Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  Arizona is where you should be playing golf right now! Our one assistant on the Manakin, Grant, came up with a pretty fun idea to work at two TPC courses for PGA Tour events this winter. We did a site visit with Grant two weeks ago at the Waste Management open where Grant helped out for a few weeks. He has now driven his conversion van (that he lives in!) to TPC Sawgrass to help out with the Player's Championship. This has been a great learning experience for Grant as it is always helpful to see how other big time facilities manage their operations.  Back home on the ranch the guys have been working hard digging out bunkers and pouring more pervious concrete. Our last two bunkers (2 fairway and 3 fairway) are being filled up now and will more than likely be in play for the weekend. This completes our bunker work for this fiscal year as we have hit the annual budget allotment. 11 bunkers down, 49 to go. We will be working through the old bunkers now, adding sand where needed ...

  High's in the 70's and lows in the 20's look like they will be around for the next week or so. It is always hard to realize that grass needs a little more than a few nice sunny days to start to growing again. Soil temps are slow to change so keep fixing ballmarks and replacing divots, there is a solid two more months before we see even the tiniest amount of growth out of the bermuda. Around the bentgrass greens we have sprayed our pre-emergent and a non-selective herbicide to help knock out the Poa. Overall the Manakin is very clean from weeds this spring. We continue to push the bunker project along so that we can spend more time on daily maintenance as the weather changes. This fairway bunker on 3 and the first fairway bunker on 2 are the last two bunkers that we will renovate this spring. These bunkers have seen a lot of different weather over the past 20 years. New sand has been added on top of contaminated sand and the bunker liner has been ripped up from normal main...

  Even the irrigation crew is getting tired of the winter weather as they look forward to a pleasant weekend on the way. They are now about to cross the bridge over to 8 tee side fairway. The team is getting into a groove, especially when the sun comes out. The 2 inch line is pulled across the fairway, the heads are fused onto the pipe, wired up and then they backfill and sod. About 600 times in total for the front nine! From new to old, this oak tree over on 6 Manakin had to be around 100 years old. It dropped its leaves pretty early this summer and it did not look good going in to the fall. We wanted to give it a chance this year but branches were coming down daily, it was dead. The tree was so dry that the branches exploded when it hit the ground. Being on the driest spot on the property probably did not help its chances. Our staff continues to make progress on the Manakin bunkers. The old drainage in these bunkers was very overdone, in a way to try and reduce washouts. This wor...

  We get some pretty wild sunrises on Manakin with the winter angle of the sun. Leave it to the snow to tell you where any shade problems are. The irrigation guys continue slugging their way through the winter weather. This week they were able to run the communication wires around the chipping green and to the back corner of the clubhouse. Four wire paths will run through the attic and then communicate via radio a short distance over to the Maintenance Facility. All 1400+ heads on both nines will be connected by one of these four wire paths. This new system eliminates miles and miles of copper wire and helps pinpoint any future problems with this much simpler wiring. All the new sprinklers are in and connected on #9. The green box houses the valve that we pictured a few weeks ago. The pipe is pulled through the fairway and then the new heads are connected. There are 5 heads on this line. One in the center of the fairway and two on each edge of the fairway. One head will water only ...