Hawks Landing 2008 Greens Staff

I would like to introduce to you the staff for 2008. We are missing two full time employees and one part time from the picture, but they will be here soon.

Small and mighty is what I like to say. We always seem to do what most clubs accomplish with half the staff. Our staff is very dedicated to the club and work very hard to meet or exceed the expectations that I set forth.

A little background on the staff.

I have a father and two sons, 4 cousins, one employee has been here since 2001 and all have been here for at least 3 seasons.

Jerry, works in the background as the equipment manager. You may never see him but he is very valuable Hawks. He is in charge of all equipment maintenance, budgets related to equipment and proper performance. You would not believe the scope of this position and without him we would never get off the ground.

Scot pictured here alone top left is my First Assistant. Scot has been an employee of Hawks for 3 seasons. His first year he served as a crew member and made a life changing decision to return to college. He attended Michigan State which is one of the top turf school in the country and received a degree in Turf Management. While attending MSU he completed an internship at Baltusral Country Club which hosted the 2005 PGA Championship during his internship. In 2006, Scot returned to Hawks Landing as a First Assistant. His responsibilities as vast and very demanding. I am fortunate to have him back again

Jose picuted in the group shot on the far left has been promoted to the Second Assistant position for 2008. Jose has been an employee at Hawks for 4 years and has a very good eye for detail. He has moved up thought the ranks, is a good leader and respected among the crew.

The 2008 season is just about to start we are all working hard to get the golf course in shape and we all look forward to seeing you soon

Course Opening 2008

Finally we are seeing a change in the weather and it looks like spring is finally here. At least for now. I have started a crew working on the course we are very busy cleaning up the golf course if you have had a chance to walk around you might have noticed that there is a lot of damage around the bunkers from the mice. These mice burrow into the grass and make tunnels in the grass to survive the winter. We will have to rake up and in some spots even resod some of the damage. We are also cutting and clearing some dead trees on the golf course.
Today, I am actually mowing some fairways using a verticutter to try to clean up some of the snow mold areas. I was able to grow out the sample that I removed from 15 fairway. This is a good sign in that some of the snow mold did not kill the crown of the plants. I still feel that we will have to reseed a few areas in the fairways. The greens and tees for the most part look pretty good. This time of the year I have to take things a little slow and not "push" the turf to much. the ground temp is still very cold and the grass will not really start growing until the ground is around 55 degrees.

We plan on rolling the greens and tees on Wednesday and then mowing all greens and tees on Thursday. The fairways will all be verticutt and then mowed hopefully friday. I would like to mow everything again on Monday then open the golf course Tuesday.