New Practice Green Open!

Those of you that have been following our progress on the south end of our practice facility, you have probably already noticed that the second green officially opened up for play last weekend.  The green is still only 16 weeks old and has been completely grown in using aerification plugs from our existing greens.  

South end practice facility.  New green in the background and existing chipping green in the foreground.

This green will eventually become our South-end practice putting green in the coming months but for now, it is our chipping green as the trueness of the surface needs a little bit more time to mature.  In the meantime, it has become dense enough and strong enough to handle regular foot traffic and pitch marks from balls.  We wanted to offer our membership a variety of options to practice their short game this season thus, we have accelerated the process and temporarily made our chipping green in this area (which was grown-in the exact same way in 2010) the putting green as the quality of the surface on this green is much truer and more conductive to ball-roll right now.

The turf is still filling in and has come a long way in the last 16 weeks.

We are slowly dropping the height of the new green to match up with the rest of the greens, right now they are 75 thousands of an inch apart in height.  We will continue to implement cultivation practices such as topdressing, verticutting and frequent mowing which will promote the quality putting surface that we desire. 

Fresh mow on the green, right before the inaugural cups were cut.  The area around this green will be removed and replanted in September/October.

 This fall we will continue the renovation of the south end practice area by removing much of the remaining bentgrass that was left over from the old green and growing in a new approach area between the two greens using fairway aerification plugs that will be used to pitch balls over the bunker onto the chipping green.  The smaller areas on the left and right hand side of the new green will be converted to rough height as to frame the green a little better.  This project will wrap up by switching the two greens back to their original chipping/putting designations at the start of the 2014 golfing season.   

Inaugural cups are cut and the green is ready for some chipping action!