Try again next week bermudagrass
Bermuda took it on the chin this week with multiple nights in the 20's. At least we have dried out again and some of the turf on these south facing slopes is still hanging in there. The days keep getting longer and the sun is just as high now as it is in September so the soil doesn't have much choice but to heat up as we get deeper into spring.
We finished up the other side of the drainage on 17 fairway Manakin this week. These areas have dried up quickly now. We hope this bermuda that as been saturated all winter and now trampled by us putting drainage in perks back up in the next 4-6 weeks.
The pipe that use for our french drains is slotted (or perforated) pipe. The pipe is covered in gravel on both sides and then in most cases now, topped with sand so we can sod over the line eventually. Water seeps down and once it hits the pipe it can move faster down towards the catch basin.
The final pipe and wire is now in the ground on Sabot! The guys have had a few nice dry days to finish up backfilling here on 10 tees. The team will continue rolling lateral pipe lines and cleaning up punch list items next week and then this project will be just about complete!
The patio work continues to progress with the dry weather. We decided to brick paver over our old planting bed here outside the Tavern. This area will be good for the Clubhouse staff to fire up the grills on the weekends and service golf play as well as patio guests.
Our new EZ Locator pin location software is up and running. We gave some details last week on the blog but the software uses 3D scans to locate every possible pin position on the green where the slope is less than 3.5 percent. The new pinsheets have 5 yard gridlines and are the actual shape of each green. These are already integrated into Visage for the carts.
Today we placed leftover survey whiskers from the irrigation project to properly mark the front of every green as well as the intended line of play. Obviously this is similar to what we have done in the past but EZ Locator now has these positions GPS located and it will be easier to consistently find the start point for walking off each pin and changing the cup. As the mowers come out these whiskers will get chopped down and/or we'll pull them out in favor of a paint dot.
The software will move the pin around to each hole location (black dot). The same pin will never be repeated inside of a month. After a location is used, a radius of 12 feet is set up so that future pins are out of the way. Each day the radius drops and after a week it is gone but again the old pin will not be reused for 30 days. We can generate pinsheets in advance and even block off areas for tournaments or wear spots. Old Tom Morris did not have this type of technology.
The golf shop is working on printing some greens reading books that they will have available for purchase some time soon. If you search for ezLocator epinsheets you should be able to download the app for your phone which will show you the daily pin position. Apple has worked ok but later Androids have had some trouble locating the app at the moment. The golf shop is figuring out also how to include the daily pinsheet in their morning email.
Again, this is all up and running and hopefully everyone can get some benefit out of spreading the wear on our greens better and maybe finding a few new pin locations. Enjoy!