President's Cup is Always a Busy Time of the Year

With our annual President's Cup  (Member-Member) coming up this weekend the staff is busy trying to get the two courses into top tournament condition.  In an effort to get to what we call tournament conditions we expect to put in over 400 overtime hours spent on extra mowing, trimming and grooming of the two courses. But in order to get a course into top shape there is more involved than just a little extra work the week of an event.  The past several weeks the two staffs have been hard at work trying to wrap up some small but numerous repair or improvement projects, which includes but is not limited to:

Aerfication
Both courses underwent extension aerification during the month of June.  A second aerification of our fairways is scheduled to begin the Monday (7/28) following the Presidents Cup at the Farm and the following Monday (8/4) at Irving Park.

New Sod at 7 Tee IP

Turf Repairs and/or Replacement

Replacing Shade Damaged Sod

The staff on both the courses has been very busy making repairs to thin damaged areas of turf.  Most of these areas were repaired by cutting up the thin or dead turf and replacing with new sod.  The whole process took place much later this year than we would have preferred due to a very limited supply being offered by our sod producers.  Despite the timing not being to our liking the majority of repairs have been finished at each course with close to 33,000 sf of new sod being installed between the two courses.

Soil Prep

Landscaping
In accordance with our long term landscape plan the Farm staff finished up the new installation of ornamental grasses on hole number 5.  The new plantings included a combination of Little Bluestem, Purple Lovegrass, Pink Muhly grass, and Panicum.  Nearly 6,000 new plants were added to both the left and right sides of the hole and by the end of the summer everything should begin to take on a more mature and fuller look.

New Plantings Going In

Irving Park Course Planning Committee
A new committee has been appointed to evaluate long term planning needs associated with the Irving Park course.  The Irving park course was renovated in 1998 by Kris Spence.  That 1998 renovation was relatively small scale in scope coming in at around 1.5 million and dealt a limited scope of features, which included greens, tees and bunkers.  There has been a lot of discussion as to the drainage needs of the Irving Park course as well as other considerations such as converting to an ultra-dwarf putting surface and how expanding the parking needs at the clubhouse could affect the existing routing of the course.  The first initiative related to improvements and long term planning was approved last year by the Green Committee, which was to contract with Turf Drainage America for a Master Drainage Plan on the Irving Park course. That Plan has now been completed and will serve as a valuable planning tool as the Planning Committee moves forward.  With a myriad of additional issues facing the course beyond just drainage it became very clear early on the Club would need another consultant to help the integration of all the possible considerations on the table for the improvement and strategic positioning of the Irving Park course.  The Committee's first recommendation was to interview architects to aid the club in it's long term planning.  With Board approval the Committee has now interviewed three candidates and has three more on the schedule. The goal of the committee is to have someone selected by sometime this fall who can serve in an advisory role as the Club updates and develops its next Long Term Capital Strategy.