Saturday, March 30, 2013

Project Update 3/30

 So to date we have moved over 25,000 square feet of poa sod off the range and onto areas like you see here where the left of 12 green will now be mowed into the new black tee on 16.  Considering the turf came off the range, it is surprising how good the quality is.  It will take no time at all for it to look much like all the other fairway turf.
This picture shows the area between 5 and 8 green and the new black tee on 9.  Today it is all grassed.
This is a different angle of the same area and you can see that this week there was quite the transformation here.  My crew (which is the world's best) laid 10,000 square feet of ryegrass in the roughs here and another 5,000 square feet of fairway poa sod from the range........just this week.   
So in the last two weeks, in addition to moving sod off the range, we also laid over 25,000 square feet of sod from the farm in Moses Lake.  Here you can see the area on 18 fairway getting sodded over.  You'll notice the sod still has some yellowish areas in it, and that is because it still hasn't completely come out of the winter slumber.  Temperatures over there have been in the teens at night so the turf is still waking up.  
With the sod from the farm, we were able to get several other areas finished up.  Here you see the new teeing ground for the 7th hole.  That huge area to the left up to the 6th green is now grassed. 
Here's a picture of that area taken from 6 green.  It is really a cool looking teeing ground.
Check out the area on the right of 4 where the fairway bunkers have been reconfigured.  Another 6,000 square feet of ryegrass went down here in the roughs.  I love this area.  One bunker and two fir trees were removed here and it is now a nice open space.
If you're on the grounds this week you will notice a lot of paint lines and a lot of scalped down turf.  Take another look at the master plan if this is confusing to you.  If you look at the plan, you will see there is many areas that are fairway turf which today is roughs. Here you see our Jacobsen 1880 scalping out the expanded portion of the fairway on the top of 18.  The timing for this process is absolutely perfect.  Many of the areas we scalped down look perfectly fine.
Remember this diagram from the master plan showing the area between 9 and 18 as fairway........well today that is pretty much a done deal.  Next weeks blog will be all about this process so check back in then to see some more pictures of it.
Lastly, we played around with our new flymo this week.  Actually, it's an old flymo, but we put a new lift kit on it that makes it mow at 4".  So far I'm very impressed with the result.  We mowed some of the fescue eyebrows with it and here's the end result.
It is still shaggy and a nice rustic look but you wont loose your ball in it.  I think this might be the ticket for cutting the eyebrows.  This year we will start experimenting with some growth regulators on these areas to hopefully minimize the frequency of this process.

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