Busy Two Weeks

It has been a while since my last posting and it has been a very busy two weeks. I have posted a link to the club's blog site in the right hand margin that has a weekly construction update I do for our membership, as well as some other interesting material relating to the project, especially the commentary on each hole from Tom Lehman.
The golf course is completely engulfed in construction right now ranging from turf removal and rough grading to greens construction and sprinkler installation. Duininck Construction has drainage and gravel layers installed on the 6th and 12th greens.


12 green with drainage

Greens 15 and 17 have been cored out and are close to being drained. Greens 14, 13, 8, 5, 3, 4, 11, and 10 are all at various stages of rough grading. New fairway bunkers are popping up throughout the golf course as well.


Fairway bunker on 8th hole

The irrigation installation is also in full swing with a little over 50% of the course having the main line installed and pressurized.


Main line valve installation

This week Leibold Irrigation has started pulling pipe and installing sprinklers on 12, 16, and 15. By this time next week our old irrigation system will be shut off permanently.

My seasonal and full time staff have found plenty of things to stay busy with, including scalping bluegrass for the sod cutters, removing ornamental beds to make way for the new 18th fairway, applying Primo around trees, fencelines, and anywhere else that will save us time from mowing and string trimming. Jeff and Kevin have helped Erik Christiansen with irrigation staking during his two visits also.


Jeff, Kevin, Erik Christiansen, and Dave Lindsay staking irrigation on hole 5.


This week we have also started to work on scalping our fairways in preparation for the Basimid application. We have lowered our height of cut to .300 to start with and started verti-cutting at .600 below surface. We will keep working the height down and opening up the canopy as much as possible before we aerify and then apply the fumigant.

Each day and week gets more exciting as we work through the golf course and one of the more exciting things we found in my opinion was old aerification holes and sand layers from the old pre 1996 6th green while drainage was being trenched in last week.


White silica sand from old aerifications and sand layer below from some previous activity.

Old Greensmix Depths.....

As long as I have been employed at Edina Country Club there was always the question of, "what is wrong with those greens?" I could always give the answer of we think it is this or that. The "birdbath" areas that prevented water from draining off the putting surface was always pretty evident, especially during the spring of 2009.
Now that we are getting to see the old greens de-constructed and get some definitive visual evidence that was always suspected. This past Friday and Saturday Duininck Construction started to carefully remove the old greensmix (sand) from the 17th green. Other greens that have been de-constructed have shown some irregularities, but not to the following degree. Construction Superintendent Travis Quisberg notified me of three things that he found in the green on Friday night and I took the following pictures on Saturday morning.

1. The original greensmix in the right middle part of the green was 17" deep. (USGA construction specifies a depth of 12") This was an area that was usually very dry.


2. The original greensmix in the front middle of the green was 7" to 8" deep. This was an area that was usually very wet.



3. A substantial clod of dirt was found in the greensmix. (Any number of reasons during construction could have caused this).

We will keep investigating as we move along through the rest of the greens and see what else we find.

On a lighter note, we witnessed some of the baby wood ducks leaping from their nesting box in 4 pond on Monday morning.


Here is one of the babies making its first nose dive into the pond!!!


Mom with some of her babies

One Week into Construction

7 Green Rough Graded

It has been one week since construction began and everything is moving very quickly. The first green (number 7) has been rough graded and you can now see the shapes of the bunkers and how they will tie in around the new green. Trees are being removed to make way for new bunkers, fairways, greens or anywhere that they will interfere with the playability of the course or the turf quality. Tees are being stripped off in preparation for laser leveling and/or reconstruction. The irrigation pipe has been staged throughout the golf course, and we should see a lot of installation happening this week.


Irrigation Pipe being Delivered

Congratulations are in order for our Architect Tom Lehman who won the PGA Senior Championship over the weekend in a playoff with Fred Couples and David Frost. Even after his victory, Tom was on site at 10am the next morning ready to look at the work that had been accomplished so far. He explained his vision for the bunkers, greens, and angles of shots so that nothing was repeated and each feature and hole was unique. Here is a picture of Tom standing close to the middle of the new 15th green where a Red Oak was removed. Good luck to Tom as he heads to Columbus, Ohio to play in the Memorial Tournament.


Tom Lehman reviewing 15 Green Drawing