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.
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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.
