Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

   The sun is coming up earlier and earlier! We will gain a full half hour of sunlight in the morning this month. The new greens on the Sabot back nine received their first aeration Thursday morning in front of the small heat wave. These tiny 1/8" cores were popped out of the sod and then the greens were rolled smooth again. We have been able to keep plenty of sand on them this winter which also aids in getting the sod seams healed up. These greens will be aerated again with the front nine with 1/4" tines on March 20 and 21. Our agronomic schedule is now up on the Blog pages section or just  click here . It was amazing to finally have an entire week without rain. The Sabot team put in another large drainage system in the middle of two fairway this week.  This fairway is probably our worst shaped fairway in that it collects water from both sides. This french drain will compliment the one we put in previously a little further from the green. This area was still relatively satur

  The soaking rain this past Sunday brought close to 2 inches of rain with it. We have barely gotten ourselves into a full dry/wet cycle now which means we are drying out in between rains instead of just staying saturated like the past two months. With wet soils early in the week the guys focused on cleaning up the cartpath edges. The 10 miles of edging is almost complete with only a few holes on the front of the Sabot left. The sun helped dry out our mud hole on 16 Sabot this week. The front bunker now has a taller face the bunker behind it is filled in. The old drain on the right side of the approach is filled in and we are putting the finishing touches to the expanded approach area here to the right of the green where the second bunker used to be. Tree work continued this week on both courses. Opening up sunlight pathways for our bermuda, alleviating cartpath damage and taking out dangerous trees are always our main goals with the tree work. Some of these oaks with hollow insides ar

  Ben, Joe and I traveled down to Orlando this week to find some better weather to bring up north. This week was the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America education conference and trade show. It also involves a national championship golf event that we all played in. My old friend from Kinloch and I finally placed in the four ball this year, getting card matched down to fourth place.  Ben and Joe choked pretty bad in the fourball but Ben pulled it together for the individual championship shooting 73-77 and racking up enough stableford points for 4th. This was Ben's first trip to the national conference. I was lucky enough to keep my handicap just high enough to stay in the last flight of the tournament. The net side of this flight gets silly quickly so I'm always content to do OK on the gross side.  Joe took a swing at a $500 closest to the pin contest.  The robotic tech at the trade show was quickly trumped by the SpaceX rocket launch that we were able to see from

  How can it get more gross out there than super saturated dormant Bermudagrass in the middle of winter? Here's how! Dip pouches, cigarette butts, tees, candy wrappers, etc are all trash and need to be disposed of properly, not just tossed down on the turf. It doesn't matter what time of the year it is, these items need to find the bottom of a trash can please! The irrigation guys have not made it far this week in the wet. They are trying to button down 16 and move towards 15 tees. We sloshed through the mud on 14 fairway this week to put in some more drainage. The clay here is so dense that the water isn't even moving towards the new drain that fast, it is just sitting still. The weather will change soon! The new beams are going up for the back patio roof.  With the pad poured the only thing that will hold up the construction crew now is rain (or snow!) during the day. One thing that can be overlooked before the pad was poured was all the electrical and plumbing rough ins