Hermitage CC Golf Course Management

  Last week was not very conducive for digging holes but we did manage to get most of #3 completed. The higher February sun angle did a nice job of melting the snow off so come Monday the guys were determined to finish 3 and 4 this week and that is just what they did. Every remaining head to be wired was dug up before lunch on Tuesday. The last few heads getting plowed in by Wil and Kevin. We had wire and solenoids to spare which is a good thing. Our 30 year old repurposed water wick drainage machine survived the task of plowing 80,000 feet of wire in the ground, that is just over 15 miles! Roberto had the honor wiring the 1,260th head into the new wire path. This was a cold and wet winter to be fooling with stripping and connecting wires. Not a day went by where all these guys didn't have a smile on their face making this project happen. The happy group behind the final hole on 4 tees. Another 600 heads this winter were excavated, wired up and backfilled giving us a total of 1,260...

  The courses were actually drying out nicely on Monday and Tuesday. It is always great to see prior drainage work sucking down water in the winter months. As we cycle through these wet and drier times, it only makes sense to keep carts on the path in a conservative manner. This also includes remote control carts. We will have the golf shop differentiate between walking manual push carts and remote control carts on some days. These days are where it is still soaked and the remote carts can damage turf in wet swales. In general, people pushing manual carts will avoid these wet areas so we are happy to allow them out. With an absolute mess of snow and rain was in the forecast, so we hustled the entire crew back out to #2 Manakin and kept on plowing wire in on Monday. Every remaining head on 2 was dug up except for around the green. The guys even picked off a few on 3 tee and got them back filled (over 50 heads total) before the snow started to fall on Tuesday. There are less than 90 ...

  Our less than ideal winter weather continues although this is really how winter used to be. Cold, wet and gross up here is why golf in Florida and California was invented! The guys have made the most of a few sunny and thawed out days this week and crushed the irrigation wire plowing on #1. The tees on #2 are also complete and the whole left side of 2 is close to being finished as well. The digging and back filling is tough but the light at the end of the tunnel is around the corner up at 4 green. With the bunkers thawed out we were finally able to get a decent rake on them this week. And with the greens fully thawed they were rolled and sprayed with some fertilizer to perk them back up from last months nasty temperatures.  Our Thorguard horn got smashed by a pine branch in the ice and snow a few weeks ago. Sloan got the parts in and replaced the broken horn housing. Scobar, our stump contractor was out on Monday to finish grinding some stumps, mainly on the Manakin. Most of...