Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Electricity was restored to our building and more importantly to our irrigation system last night. The rest of the club's electricity was returned today. Many thanks go out to John Gillenwater for getting us a generator to run the irrigation and allow us to water greens. Thanks also go out to our Facilities team of Wes McIntyre, Brian Bingham, Brandon Moore, and Jeff Sanford. (I apologize in advance for misspelling any of these five names.) John brought us a generator within an hour of getting off the phone and the facilities team had the water pumping shortly thereafter. This allowed us to hand water the greens. The facilities team also provided power to our gas pumps that allowed generators to run and our equipment to keep working. I must also thank Chris Welles for watering greens following the irrigation being brought back on line as well as the team at Smith Turf and Irrigation for grinding some bed knives for us while the power was out. Thanks and Great Job!
This week has been trying but overall we were lucky to dodge a lot of damage from the hurricane. We lost 5 trees in play and a few in the wood lines but no damage was done to tees, fairways, greens or irrigation. The greens received no erosion damage mainly in part to the barriers that were installed in anticipation. The rain has done wonders for all turf areas and the quarry is very full. Our staff has been diligent in cleaning up the trees and all of the debris left behind from the storm. We have still been busy focusing on greens and readying the course for Friday's opening. Greens have been mowed four times now and are really growing in nicely. Fungicides have been applied weekly as well as before and after the hurricane and fertilizers have been applied once a week to keep the greens aggressively growing in. The hurricane has thrown a few curve balls but we are pushing forward and crossing our fingers for the rest of the storm season. The club will be open for business tomorrow and I hope you have a great labor day weekend.
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| Half of this double tree fell on #3. We will evaluate the health of the tree to see if we have to remove the rest of it. |
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| The large pine to the left of #2 Green barely missed the bunker and the green. |
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| Erosion barriers were installed to prevent damage from heavy rains |
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| #15 green is really taking shape |
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| Lots of debris to clean up following Irene |
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| Kevin Mark, our new Assistant Superintendent, is mowing #12 green under the watchful eye of our Equipment Manager, John Anderson. |
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| The third cut really starts to make the green look good. |
