Fall In Full Swing

Sunday’s storm packed some gnarly wind, knocking down a few branches across the property including this tree on 16 Sabot. We didn’t get as much rain as expected, but the wind definitely made up for it. The crew was able to get everything cleaned up and get out of the way before Mondays outing. 

Rosa and Angela have been busy decorating most of the campus entrances with our fall displays, bringing a true seasonal feel to the property.

Temperatures continue to drop, and with that, so do the leaves. Almost every morning, we’re greeted by two beautiful golf courses blanketed with leaves, sticks, pinecones, and other debris. Our all-star crew is out well before sunrise with backpack blowers, debris sweepers, and turbine blowers to get the courses cleaned up and looking their best for another busy day of golf. The team continues to handle it with great efficiency and pride.

We took a couple of guys over to dress up a much-needed area on 18 Manakin. I’m sure everyone’s grown tired of looking at the empty woodchip bed that’s been there since we removed the trees earlier this year. We’ve been wanting to convert this into a natural area, but mid-summer isn’t ideal for establishing cool-season grass. With temperatures now in our favor, we took advantage of the timing. Sloan removed about four inches of woodchips and graded the area smooth to prepare it for seeding. We will likely continue the natural area around the entire tee in the spring. We'd like to use the existing sod there to fill in some weak areas in the rough.  

Wil put out some fescue seed in the newly prepped area, and also added some additional seed to the dredged soil area left of 16 native to help that hill fill in a bit more. We’ll be using a combination of existing irrigation heads and a few temporary ones to help the new grass on 18 get established. We should start seeing some germination in the coming weeks.

The Sabot team has stayed busy, knocking out a few of the smaller project items off our list. They started with the rock paver area to the right of number 10 and some repairs to the dry stack wall in the same spot. It’s always nice to get some of these smaller projects wrapped up before the end of the season.

Another small area we touched up was this paver section behind 10 tee on Sabot. Constant water flow had gradually washed away the base along the edge, and with all the traffic this heavily traveled cart path gets, it started to show. Nevertheless, Eligio was able to get everything patched up nicely, and we’re hopeful this problem won’t continue moving forward.

We still have plenty of activity around the property as we head into the end of October. The bentgrass continues to thrive in the comfortable fall weather, and the Bermuda is still hanging on, though it has certainly slowed down over the past couple of weeks. We haven’t seen frost yet, but that may change over the next few mornings with temperatures dipping into the upper 30s. There’s still ample time to get out and enjoy some great fall golf. Have a great weekend!