The agronomy staff has been working hard to take advantage of the opportunity to accomplish a few key projects around the course to improve playing conditions for the upcoming season. The biggest opportunity that we get each year to do this is when the growth of our turf ceases or significantly slows down during the months of December, January and February. This frees our labor force up from the routine maintenance that takes up so much of our time during the season.
Each year, we assess the status of slow draining areas on the golf course and attack the wettest areas that have the largest impact on how the golf course plays. The areas in the rough on the left and right side of #3 green have been chronic wet areas for the past few seasons so we decided to start here first.
The left side of the green was completed at the end of last week with a total of 270 linear feet of 4" perforated pipe installed. Today, we are in the process of capping our trenches on the right side of the green with sand and sod today and the linear measurement for this area is 145 feet, bringing our total amount of installed pipe to 415 feet. Both areas are already a little bit drier than they were before, however, since the area was already wet, we will likely not see the full benefits of the drainage until early this summer. We are excited to have this process started and our next project will be on the 15th fairway in the landing zone, about 120 yards back from the green.
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| The mainline for our herringbone design on the left side of the green. |
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| Fingers running off the mainline. |
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| A little visual of the entire area. |
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| Left side all done. Pipe, gravel, sand and sod installed! |
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| Getting ready to start the right side. Sod removed and ready to dig! |
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| A lot of ground water in this area, the first scoop we took, the hole filled up with water. |
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| Notice all the water already moving through the trench. |
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| Digging the final finger of this area. |
