Opening when?

The Pro-shop has been getting a fair amount of questions on when we will be opening.  I can not give a definite answer on that.  Typically we don't know until 3-4 days before we open.  The rule of thumb has been to mow the greens 2 times before we open, allowing the grass to come out of dormancy before we subject it to traffic and injury from ball marks.  If we maintain this rule, I don't foresee us opening in the next ten days.  The temps next week will still be in the 30's and the greens have not begun to grow yet.  I will let you know when the course will open as soon as I feel comfortable with the weather.  Just a reminder that we do have temp pins out in the approaches on holes 1, 2, 7, 10, 11 and 12.  Feel free to get a few swings in when we get those 50 degree sunny days.

Putting green, Spring clean-up

With all of the ice now melted off of the putting green, we can get a good look at the turf.  The low areas of the green where ice sat for 60+ days definitely saw some injury.

The brown spot in the middle of this picture is a low area in the green where ice sat for a few months.  The lighter brown towards the sides of the picture are mounds in the green where the snow was blown off from the wind - causing the tips of the turf to turn brown due to the cold.

These "puddles" of ice damage are a very deep brown.  I can still see spots of green turf down by the soil.  I think we might get lucky and this will grow out.  Another week under ice cover and these spots would have completely died.  If we do see areas not recovering this spring, we will be replacing the damaged areas with healthy sod from our nursery.

 

The good news is that this damage is only present on the practice putting green.  This was due to the fact that we did not remove the snow from this green to melt the ice a few weeks back.

 

On Monday we started our stick clean-up on the course, preparing and cleaning the course for an opening sometime soon.

We spent all day on 8 yesterday cleaning up debris from the floods this winter, today we again will be cleaning up 8 and 9.  Next week we will be finishing up the remainder of the course.

 

 

Flowers and tee markers

First I want to update you on our new tee marker colors.  Black will be the new "back tee" color, followed by Blue, White and Gold for the "forward tee".

We will no longer have a Red tee marker.  Also, the new tees that were built this past fall will be the home of the white markers.  The course yardages will be as follows: Black - 6842, Blue - 6399, White - 5661, Gold - 5383.  The Proshop has updated the scorecard accordingly.

 

 

 

 

As you may be aware, our Horticulturist - Tim Stumpp, left us for a teaching position last Spring.  We elected to cut that full-time position from the staff to save on labor costs.  The work that is done around the Clubhouse is now done with seasonal labor with direction from myself and my assistants.  Tim always did a great job around the Clubhouse with the flowers and landscaping, we will be continuing that level of product with Tim's help.

 

Tim is currently teaching at the Blanchard Valley Center on Sandusky, his specialty is Horticulture.  Last fall, he and I sat down and came up with a win-win plan for both of us.  Tim along with the help of his clients at BVC are growing most of our annuals for the upcoming season.  They have been growing them from seed in their greenhouse.  Come Spring, Tim and his clients will be planting them at FCC, giving them an opportunity to learn valuable job skills.

The flowers they are growing look great.  I toured the greenhouse today to check on the progress.

In the end, we get wonderful looking flowers and BVC gets a great learning opportunity.

 

 

Greens update

Yesterday was a great "Spring" day.  We started our Spring cleaning on the golf course, cleaning up leaves, sticks and debris around the front entrance of the club, around the clubhouse and also around 9 green.  Also with most of the snow melted I was able to make a walking tour of the course, taking inventory of the winter damage and making notes of projects that need to get done.

The course looks great out there.  We got through winter with very little damage.  Most of the damage is superficial and the grass will make a full recovery with a few weeks of good growing conditions.  We definitely have some damage and battle scars, but overall we made out well.

This is wind desiccation damage on the putting green.  Just like previous pictures of 12 green, these are areas that were exposed to the very cold temps and high winds.  There is green turf underneath, these areas will grow out of this damage with a few weeks of 60 degree weather.

When we removed the snow from the greens a few weeks ago, we did not get to the putting green and 8 green.  There was a few areas of ice the remained on those greens yesterday, being melted completely away by the end of the day.  This is the ice cover on the putting green, underneath I saw green turf.  Therefore, we made it through winter with no damage due to ice cover.

This is the snow mold damage to 1 green.  With it being Pink Snow Mold, this damage is mainly superficial and the turf will recover from this damage.  Again, I can see green turf underneath the damage, come mid-April we won't know it ever happened.

This is some bruising of 3 green due to removing snow with the snow blowers.  This will recover quickly.

It is hard to see, but these are deer tracks across the green (you can click on the picture to get a better view).  This type of damage is all over the course.  This also will recover quickly.

Here is where the deer dragged their hoofs across the green, I need to remind them to stop being so lazy and pick their feet up!

These are the icebergs that were deposited along 8 fairway, it will be a while before these melt away.

 

 

Firewood pile is growing

The guys have been hard at work this week cutting up the logs from the winter's tree removal, most of it being Ash.

We deliver the wood to members throughout the year, the pile was almost depleted.  We now have enough wood to make it through another season.

We see deer on the course frequently, this morning we had 12 of them on 3 fairway.

There was one buck in the group, he still had one antler attached, the other must have been shed not too long ago.

 

 

Fighting fires

This week we have been "fighting fires" not on the course, but with our equipment.  We have had one thing after another break during this past week.  It seems we would get close to repairing one item then another problem would arise on a different machine.

It started last Thursday with our reel grinder, a condenser went out in the electrical box.  This set us back a few days.

On Friday the throttle body on our dump truck broke, parts where hard to come by because of the age of the truck.  We found a local "Good Samaritan" that had some spare parts that helped us out.

Also on Friday the brake line blew on the dump truck, it was rusted through.

On Saturday our snow blower didn't run correctly and we found some loose connections - this only required some special bolts.

Then yesterday we found the log splitter would not run at all, after a few hours of going through all the possible problems, we finally found that the timing belt came off.  This wasn't a big deal in the end, just time consuming when we are trying to fix all the other items.

 

In the end, everything will get fixed, that's why we have a full-time Equipment Manager.  With over $1,100,000 in equipment, these types of weeks are bound to happen.