Friday, January 9, 2015

New Year, New Projects!

Happy New Year from the TPCSR agronomy staff!  With the holiday season behind us, we are excited to get a few new projects underway in the next few of weeks.

Foggy morning at TPC, highlighting the sun's rays. 
First up, is a few in-house drainage projects.  You may have noticed already that we installed some drainage along the cantilever of #10 cart path where water seepage was a constant issue year-round.  Our charter members may recall that this has been an issue tracing back to the days when the course was newly constructed.  It will be nice to not have to drive by and look at a mud pit any more.  We put in 200 feet of pipe to capture any water coming off the hillside towards the cart path and tied it into a drain at the bottom of the hill.  As with any drainage project, we expect to see the full benefits beginning next season after the area has a chance to dry out this summer and begin next winter with a clean or I should say, dry slate.    

New drainage along #10 cart path.
Next up, beginning Monday the 12th we plan to begin installation of 500 feet of drain pipe on the right side of #11 fairway starting about 165 yards back from the green and going all the way up to around the 85 yard mark.  These two projects will kick off our season of doing as many in-house projects as we can before summer time mowing frequencies and other maintenance start to take over our time.  If you happen to be playing next week, please be mindful of where you land your balls on this fairway as this can be somewhat of a blind shot where you run the risk of hitting into our team working on the project.  

The new OB stake style is pictured on the left and the old on the right.  
Another project that we are excited about is the replacement of our out-of-bounds stakes.  The existing ones made of wood are over ten years old, rotting internally, falling over crooked and covered with faded paint.  We have chosen to upgrade the design with a little more sophisticated detail that will reflect the style and quality of the course a little better.  Our staff has been hard at work with the chop saw, router and a few gallons of white paint.  Once the stakes are complete, we will begin installation on the golf course, slowly completing the project between our other projects and routine maintenance tasks with the goal of complete installation by May 1st.