Golf Course Update - December Version

 Leaves, Leaves and More Leaves

As is the case every year, the course has more than its fair share of leaves waiting for removal.  With 2.76 inches of rain falling over the last two weeks it has proven nearly impossible to get the equipment off the path in order to clear and/or remove the leaves.  The Irving Park course always proves more difficult to deal with each season because unlike the Farm there are no places to blow the leaves to, not that the Farm course staff doesn't do more than their fair share of vacuuming up leaves. Instead, at Irving Park every leaf that falls has to be sweep up and hauled off site. As soon as the courses dry up enough to get the large equipment off the path the staff will quickly play catchup.  The leaf situation is always the worst in late November throughout the biggest part of December with the final cleanup usually taking place in mid-January.

 

IP Practice Green

We are getting a lot of questions as to when we will be opening the new practice green at Irving Park.  We are currently mowing the green at about twice the height of what is expected to be our final mowing height and it will take several more months for us to get that height down to where we can provide acceptable green speeds that are comparable to the remaining greens on the course.  The fall and even the winter months are an important time for this new grass to mature and establish a full set of roots.  With that said, we expect to have this green ready for play by sometime in mid to late March next year in conjunction with the onset of the busy spring golfing season.

New Practice Bunker at the Farm

As most of you know we lost the fairway practice bunker at the Farm when we constructed the Teaching Pavillion.  In response to member feedback asking for a replacement bunker to be constructed we did add this project to our Irving Park range reconstruction this past summer, The bunker was opened in late summer and is located on the back tee of the range, and we encourage anyone who wants to practice long bunker shots to utilize this new feature.

      

Cart Path Repairs

We have recently made several repairs to the cart paths on the Irving Park course in areas where we had damage to the asphalt, most of which was a result of tree roots.  We normally make these repairs in the summer months, but with the extensive number of resources we had to dedicate to the range restoration project we just couldn't fit this work into the busy schedule.  We have a few remaining areas to add to the list, but the rainy weather has us in a holding pattern.  One thing we did include in these repairs was a new turn around for the newly routed path at #3 tee.

 

Replacement of Plants on Farm Hole #12

We recently replaced the plant screen material on hole #12 at the Farm where the previous trees were destroyed as part of the DOT Horsepen Creek road widening project.  The same material that currently exist along the left side of the hole was used to fill in the gap and in just a few short years the busy road should once again be gone from the golfer's view.

Leak Irving Park Hole #5

We have been dealing with an unusual leak on #5 on the Irving Park course.  It has taken several months to trace out the source of the leak, but we are now very close.  The source of the leak has been determined to be from a city water line that is underneath the sidewalk on Country Club Drive.  Evidently the leak found its way to a nearby sewer line that was originally terracotta pipe but was lined with plastic pipe several years ago.  The water was getting into the juncture between the old clay pipe and new plastic pipe and traveled across the street and all the way across #5 until it found a crack in the clay pipe.  As this relates to city infrastructure it has taken much longer than normal to identify and fix the issue.  But now that we think we know the source it shouldn't take that much longer to fix and finally get this large eyesore to disappear.

Farm Bunkers

We, on more than one occasion, get complaints on buried lies in the Farm bunkers.  We have several bunkers that are more susceptible than others.  Certain greenside bunkers are positioned perpendicular to the green and balls that come in with a lot of loft and spin can and do plug in the face of these bunkers.  The staff is currently working on ensuring the face of these bunkers has the proper amount of sand and adjusting where necessary.  Once the sand depth is proper then they use our plate compactor to firm the faces even more.  Later on, this winter we will be measuring the depth of all the bunkers and adding new sand, mostly to the bottoms, where the sand is thin. 

Irving Park Range Restoration Finally Underway

 After months of delays, the construction crew from Medalist Golf finally arrived on site this past week to begin the process of putting the Irving Park practice area back together.  While the shaper has been here several weeks the 4 man crew responsible for constructing the features, installing new drainage and irrigation and finally re-grassing the area arrived last week and have been making steady progress.

SOME NOTABLE CHANGES

The club did retain the services of Golf Course Architect Keith Foster to aid us with the new design of the entire area.  A committee that consisted of Mark Davidson, Rick Ramsey, Ralph Allen, Kevin Gunter, David Egerton and staff members has worked along side Keith to reexamine the use of the area, the spatial layout and the flow of traffic.  In the beginning all options were put on the table.  Some of the options that were considered were to go back exactly like before with a path between the green and tee and a path from 18 back behind the practice tee.  Another option that was considered was to convert the range area to a large and mostly flat event space.  A third option was to flip the first tee to the right side and the practice green to the left side.  A fourth option was to convert the range area into a short game area but concern for safety did not allow that design to proceed.  In the end, the option that everyone agreed worked best with the reduced space that we were left with due to the clubhouse and pool expansion was the one we decided to put in place as outlined below.

NUMEROUS CHANGES

• Practice Green Size and Useable Area has Increased Significantly - The old green was around 4,500 sf with about 50% of that deemed usable.  The new green will be 6,200 sf with around 95% of the area useable for practice putting gaining the club around 4,000 sf of extra useable putting surface.
• Cart Staging Area - The cart staging area will be shortened but widened and limited to the area just behind the new first tee.
• Practice Tee - The practice tee will be 8,400 sf and include 12-13 artificial mat hitting stations behind the tee.
• In addition to the steps that lead to the lower practice tee a walkway will be shaped out around the practice green for easy access.
• The range itself will measure 140 yards from the front of the tee to 155 yards from the hitting mats.
• The range will be widened by removing the path currently going up the right side of #1

COURSE RESEQUENCING AND CART PATH ADJUSTMENTS

• Hole Resequencing
• Hole #1 stays the same - Cart path will be located on the left side of the new tees.  We will be experimenting with a limited path design on this hole.  The new path will end just on the other side of the creek and won't pick back up until closer to the green.
• Hole #2 will be current #18 - Paths will be added
• Hole #3 will be current #16 - Path will be added
• Hole #4 will be current #17 - Path will be added
• Hole #5 will be current #2
• Hole #6 will be current #3
• Hole #7 will be current #4
• Hole #8 will be current #5
• Hole #9 will be current #6
• Hole #10 will be current #7 - Better for #1 and #10 starts.
• Hole #11 will be current #8
• Hole #12 will be current #9 
• Hole #13 will be current #10
• Hole #14 will be current #11
• Hole #15 will be current #12
• Hole #16 will be current #13
• Hole #17 will be current #14
• Hole #18 will be current #15 finishing in the parking lot at the clubhouse
• Snack/Restroom house will be situated on new hole #5 and New #13 (old #10)
• New Par - Front 9 par 34 Back nine par 37 (inverse of current layout) 

*** New paths will be installed wherever needed to accommodate the new sequencing

SCHEDULE

• Open the first tee and practice tee - Expected Mid-August
• Open the new practice green - Spring of 2023 (seed in late August - early September 2022)

Blum Headquarters

New #1 Tee

Drainage Being Installed in New PG

Gravel Bed in New PG

Walkway to New Practice Tee

Pond Work Completed Just in Time for Spring Rains

 Ski Lake Spillway Renovation

The spillway pipe structure on Ski Lake (#1 Pond Farm Course) has been successfully replaced.  The original Galvanized pipe had deteriorated to the point if could no longer be trusted on what is the club's only high hazard dam.  The project has been in the works for several years with the permitting process taking well over a year for the approval of our engineered plans.  The pond had to be dropped over 10 feet to conduct the new construction work.  Once the work began it went very smoothly and finished on time despite a few heavy rains slowing us down.  The work is now officially over and moving forward  we just a need a few good rains to get the pond back to an acceptable water level before we start using it again for our course irrigation.

Farm #14 Pond Level

Our repair of the spillway structure last year resulted in the wrong final elevation of the pond level.  This was due to leakage in the pipe over a long period of time, which gave us a faulty survey reading of the true lake level.  As such, a new riser was added to the new system this year at no additional cost to the club to bring the lake water height up to it's proper level.  The pond on #14 had to be lowered several feet to add the extended structure, but that work is now complete and we expect once the pond is full this addition will result in a much more attractive pond and a lot more water, which is important as this pond also serves as a primary irrigation source.

Additional Storm Drainage #11 Farm

Water flow from the additional road widening on Horsepen Creek road has added to our storm flow demand on the left side of #11.  This actually has always been a problem going back the 2009 renovation but the roadwork definitely added additional storm flow and siltation.  We have hopefully alleviated this problem by catching the the water as it comes onto the golf course and not allowing it to travel all the way to the singular basin in the low area at the turn of the dogleg.

Preparing for the Spring/Summer Season

Both courses have received preventative treatments for spring and summer weeds.  Both courses are now working on installing mulch in all our landscaped areas.  In total the staff will put over nearly 1500 yards of hardwood mulch between the two courses.  Nearly 3,000 bales of pinestraw will follow this in May.  The Irving Park greens were aerified in early March and are now nearly 100% recovered.  The Irving Park staff recently completed the large task of adding nearly 200 tons of replenishment sand to the bunkers.  Of course all this work and much more is done in conjunction with routine maintenance of the two courses for daily play.

Irving Park Range Renovation  - Tentatively Start Repairs May 2

We are tentatively scheduled to begin putting the Irving Park back together on May 2nd.  This of course is very dependent on the clubhouse contractor completing enough of his work, so that he can get range area cleared of trucks and materials.  Once the work does begin we expect the renovation work to last approximately 6-8 weeks.  The scope of the project currently includes redoing everything from the first tee to the practice green to restoring the range area.  Everything will be put back together very similar to what is was before construction damage with the exception of the practice green which we expect to be significantly larger and more usable.