The course was officially closed on May 23 to begin all the work associated with converting the Farm greens to the new Champion G12 Ultradwarf Bermuda. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 10th week (9th-week post planting sprigs) and a lot of progress has been made since we embarked on this project.
#5 Green Complex
A lot has been said in previous posts as to what was involved in the reconstruction of this green complex and why this work was needed to make this green more playable with the new Ultradwarf surface. The green was planted on June 27 and is now four weeks old. The gravel layer of the two new bunkers have now been treated with the Better Billy Bunker polymer and filled with new sand. The green was aerifed last week and a moderate layer of topdressing sand was applied. When the course opens on August 18 this green will be just a little over 7 weeks old and as such, this green will be visibly behind the remaining greens that were planted some 25 days earlier.
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| #5 7-21-17 |
Short Game Area
Once the construction efforts concluded on #5 our contractor quickly turned his efforts into making the various new improvements to our short game chipping and practice putting area. The newly improved area was effectively enlarged by removing the large concrete cart path that once bisected the area between the putting green and the chipping green. A new chipping green was constructed on the area closest to the clubhouse and the chipping area around that green was expanded slightly towards #2 green. The new green was designed to simulate the #7 green on the Farm course. Two new practice bunkers were created in front of the old chipping green and the three previous bunkers were all filled in. The area around the new green and the old green was sodded with Zeon Zoysia and the few remaining areas in the corners were sodded with 419 Bermuda. A small area of overflow parking was created near the old chipping green and #1 tee. The two chipping greens were sprigged on July 13 and will only be 4.5 weeks old on August 18 and will therefore not be open for practice until sometime in early September. However, the putting green was one of the original greens to be planted and it will be open for practice putting and limited chipping on schedule.
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| The New Chipping Green with Mix Installed |
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| Brooks Turner examining the new Better Billy Bunker Polymer |
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| New Overflow Parking |
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| Chipping Greens 1 Week After Planting |
#14 Bunker Reconstruction
After the short game area improvements were finished the contractor set his sights on making improvements to the bunker and surrounding green slopes on #14. The purpose of this change was to allow golfers a better opportunity of shooting at the back or right side pins on this green. The old bunker had a lot of severe sloping that added to the kick effect of balls landing short of the green. To achieve this goal the bunker was lowered some 2.5 feet and the mounding between the new bunker and the green was all but eliminated. While lowering the bunker the contractor ran into a significant amount of bedrock that had to be chipped away, which resulted in another three days work of unplanned work. The end result is a bunker that most will not even know was completely rebuilt but one that will play much fairer for all those shots that land just short of the green.
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| Rock Removal |
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| #14 New Softer Bunker |
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| #14 |
Collar Sod - Latitude 36
As we worked through this whole process a lot of people on their way to the range would ask why the collars looked so bad. The old collars were sprayed out at the same time the greens were sprayed but were left unplanted until the very end. This was in an effort to limit any contamination of the sodded areas into the sprigged areas as the sod would have greatly out competed the sprigs throughout that first 6-8 weeks. The collars were the last thing the contractor worked on and the last collar was planted on Friday, July 21. The new collars were planted with Latitude 36 Hybrid Bermuda that has a slightly darker green color than 419 and has shown to be slightly more cold tolerant than 419. The new collars will take another 4-6 weeks to get the height lowered and the surfaced smoothed down to a suitable collar quality.
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| Removing the old collar |
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| Latitude 36 grown beside 419 under the same conditions |
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| Collar removed and ready for planting |
Low Areas on the Original Set of Greens Planted on June 1, 2017
With everything that has taken place throughout this project, our only real hurdle has been to overcome the weather. The heavy rains early in project totaled close to 20 inches before the tap shut off. We were fortunate that the rains had little washing effect each time we went out with the new sprigs. But the heavy rains along with all the additional irrigation required to grow in the sprigs did apparently create some difficult grow in conditions in the low areas on the greens. These areas have been slower to grow in than the higher areas of the greens throughout these first few weeks of July but we are now seeing some notable growth in these areas and expect them to catch up with the remaining healthy portions of the greens by sometime in early August.
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| Watering the new Latitude 36 sod along side of one of our thin low areas |
Going Forward
The next several weeks will be spent trying to establish all the new sod and get the newly sprigged greens turned into something that more closely resembles the high - quality putting surface the Members will expect on opening day. The current mowing height on the greens is set at .130 and if all goes well it will be lowered to .120 this weekend or early next week. Next week we plan to conduct our first vertical mowing followed by a topdressing sand that is finer than the one used during the early stages of grow in. Each week after that will see the same process repeated at slightly lower mowing heights and slightly finer sands until we reach the opening day where we expect the greens should be smooth, uniform and stimping around 10.5 feet. From there we do expect the greens to get slightly better in the month of September as they continue to grow-in and we continue to focus on the final conditioning of the new surfaces.
