Work to Do....Snow or no Snow!

We have been trying all winter to work on a few jobs that we feel are important to the playability of the course.  The one shown here is a drainage project on the lower tee at 4.  This tee sees  lot of traffic from golfers as well as the range.  In addition it is squeezed in between two large stands of trees, and struggles for sunshine.  As though that is not enough, it's primary struggle is with water.... too much water.  The cart path and parking lot funnel water onto the back of this tee in large amounts.

This water logged condition coupled with the other environmental factors can stress out any grass introduced.  We had always had a plan for the 4th and 9th tee to be rebuilt so we held off working on this area.  With those plans delayed and possibly pushed out several more years we decided to revamp the walk on, range walkway and back of the tee.  Unfortunately winter struck, and we could never find sufficient time to work all the issues.   Well here again we hoped to get started, install drains, move soil and sod,  but as you can see the best laid plans are still dictated by nature.

After we dug the drains it snowed.  The gravel company then could not deliver the stone.  Next the delivery of sod was moved due to more snow in Deleware, so here we are waiting on grass to finish part of the project.  We hoped to start grading of the walkway, but now 2" of rain is forecasted so that will be put off as well.

The guys are still working hard to get work done to to prepare for the next phase

This kind of work is not fun, but we need to make progress before the grass starts to grow and take the rest of our time.  The lower tee should be mostly sodded next week to bent grass.  After it roots for a few weeks, we will slowly move play onto those sections and sod out the rest of the tee.   Thanks again for your patience as we continue to make improvements to this wonderful old course.