Course Update – September 2nd
The month of September is a challenging one for the Turfcare team. With the return to studies the staff has seen a reduction in size of over 50% daily. Keeping up with the details and the expectations of the course will be difficult. On a daily basis to prepare the prime playing surfaces we rely on having a minimum of 15 team members. This does not include other items such as spraying, watering and mowing rough. On any given day for the remainder of the season the Turfcare team will be lucky to have 12-14 staff available. Many items will become reactionary and our main focus for the remainder of the prime playing days will be to care for the greens and work our way out across the property from there.
This is a good time to remind the morning golfers of the pace of play policy in place to allow the small team size time and room to prepare as much of the course as possible for all members. We will continue to hold members who are playing the front 9 quicker than 1 hour and 45 minutes. Waiting on the game of golf for maintenance moving forward will not be efficient and with the reduction in team size we need as many efficiencies as possible to keep the conditioning acceptable.
Bunker raking has been reduced to one or two days per week. With this knowledge members can assist the conditions by simply taking your time to rake a bunker if you have played in it. Not raking bunkers is an unacceptable practice that continues to take away from the property this season. The condition of bunkers for the remainder of the season will fall heavily on the membership to care for.
Greens while the focus are beginning to see a reduction in rolling with the staffing numbers. We will continue to mow greens daily until we see frost and growth slow. Green speeds will fluctuate daily depending on if the rollers are able to go or not.
We would like to thank the team members who have returned to studies for the help this summer and wish them all the best.