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.