Merry Christmas! See You In 2026!

 Oh, what a week it’s been, December has not been kind so far. We were hit with another light dusting of snow Sunday morning, forcing the courses to close yet again for a few days. While it was the least amount of snow we’ve seen all year, not even totaling an inch, it stuck around longer then our previous storms. Temperatures dropped into the teens Monday morning, effectively freezing what little snow we received.  We were able to open 18 of the 36 holes early in the week, and by Wednesday all 36 holes across the property were cleared of snow and open for play. Winter golf is officially in full swing!

With temperatures well below freezing Monday morning, we wanted to give everyone a chance to warm up by taking out a few trees and feeding them into the chipper to the right side of 12 Manakin green. 

After speaking with our neighbors along number 12, we were able to remove approximately 15 trees to allow more sunlight to reach the right side of the hole. The primary reason this area stays frozen longer is due to the sun’s path during the winter months. With the sun rising in the southeast (behind the green) and setting in the southwest (behind the tees), much of the right side remains shaded for most of the day. We experience similar issues on 13 fairway and 4 tees. We plan to continue tree removal in these areas throughout the winter to help reduce shade and improve overall turf conditions.

Once the trees were cut down, we decided to use the wood chips to dress up the entire area. The stumps will be ground once we accumulate enough for our contractor to spend a full day on the courses grinding them out.

While most of the Sabot team was focused on tree work on 12, the Manakin crew began installing the new fan poles. Overall, the process is fairly simple, the placement being the most important step. The goal is to have the entire green within 100 feet of the fan. The ground poles are 4 feet in height, which means we must excavate at least 4 feet into the soil to properly set each pole, not to mention removing enough soil for the valve boxes they hide under, and then dig an additional 4 inches below the pole to allow room for the concrete.

Once the hole is dug to the proper depth, we can fill the entire excavated area with concrete. We typically use the wheelbarrow method for mixing, and the green ground pole shown to the right is set directly into the wet concrete. The 2×4 form placed on top of the green valve box helps ensure the base is level. We allow the concrete to set for a full day before installing the valve box and backfilling the area. The next steps will be running power to each fan individually and tying them into our irrigation system, just like our existing fans. The ground poles are in and ready for wire on 6, 7, 11, and 15. Leaving 9, 18, and all the wire for the upcoming new year. 

The remainder of the Manakin crew spent most of their time on number 17 installing a new French drain. This walk-up area has needed to be addressed for quite some time, but the weather has not been in our favor. We were given a small window of warmer temperatures this week, and we took full advantage of it.

 We did everything we could to try and save the existing sod, but the top 2–3 inches were too frozen to remove. Instead, we trenched the line and, once things thawed out, we cut sod from our nursery on number 3 Sabot to patch everything back in. Here is your end result and this should help the walk up dry out significantly faster.

We also received a couple of early Christmas gifts here on property, as two of the final three capital replacement items have arrived on campus. The new Turfco top-dresser will help us be more efficient when topdressing the fairways. Having three fairway top-dressers will be an absolute game changer for next season. Our second Wiedenmann Terra Spike has also arrived. This new unit is an 8-foot-wide deep-tine, making it wider than both of our older machines. While the ground speed will remain similar to the existing units, the increased width will improve efficiency when deep-tining greens, tees, or fairways. We are now just waiting for our new tractor. 

We weren’t holding our breath to get the new deep-tine out on the course at the start of the week, though we had hoped to deep-tine a few greens before Christmas. That proved unrealistic, as the greens remain frozen even this morning. We plan to begin deep-tining in January, weather permitting. 

Hopefully, the incoming rain doesn’t saturate the courses too much ahead of the annual Snowball Tournament. It looks like the place may actually thaw enough tonight to allow some golf course work to be done following the rain. Look forward to a couple of nice weekend days for golf. 

This week has brought both the coldest day of the year and the warmest temperatures we’ve seen in December. We were finally able to break our streak of daytime highs failing to reach 50 degrees. That said, it hasn’t mattered much, as most of the course continues to stay frozen until after lunch and then refreezes overnight. This will be the last blog of 2025 so Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year we will see you sometime in 2026! Have a good weekend!