2015 Member Meeting
15 years seems like yesterday when I started here at hawks I would like to thank Jeff for his support over the years. I look forward to coming to Hawks everyday, I have the same enthusiasm I had when I started here. I rarely call this my job, I were so many hats on a given day, its not just about growing grass, most days; I am a electrician, environmentalist, plumber, dad, mentor, scientist, mechanic, accountant, this is what makes my days here so enjoyable. I have to know so many different things and each day is different and exciting. There are days that things go really bad but many days are very rewarding when everything comes together and the golf course plays as intended. I would also like to thank the membership for all the nice compliments as well as support that I receive during the season.
I would like to take a few minutes to highlight a few things from last year. We opened on the 9th of April but the month was fairly chilly and wet. I did not water the golf course at all during april, This year, I actually used less water for irrigation than any year previous. I usually average around 25million gallons of water per year this year we used 18 million of water. Part of this was from the months of April and May but also from the conversion of full circle irrigations heads to part circle heads in many locations on the golf course. I also continue to do my best in maintaining a firm golf course. The buzz word “firm and Fast” is not as easily achieved as turning off the water system. If that is done turf will go dormant or most likely die. What needs to be done is actually a lot of balancing and careful management of the soil to achieve these conditions. I wrote a blog article on this,firm and fast ,
This year was for the most part pretty mild and ideal for growing grass, We did not see any of the poa trivialis going dormant in the fairway this year, but in turn the ideal conditions increased the % of this undesirable hard if not impossible to control grass in the fairways. We have been successful in keeping the poa annua out of most playing surfaces but its just about impossible to control the poa trivialis. We were able to maintain the greens at a very high level most of the season. This year we have purchased a new roller, agrimetal 660, that we will use regularly one key benefit of this new roller its almost double the width of our current roller without reducing the roller performance.
Speaking of new equipment we also purchased a new rough mower that is a large area mower the has the capability of mowing 2 times the amount of rough as our current mowers. toro 4500D, additionally we should be able to maintain the height of cut a little lower than the current model because the engine size allows increased cutting performance. We also purchased a new sprayer toro sprayer and a new bunker rake. bunker rake
Every fall we try to work on a few projects that are critical to the health of the turf and detail work on the golf course that is in need of repair. This fall we completed a lot of work but we were not able to work on any bunkers this fall, just ran out of time due to the cold and frozen ground in November. We were able to repair and level most of the drains in the fairways. I am sure that you have seen the work that was done its very time consuming and mainly hand work to get the slope correct, .drain post We also lowered a few more approaches around the greens to reduce the chance of standing water on the green which could possibly turn into ice. When completed the approaches are back to the original design.
We increased the size of the drop tee on 13 in doing so added a new maroon tee on 16 by removing excess and unused section of 16 maroon tee. We will complete the removal of the excess bentgrass on 16 tee in the spring and seed this area to fescue. 16 tee, The new maroon tee on 13 will not be the permanent location for the maroon tee markers but will be used a times throughout the course of the season.
we had a nice stretch of weather in december, I took advantage of this by cutting down most if not all of the brush around the ponds on the course, I also cleared the creeks on 11/17 and 16. We will treat these areas in the spring to reduce any undesirable growth. There was a lot of dead or dying trees that needed to be removed around the pump house on 10 and near the lower part of the fairway on 10. With the removal of the trees some nice angles were created on shots into the greens. tree work,
Now we have settled to inside work repairing and rebuilding equipment.equipment work. We also spend a lot of time on refurbishing the golf course supplies. This year we made a new set of member tees. In the past we had a gold stripe on either the blue or black tee marker. This year there will be a dedicated gold tee marker. There will be a change to a few of the locations of the black and blue tee markers on the course. Examples; will be the blacks on hole 5 and will be placed on the “maroon tee while the maroon tee will be moved back to the for most part unused tee. Currently,we have score cards referring to the member tees as a stripe when we run out of these we will have the course rerated and new cards will reflect the new teeing grounds. As many of you already know we are changing the flagsticks this year. We had a vote for 2 different styles during the holiday party and the tapered flagsticks won in a very close vote.
In closing, I look forward to seeing everyone very soon the golf course seems to be in good condition at this time and would not expect too many issue as the snow melts we have very little ice issues at this time. I do not have any idea as to opening day right now but would expect that we will be on a “normal” schedule this year. I know that I have discussed a lot of information here tonight so I have publish this presentation on my blog. If you have not accessed and bookmarked my blog it can be accessed through our Hawks landing website. Many of you also follow me on twitter which is a great way to keep updated, @hawksnr, I routinely post to twitter during the season much more so than the blog.
Thank you and hope to see you soon.