Back to Business as Usual - Douglas Lowe, CGCS

Leading up to the President's Cup was definitely a busy few weeks.  The staff should be commended for their hard work to repair whatever damage Mother nature threw their way and in turn getting the two courses in a very presentable condition.  A few things worth mentioning prior to President's Cup would include:

Building a new walkway for the bridge on #13 at Irving Park

Old Walkway

Old Walkway

The old stone walkway had more than outlived it's usefulness and had been allowed to fall well below a satisfactory level.  As such, it was decided that this area needed to be renovated and it needed to be finished before the President' Cup.

The work was hard but the idea was simple.  Get rid of as much of the unattractive and unnecessary landscaping as possible and go back with a set of simple wooden / brick steps and walkway.  Much of the landscaping was replaced with grass and the usable pieces of plant material were reintegrated into the new design.  The brick pavers were left over from the recent driving range project so the overall cost was less than a $1,000 when everything was finished.

We also continued our work on installing new drainage on the Farm course and as of this week we have installed nearly a 1,000 feet of additional french drainage and storm basins throughout the Farm fairways. The sod has been re-installed on the first set of drain lines on holes #2, #7 and #10 and new drainage has started on hole #6.

New Drainage Drawn out on #6

We had to get innovative with our pond management of hole #6 in order for it to be presentable for the President's Cup.  Algae, grass clippings, other dead plant material  and a lot of silt from the recent storms had it in pretty bad shape going into the week.  Without any help from pond aerators or fountains we found ourselves having to find a way to aerate the water and push everything to one side for removal.  Our Assistant Kyle Gentry came up with the great idea to use our turf blowers to churn the water and push everything to one side.  The idea work ed great and the pond was beautiful for the tournament.

But now that the President's Cup tournament is behind us it's time to shift gears back to standard maintenance mode with a few projects to work in before our next big tournament, which will be the Club Championship on August 24-25. The primary thing we will be working on will include additional drainage projects at the Farm for the next two weeks.  This style of drainage work is very labor intensive so we get as much done as we can between tournaments and once another major tournament approaches we shift gear and go back into conditioning mode.