A Week Of First

It has been a busy week of firsts for the season. As usual everything hits at one time durring the transition out of winter into spring. We have been begun to get the golf course back in playable condition for the upcoming season.

This week we have changed cups, removed winter debris from bunkers, put out tee makers, fertilized greens, mowed selected fairways and even aerified many areas on the course.

Last spring we started with an earlier than usual aerification of selected areas and this year I have carried that process forward. With all of the renovation work that has taken place over the last several years, I feel there is a need for additional aerification to alleviate some of the compaction from the heavy equipment utilized.

By the end of next week weather permitting I am hoping to have all of the fairways aerified. This is a slow process because it is being done in a manor not to effect play. We will try to aerify one or two fairways a day and cleanup right behind so that it looks like we never did anything. This different approach works now since it is mid March and we are having limited play.

We will still be performing our normally scheduled aerification April 12th-15th to the main play areas. The bonus early aerification will go a long way to help with recovery from all of the construction traffic the course has been subjected to.