weather
The new greens have absolutely loved this pleasant fall weather. No frost on the bentgrass, no rain and sunny days have kept the roots digging into our profile. All the greens were hand rolled this week in preparation for their first mowing.
Dunstano got the inaugural cut on the putting green at a height of .200". All the greens mowed out nicely and may be ready for the big roller next week. We may drop the height slightly over the next few weeks but the turf will stay relatively high through the winter. The beginning of March should give us some more weather to start dialing things down to putting height.
30,000 more square feet of sod was delivered this week so that we could button up our projects on 7, 8 and 9. The newly raised up pond bank in front of 7 green was sodded with "Innovation" zoysia grass.
The new collar on 8 was sodded to bermuda and then zoysia on the bank. The new slope combined with some velcro like zoysia should stop "good" shots from rolling into the water.
The bulk of the sod was laid here on 9 around the new bunker. This area of disturbance reached all the way into the middle of the fairway. This allowed us to lower the height of the fairway and widen its playable area.
The newly shaped bunker was wrapped in zoysia and bermuda and the drainage was cut in. The capillary concrete is set for next week and then the sand from the parking lot will take a short trip over the hill to finish off this project. The green is now easily visible from all parts of this bunker.
Our crew worked to complete the renovation on the next bunker up on 9 this week as well. We found the old pond transfer line from when before this nine even existed underneath this bunker.
Sod was installed around the bunker and new drainage was dropped in.
With the left side of this bunker filled in, it takes a more natural shape and also reduces the amount of sand and of course time raking here on 9. Even with some slight size reductions here on 9, all of these bunkers in total still take up more area than the rest of the bunkers on 1-8 combined.
We even let Manakin have a few pieces of sod this week in order to get some tall fescue growing in the trees over on the left of 8.
The 6 inch mainline pipe has reached the tee boxes on 9. With the fusion of this HDPE pipe, so far, this is one long continuous pipe. With the older PVC there would be almost 70 points of connection in this line exposing us to leaks and breaks like we have seen over the past 30 years.
All of the digging has been done on plywood and the finished product looks great! Some more equipment and more people are set to roll in next week so things will only get faster from here, but for now we are right on schedule.