After The Championship

( 2010_08_29 - Looking back on hole 5 )

Congratulations to all the winners this past weekend, we had a great turn out for the entire 2010 Club Championship. Last I heard there were around 195 total players from Wednesday through Sunday, pretty cool if you ask me. I want to thank my staff for a super job getting the course prepped for our biggest event of the year. We had great weather to get the place a little firm and keep the speed up. A lot of people asked me how fast the greens were, we stimped them both days around 6:30am and were able to keep them right around 11. To put that in perspective, we have been able to hold around a 10 most of the summer and rarely fell below the 9.5 mark. USGA Stimpmeter Information for those unfamiliar with what the numbers mean and how it is measured. The other thing we were able to do thanks to my staff was mow all the fine turf areas every morning from Wednesday through Sunday, this kept the golf course in top shape throughout the entire event. I really hope everyone enjoyed a great tournament...

So now that the tourney is over we will start some of the normal end-of-summer practices. Fairways and tees will be aerified soon, and this year we will just be aerifying collars around the greens because of the MGA Tournament being held at IVGC on September 27 & 28. This will most likely push us to do our normal core aerification on greens next spring and then I am considering a deep tine aerification in the fall. As usual though, we will do everything we can to keep the disruption to play at an absolute minimum. 

Also this fall, early October, Hartman Companies will be out renovating the bunkers and approach on hole #7, the tee on #8, and the tee on #4. This plan is to tier the tee box on #8 so there are two distinct teeing surfaces, and make the tee on #4 much larger while re-aligning it with the hole. The space between the two holes will be decreased to about half the size and planted with perennial grasses as a buffer between. The left fairway bunker on 7 will be renovated in its current location while the right fairway bunkers will be filled in and a new bunker will be placed near the 100 yard stake. The green side bunker on 7 will be brought around the front corner a little and built up in the back for better visibility. There is a chance that 18 fairway bunker will also be renovated at that time, but that project is currently on a wait-and-see.

I know things start to slow down around the course once school starts, but I hope everyone can keep on coming out. There is a lot of great golf weather ahead of us.