Winter Projects...

 

The verdict is in and the decision is unanimous: Mother Nature won the battle this week. According to local news reports, our area experienced the coldest weather in the last twenty years. The course was covered in snow and frozen solid.

That doesn’t mean the Maintenance Team was unproductive however. There are always projects for our multi-talented staff to complete. This week, for example, the team sanded and re-painted many of our tee markers.

 

 

Before and After

 

 

Hopefully we'll see improvement in the weather next week and the staff will again be able to get out on the course to change cups, roll greens and work on other winter “outdoor” projects.

 Rest assured however that, whatever the weather, the Maintenance Team, always has a plan to remain productive and work toward the betterment of your golf course.

 

Cartpath improvement.

Dominion Valley has an excellent cart path system. It forms a continuous trail around the course that is eight feet wide and widens to ten feet at all tee and green complexes. In a perfect world, every part of the course--including the turf adjacent the cart paths--would receive equal use and wear and tear would be distributed accordingly. Invariably however, some areas nearest the paths receive more than their fair share of use and require extra attention from the maintenance team.

Where carts enter and exit to the fairway, or near the greens, for example, turf alongside the path can suffer. Historically, we've stripped and sodded these areas in the off-season. This year however, we're trying something new: we've purchased cobblestone pavers and are placing them in some of the high-traffic areas.

The process is straight-forward: The area to be covered is marked and excavated; a base of crushed stone is added and compacted; and the cobblestones are installed and top-dressed with stone dust.

When completed, damage to high-traffic areas should be less noticeable and the look of the course should be more pleasing.

Tee it Forward...

 

 

#6 Tee

 

 

Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate and allows us the opportunity to get out and enjoy the golf course this winter. If so, it’s important to remember that the grass has stopped growing until spring. This means that any damage to the course will remain until spring when growing conditions will again allow for recovery.

With this thought in mind, we’ve decided to move the tee markers forward on the tee boxes for the winter and leave them there. This will confine wear and tear to the front of the tee box and protect the majority of the teeing areas.

In the spring, we’ll develop a plan to get the tee fronts back into shape. Most likely, we’ll need to strip and sod some forward areas; but some combination of fertilizer, seed, sod and good growing weather is really all that will be needed.

So, until spring… Get out and enjoy the course.