2018 ???

April Snow showers, you always here well we live in Wisconsin but it has been a long time that we have had a spring start like this year.  I started our irrigation system,  mowed just about everything by April 5 last year.  The season will start soon enough we all know better days are ahead.  On the postive note our greens staff has done a lot of behind the scenes detail work over the last 2 weeks.  The course is in pretty good shape right now we just need some warm weather.

The lack of snow cover this winter has really browned out the turf.  There has been some growth recently but the wild temperature swings have not been very helpful for spring start up.  I have yet to mow any turf on the course with the exception of fescue. I have most of our staff in place with 1 full time seasonal and 1 part time positions to fill.  This  year has been a challenge to find anyone willing to work this year.  I have had at least 10 no shows for interviews.  We have just enough to get by right now, the search will continue to fill the remaining spots.  It is hard to believe that not 1 high school student at any of the local schools has responded to our flyer we have posted on the job boards at the schools.

We have been able to work on our bunkers this spring .  There was very little washouts and no standing water.  We packed the sand on the faces and made sure we had 4 inches of sand in the Better Billy Bunkers around the greens.  We will continue to prepare the bunker with smooth faces, the sand will continue to pack over time.  Please when raking the bunker only use the back of the rake to smooth out footprints and do not exit the steep faces this will help keep the faces undisturbed and smooth.

We have made very good progress with mowing down the fescue this spring, in a lot of areas this is the 2nd mowing.  Next week, we will be treated bunker banks and fescue with a pre-emergent herbicide for annual weeds.  Once we have growth to approx 4 inches we will treat with a broadleaf herbicide as well as a grassy weed product.

Last week, we solid tined all the greens using a small tine and rolled all the greens.  The plan was to core the greens Monday but that is not going to happen due to the weather.  We made progress on the firmness and water holding last season,  We need to continue to move forward this season creating vertical sand filled channels to allow for good air movement and improvements in soil water holding.  As you can see in the photo the channels are filled with clean sand packed in tightly using blowers.  It is obvious that this channel is drier than the rest of the profile.  The more clean vertical channels the quicker the surface will dry down with less moisture in the top few inches.  The plan this April would be to solid tine the greens at the end of the month  filling this channel with new sand.  We will then core aerify all the greens in early September.  Our goal is to continue to reduce organic matter in the top 3 inches, use small solid tine aeration on a monthly basis throughout the season to keep proper air exchange.  I understand aerification is a sore spot, this is a commitment to the health and playability of our putting surfaces and can not be overlook. It takes of a lot of time and manpower to complete this process. We are committed to providing you with firm, smooth and fast putting surfaces we can not do this without sound management practices.

I look forward to seeing everyone very soon on the course

Neil

2017 Year in Review

Another excellent golf season has come end.  This has been my 17th year here at Hawks Landing.

Every season is different which is one of the exciting parts for me. My focus is to provide our membership with a well conditioned firm golf course daily.  We have implemented many new strategies in the last few years to do just that.  There is no status quo in maintaining a golf course, especially as the course ages.

This season we have been addressing the organic matter and excess water holding in the greens with very good results.  We will continue the profile testing for years to come and will evaluate what management strategies need to be implemented.  This testing provides us with valuable insight and an excellent plan to follow.  In the upcoming seasons we need to continue our focus on fairways and tees as well.  Our soils very extremely rocky which poses many challenges for organic matter control.  We need to look at alternative management practices that will help remove excess organic matter.  The problem is not going to go away by itself we need to be very proactive in order to provide the membership with quality playing surfaces.  Additionally, this is not an overnight fix, it took many years to become a problem.

It has been a crazy weather year as well,  This spring started fairly normal but then the rains started.  It almost seemed like we lived in the jungle with multiple  3+ inch rain events in a short time frame.  Every time we were able to have the course playable it rained again and again.  We were very fortunate this summer  had fairly mild temperatures.  The saturated conditions and excess heat would not have been a very good situation. Late summer came along we went thru a time span of  moderate drought conditions.  Onto fall with the start of our recent bunker renovation compared to last fall the temperatures were quite chilly.  This caused some delays in our renovation work. During Phase 1 bunker renovation most seeded areas were filled in by winter this year very little seed has come up.


Staffing is and will be a serious problem in the years to come.  It is very difficult in the current job market to find staff for summer months.  My Assistant will be moving on to another opportunity.  This in itself will be very difficult to find a replacment.  The turf programs across the country have seen a drastic decline in enrollment. I strongly believe that Hawks Landing is an excellent choice to learn and gain valuable experience now the challenges begins in finding the right fit to fill this position soon. 

All in all this season has been very rewarding and with all the progress we have made I am looking forward too 2018

We have completed our bunker renovation project with a few odds and ends to complete yet this fall.  Some of the bunkers on the back 9 were very large and posed many challenges for maintenance as well as playability.  We looked at each bunker, evaluated its purpose, issues, and what we can do to increase playability for the higher handicap player and still create varied shot options along with enhanced placement of the hazard for the skilled player.  I believe we did just that for the phase 2 work.  Holes 11,12,15 have dramatic changes that have been well received this fall by many members.  I removed a total of 4 bunkers on holes 11,14,17 these bunkers were not in play.  Compared to the Phase 1 front 9 bunker renovation we laid a lot of bentgrass and bluegrass sod.  In total 10,000 sqft of sod was laid down and about the same amount of seeding done.  We harvested sod from the golf course to better match the existing turf.  The weather this fall has been challenging to get any seed to germinate the sod has already started to root well.  We will have the seeded areas roped off until we have a good stand of grass in the spring.  I did my best to keep most seeded areas outside of play.  The sand in the new bunkers is very soft at this point. I am confident that the sand will firm up over time. Moving forward we all need to focus on smoothing out our footprints using the back smooth side of the bunker rakes and exiting from the low side of the bunkers.  During this renovation I also focused on correcting a lot of the very steep exit and entrances of the bunkers. This should no longer be an issue.

 I am very proud of our staff for all the hard work they did to complete this project.  Golf Creations also did an outstanding job.  This was a very rewarding project that I firmly believe has enhanced our great golf club to a new level.  I am very excited for the upcoming golf season.

I would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and a great holiday season.  It has been a pleasure to prepare the golf course for everyone this year and look forward to continuing our progress that we have made this year into 2018.

11 green before/after

14 green before/after

12 green before/after

15 green before/after

17 frwy bunker removal

17 green bunker rebuild

Bunkers

I am sure everyone is ready for a good stretch of weather.  It looks like we will finally be able to get in some good golfing days very soon.

We have been working on finding the best technique to rake our bunkers this year to provide the best playing conditions for all. Over time, the new bunkers will continue to improve.  The one thing that is for certain even with all the rain events the bunkers have no standing water and have very minimal washouts.

 I have always raked our faces and slopes of the bunker the new sand really smoothes out well.  Moving forward with all bunkers I would like to ask everyone to not use the tooth part of the rakes especially in the new bunkers.  Smooth out your footprints using the back of the rake only.  This is very easy to do and takes less time and the finished product looks great.  We would also ask that you do not exit or enter the bunkers on any slope.  Always enter the bunkers from the low side and replace the rake on the low side not on the slopes.

  I feel this procedure will provide the membership with the best playing conditions over time.  The less distribution to any slopes will reduce the chances for plugged balls.

Thank you

Neil

2017

I hope everyone is excited for the start of the 2017 golf season.

 We are planning on opening the course this Wednesday weather permitting.  I started most of our full time seasonal staff Tuesday, next week the reminding full time staff members will be here. This week we were able to roll and mow all the greens as well as rolled all the tees.  The golf course has wintered well with very little damage.  We are still working on cleaning up debris and have yet to rake the bunkers. This spring we are also solid tining all the fairways and lightly vertical mowing before the first mowing.  This process is moving along well.  The new Better Billy Bunker wintered as expected with very little washouts.  Our plan is to renovate the back nine in late October 2017.

Over the last 2 season, I have noticed an increase in excess moisture in the putting surfaces. This has lead to reduced surface firmness.  I have been looking at many different solutions to this problem but the missing puzzle piece is a good set of data numbers,  the only way to do this is send in core samples to a lab. My yearly soil testing does not show what is going on below the surface and soil structure.   We need to understand why the greens are holding water, less firm and reduced green speed in the late afternoon.  The greens are typically great in the morning and into mid day as the day progresses,  I believe the excess moisture tend to swell the organics in the profile which leads to increased softness of the putting surfaces   

The lab I chose to do our testing is International Sports Turf Research Center.  The information gathered will be used to develop sound agronomic decisions for the health of the greens and provide the membership with firm and fast conditions.  The results show we have lost considerable air pore space with the increase in organic matter. Our water holding capacity has increased over time, I believe to a point of concern.  The only way to correct this is to start being more aggressive with our cultural programs.  I have tried everything possible to not remove larger cores then we have in the past but now is the time for action to get our greens back to the firmness we had.  Over the last 2 years we have core aerified using a .25 inch tine  this impacts only 4% of the surface,  The test reports show we should impact at least 17% this year and continue on the program until we reach desired firmness and organic matter concentration.  This can be done using a .5inch tine in the spring and again in the fall. During this time all holes most be backfilled with topdressing sand. The process of filling the holes with sand is very time consuming and costly.  We will use approximately 800 pounds of sand per 1000 sq ft for a total of 74 tons of sand to the putting greens.  This alone should allow for much improved conditions.  We all have noticed the greens aging over time,  I have had numerous comments as to why the greens seem softer, less firm, slower in the afternoon then they were 4 years ago.  This is a direct cause of an aging green.  I feel we have been very fortunate over the last 17 years without aggressive cultivation but we need to make an adjustment for the health of the greens in the future.

We are planning on closing the golf course on April 10th and opening at 10am on the 11th. We need good weather, for any reason we have rain we will be move dates to complete this process the week of the 10th.  We have a very busy May golf schedule and have determined this week is best.  Cold weather will impact quick recovery, I would expect the greens will take at least 2 weeks to heal and 3-4 weeks to be back to normal.  I am hopeful the "normal" will actually be better than the putting surfaces were before.  We will impact approx 8% of the surface area, core to 2.5 inches deep and backfill using 700-800 pounds of sand per 1000 sq ft.  The sand filling will be the most time consuming process of the operation.  We purchased a special broom and blower to allow us to work the sand into the holes in an efficient manner.  The goal will be to completely pack in sand in each channel, we may have to do some touch up sanding after opening the course to play.   We will do this operation again in the late fall. 

 As the test report states we should continue our normal weekly or bi-weekly maintenance topdressing program supplemented with solid tine aerification on a monthly basis.I have already done this once on the greens 3 weeks ago. 

 This year, I plan on using a knife tine in place of our traditional pencil tines.  I believe there is less impact to surface distribution using the knife tine and more air exchange can be achieved.  The posted photo shows 3 tines the one on the right is our current pencil tine the 2 on the left is a knife tine which I will use this year.  

I hope the membership will be supportive in the direction we need to proceed to achieve firm and fast conditions we all desire. You can not have good greens without cultural programs, our greens have reached an age that we need to have a good plan for our future.  Sure we can keep things status qua but we will only prolong an issue which will only get worse.  We are at a good point right now in a short time with this increase in our current program we will see results.  I have posted a link to our test report for 6 and 4 greens.  If you have any questions regarding the report please feel free to contact me.  I will gladly answer any questions.  I hope to see you soon and look forward to a successful and fun 2017 golf season

 ISTRC report link

2016 year end review

March 11 2016

July 26 2016

  Looking back, Our first mowing of the greens was on March 10 this year and we opened for play on the 28th.  April started off pretty cold and ended with heavy rain.  July was very warm humid and lot of rain and flooding on the golf course. July was a very tough month for my staff with multiple rain events.  We had a lot of cleanup including pumping bunkers and repairing the bunkers. We had another stretch in mid august and early september that it seemed to rain every other day.  We ended the golf season with a great record breaking November. Looking back it was a tough season but our staff did a great job getting the course back in shape quickly.  I feel we had very quality playing surfaces even with Mother Nature against us.  We have a dedicated seasonal staff that work tirelessly this year to provide these great condition and I am very thankful for everyone. 

Our fescue program here at Hawks is doing well.  We have yet to remove all undesirable grasses and weeds but every year we are getting closer.  This year I experimented with roundup and a growth regulator in a few fairly dense stands of turf.  The results were promising, I plan on expanding on this next season. 

Most of the construction on the front nine this fall has been completed.  There are a few projects that we did not finish and will  complete in the early spring.  November had some great dry weather for us to  tackle a lot of small projects on the front nine.  We leveled all the sprinklers heads around every green and replaced some sod around the greens that had creeping bentgrass containment with new bluegrass sod. Worked on squaring off a few tees and adding a little more tee space on 13 gold.  We never are able to complete everything on the list but we made a pretty good dent in it.  I also concentrated on our soil profile issues in the putting greens this November.  We continue to hold more soil moisture than desired. We have been addressing this by solid tine aerification and filling the holes using a granular sand to open up more pore space. We will continue to evaluate our progress in the spring.  After thanksgiving, we core aerated around every green and all walk ons to the tees. We solid tined all roughs on the course.  I am encouraged by our progress in the health of the roughs from doing this process for the last few years. 

 In addition to our solid tine program on the greens we did a process called drill and fill to a few trouble spot on 1,5,11 greens.  This is a very time consuming task that will be worth the effort in these areas next year. We used a 15 inch long drill bit and backfilled each hole with sand.  This will allow for much improved drainage.  

The first load of our new sand going in

Our front nine bunker renovation turned out better than I imagined.  We removed 4 bunkers and made 2 much smaller and more functional.  The sand has already firmed up. I am looking forward to next season already.  We will have our challenges with the back nine next year but I feel it will be worth the wait to complete the project in the fall versus the spring. The weather is the biggest factor in making this decision.

We continue to work on the course even with snow on the ground.  Currently we are pruning trees on the course and general cleanup when possible.  Our equipment manager has started to work on equipment which is a huge task.  We remain very busy inside the shop repairing everything from the trash cans to our largest pieces of equipment.  Before we know it March will be here.  

I would like to thank all of our members for a great golf season and look forward to seeing everyone soon

Course Update 10/29/2016

If you blinked you most likely missed out on the construction project of our front nine bunkers.  The project lasted 11 days from start to finish.  During this time we softened all the humps in the bunkers, installed the billy bunker liner system into all the greens bunkers, cleaned out the drainage and added the new sand into all the bunkers on the front nine.  We hauled a total of 150 tons of pea stone and 700 tons of new sand.  We also removed or made a few bunkers smaller to allow for enhanced playability and improved drainage.  There are a few projects that I plan on addressing before the end of the season to improve surface drainage away from a few fairway bunkers. The day after completion, we received 2.4 inches of rain before we were even able to rake and compact the new sand.  The green side bunkers performed as expected with no washouts. The fairway bunkers without the billy bunker system washed out in a few areas. I feel we can address most of the washout areas by reducing the surface flow of water into the bunkers.  I am looking at each bunker to evaluate further improvements.  Yesterday and this morning we raked all the new bunkers for the first time.  I feel that over time the sand will firm up and play the same as our test bunker on 5 green.  The photos of the front nine really show the transformation of the golf course.  I am very fortunate to have a great staff that worked many hours laying new sod in the areas that we removed the bunkers.  There is a seamless transition of these new areas and hard to imagine what was even done.

Yesterday was the last day for our seasonal staff, I am down to 2 employees and our equipment manager.  I plan on topdressing and solid tining the greens this upcoming week as well as the approaches.  We have a tremendous amount of work to in a very short time before the end of the season we will be very busy.  

I plan on shutting down the on course restroom on November 2nd and we will be winterizing the irrigation system on the 8th.  

I hope to see you on the golf course in the next few weeks the weather forecast looks to be very good to get in a few more rounds this fall.  

Neil

Construction Update week 1

We have concluded our First week of bunker Renovation with some great progress.  We are taking advantage of all the work to make some additional improvements to the course, As our construction team is working on the bunkers, I am working on these additional improvements.

  We started to work on the greens bunkers first in order to have enough ready to spray the Billy Bunker ploymer.  I would anticipate that we will work to 5 green before spraying the stone layer.

front bunker before

hole 1 new slope 

 Once the bunkers have been sprayed we will install sand into the completed bunkers.  The fairway bunkers will not have the Billy Bunker bunker system under the sand but we will repair the drainage and install new sand.

3 green bunker before

We removed 2 bunkers this week the back bunker on 1 green and the first green bunker on the right side of 3 green. I did the shaping work on the removals.  In the place of the bunker on hole 1 we will be adding some approach and rough.  Hole 3 will be seeded to rough.  We are also removing some rough along the edges of the greens that is contaminated with creeping bentgrass and replacing these areas with the sod being harvested from the old bunkers. We also worked on adding some fairway on the left side of 7 approach just in front of the bunker. This area had a high percentage of contaminated rough also.

We are doing our best to maintain the golf course as we work on the renovation.  I plan on topdressing all the greens tomorrow and the approaches on tuesday. Next week, I plan on solid tining the greens and do our best to complete the tee core aerification.

3 after 

I hope you have had a chance to see the start of our renovation,  I am on site every day I will gladly answer any questions regarding this exciting time at Hawks Landing if you would like to stop by to see me.

Thank you

7 approach work

Update

Our bunker renovation is about to begin, I hope that you are as excited as our greens staff.  Lohman Construction is here and should be working today.  We will have back nine starts daily for the rest of the golf season and there will be a good chance that we will be closing down or setting up a temporary greens on the front nine moving forward.  Once we start spraying the ploymer  in the greens bunker, I may choose to completely close the golf hole to protect the bunker from damage. I apologize for any inconvenience.

The transition to October usually is the start to a few fall projects 

  We typically lay off the rest of the staff the last week in October and really need to take advantage of the time left in the season to work on a few enhancements.  Typically our mowing is slowing down but this year is the expectations.  We have started to mow down the fescue. This takes time and with all the rain it is taking even longer. I have been topdressing the greens weekly for the last few weeks we will continue until late fall.  I have raised our greens mowers over the last few weeks to our winter height.  This allows for much  improved sand penetration into the turf. I have been alternating rolling and mowing the greens over the last week.  Our staff is greatly reduced right now and with the extra rough and fescue mowing we have a hard time mowing the greens daily.   We have completed a few nice enhancements on the course.  The tees on 8,9,13,4 have either been straightened or we increased the physical tee space.   Yesterday we started to work on the rough edge on 7 green and approach.  The rough will be replaced with fairway this week.  

I will continue to update the blog on the progress of the bunker work.  I will also post on twitter daily once the project gets underway @hawksnr

Neil

Update

I hope that everyone has had a great summer at Hawks, this season has had its challenges for us.  Overall, I feel we have had the course in really nice shape when the weather has been on our side.  This year it seemed like every time the course was in great shape we had another major rain event to deal with.  The numerous rain events kept me on my toes this season. there was no less than 6 major rain events that my staff spent countless hours getting the course back in shape. Our staff is a seasoned, dedicated group of individuals that rarely complain even under the toughest timelines and countless hard and long hours to prepare the golf to the standards we have. 

The test Better Billy Bunker, BBB, we installed this spring preformed as expected this season.  With each rain event the bunker took whatever mother nature dealt it.  I honestly feel there was no better year for us to see how the bunker renovation will perform for us.  The photo shows the performance of the bunker after the 7.5 inches of rain we had this summer.  I think we all agree that the project will be very exciting for us.  I  meet with our contractor last week to go over the scope of the project and a pre construction site visit.  We plan on starting the project no later than the second week in October. The sand from all bunkers will be removed, drainage repaired and new sand that we have in the green bunker on 5 will be installed.  All the greens bunkers will have the Better Billy Bunker system installed. We are looking at removing a few bunkers as well;  the first bunker on the right of 2, the bunker on the left side by the woods on 5, and the small fairway bunker on hole 1.  During the construction each bunker will have the ridges and humps removed.  We will be working on a number of holes at the same time during the construction to increase productivity.  Once we start installing the BBB system in the greens bunkers we may either have a temporary green in play or close the hole entirely.  It will be very important to not walk in the bunkers once we start the BBB installation this will cause major delays in the curing process.  I also plan on having back nine starts once we start construction on the front 9.  During the construction process I will give daily updates on Twitter @hawksnr  on our progress. I will also update my blog regularly. 

We will continue to work on our organic matter reduction on the golf course weekly until the end of October.   I will be core aerating all the greens using a 1/4 inch tine on the 26th and 27th.  I will also topdress the greens weekly until November.  The tees will be core aerate at least 1 more time this fall and the approaches will be aerified as well.  This process is very important for the health and playability of the playing surfaces. In October we will move into taking care of the plant and soil for winter survival and playability of the golf course into next year.  Our focus will not be rolling and mowing daily and near tournament green speeds.  I will also start to raise the heights of our putting greens very slowly in October.  There is so much to do and so little time once we get into the shorter days in October.  

If you have any questions regarding the construction process please feel free to contact me directly.  

Neil 

Update 5/13/16

I hope that everyone has enjoyed a few rounds of golf this spring.  The weather has not been the best, chilly with many rain events.

  We have come to a decision on our bunker renovation.  I would like to follow up our letter to the members and discuss in greater detail the upcoming project involving the bunkers on our golf course. The bunkers have reached a point that something has to be done to achieve better playability and improved maintenance.  We have been looking at many options over the last few months to solve these problems.  I am sure everyone is well aware of the fact that even after  light rainfall events our bunkers hold water. 

 This is problem is even worse after major rain events, some of the steep faced bunkers wash out.  These problems have been getting worse in the last 2 years.  Playability is an issue, this is directly related to the current condition of the bunkers.  As washouts happen,  silt from the subsoil along with finer soil plug up the drainage system and contaminates the sand within the bunker.  We looked at several options over the winter to solve this problem.  Our final and best option will be to remove all existing sand, replace and repair the drainage system and install a very advanced drainage matrix system into the green side bunkers, Called the Better Billy Bunker.  We will not be installing this system into the fairway bunkers, but will replace all the sand and repair the drainage as needed. Along with this renovation plan, we will be removing some of the humps in the floors of the bunkers to create a more consistent uniform bunkers.  I have chosen a sand for the project but we will be testing the performance of the sand and bunker system throughout the summer.  On May 27th, we will have our chosen contractor Golf Creations complete a Billy bunker installation in the right green

side bunker in front of 5 green.  This process will take 2 days  to complete.  The first day we will remove all sand and install the first part of the bunker system.  In this process; pea stone will be installed in the entire bunker and sprayed with a proprietary polymer that will need to cure for 24 hours before the sand is installed.  It will be very important during this curing process that no one will enter the bunker.  Once the sand is installed the bunker will be put into play.  The main reason we have chosen this bunker is that; it holds water, washes out after rain events, needs major edging work, and the bunker right next to it performs the same way.  We will be able to evaluate the performance of the sand and the Billy Bunker this summer to make sure we have made the correct decision on the chosen sand and also how the system works.  I feel very confident that the system will work and the end results will be well received.  We have also made commitments for the contractor to start the Front nine renovations at the end of September.  The work on the front nine will be done by mid November and ready for next spring.  We have yet to finalize a start date to complete the work on the back nine.  I will keep you updated on the progress and installation of the bunker system 

The bunkers is not the only projects I have been working on this spring.  We have completed our spring grass and weeds control in the fescue.  There are a few areas that we will be reseeding in the next few weeks.  If it's not fescue in areas we have sprayed this spring. The undesirable grass has been either killed or weakened.  We have some work to do but we are making very good progress since starting the program we currently are on.  

Yesterday, I treated the fescue along the path of 12 and to the right of 15 rough using a growth regulator to hopefully control the growth and thin the stand.  I will be evaluating this over the next few weeks to see if it may be an option in a few other areas.  

The golf course is in very good shape despite the cooler than normal spring and rains.  We have seen a flourish of dandelions in a few areas and are spot treating these. 

We have been topdressing and solid tining the greens on the regular basis this spring.  I will continue to solid tine the greens every 2-3 weeks this season.  This process will help keep with proper water and air exchange in the soil profile. I have also been using an old technique of using a broom mounted in front of our greens mowers. We have 2 of these brooms this year.  The broom stands up turfgrass plant up right before the cutting blades mow the turf.  My observations so far are less grain and a finer surafce. I feel the putting surfaces are very good after brooming.  The amount of clippings in our baskets are at least 1/4 more compared to the mowers without the brooms mounted.  At this point, I am not seeing any negative impacts to the turf.  We will continue to evaluate the brooms and the performance of the putting surfaces going into more stressful periods.   

We are waiting for 2 additional staff members to return from college.  We should be fully staffed by the end of next week.  I hope that you are enjoying the golf course this spring. 

Update 3/23/16

Opening day is on hold for the short term, but we will will be making a decision in the next few days.  If the snow stays to the north our plan is to open the course as soon as this weekend.  My best guess is the course will be open at least by Wednesday next week.

Currently, we have most of the staff here working on mowing and cleaning up the golf.  All greens, tees, and fairways have been mowed at least once and are in good condition.  Even with the few warm days most of the playing surfaces are not aggressively growing. I do not see too much growth until the ground temperature stay consistently above 55 degrees.  We are currently around 45 degrees.



Some of our rough edges along the fairways have a high percentage of creeping bentgrass.  Bentgrass is a wonderful grass when cut below a half of an inch at rough height this grass tend to dominate and is very hard to advance the golf ball.  I have looked at this issue in the past and without a complete conversion in these areas the rough grass has not filled in.  This week, realigned our fairway edges and will start mowing some of the areas as part of our fairways.






We have made very good progress with our Fescue over the last few years. I have applied a crabgrass pre-emergent to most of the fescue already this spring.  Our plan will be to treat for broadleaf weeds and undesirable grasses late spring.  I will be looking at the heavy stands of fescue and treat these areas with additional products to help reduce the density.  The University of Wisconsin is working on a fescue management study on holes 13 and 7.  One of their research studies involves "playable fescue"   I plan on implementing some of this research into our programs.



This week, we just started working on preparing the bunkers for play.  Most likely we will not have all the bunkers completed by opening day.  Once we completed this process we will go back and work on edging.

I am looking forward to a great 2016 golf season and look forward to seeing you very soon.

Update 1/27/16

We have been very busy over the last few months, we have also had a few changes to start 2016.  

Jeff Muller has been my Assistant for the last 4 years and has moved on to Weedman, Our Equipment Manager also has moved on to another opportunity. I have moved my son Matthew into the equipment manager's position.  He has worked for Hawks for a number of years during high school, was enrolled in the Auto Mechanic's apprentice program in his Junior and senior year.  He brings a lot of enthusiasm to the shop. I also moved one of my key employees of 14 years, Armando Arias, to 2nd Assistant position.  He has worked mostly in a seasonal position over the years, I am fortunate to have such a dedicated employee working for Hawks.  I have also hired, Chris Kesler as First Assistant, he has recently graduated from Clarkston College in Minnesota.  He completed internships at Whistling Straights, we are looking forward to his late February start date. 

Even with the staff changes we continue to move forward with our winter maintenance. This year we have a few major repairs that are being done..  We remain very busy in the "off season" maintaining the equipment to operate at its peak performance during the golfing season.  We do our best to reduce any potential down time during the season with repairs over the winter.

This week, I was able to walk the golf course getting a pretty good look at the current conditions.  We have just a little ice in a few areas, at this time I do not feel its anything to be concerned about.  The saturated conditions this december and fall warranted a second snow mold treatment on the greens and tees.  We did not retreat the fairways. This week, I do not see any snow mold on the golf course.  I am actually quite surprised but very happy that we are looking pretty good right now.  With the present conditions, We are very close to the point in the season that we should be looking pretty good this spring.  

Neil

End Of the Golf Season 2015

 All good things must come to an end this year certainly left us all with a lot of good weather to get in many November rounds of golf.  We also were able to continue working outside on many little projects to get a jump start on 2016.  The weather has not been without its challenges for me.  We winterized the golf course irrigation system on a 70 degree day,  normally its so cold by the end of the winterization you can not feel your toes, I will take a 70 degree day over the cold but we had to split up this process because of packed tee sheets.  Everything worked out very well just a different way of thinking through the process.  My other issue this fall has been trying to figure out when to apply our plant protectants for snow mold disease.  The winds this fall have not been in our favor along with the very warm days. We did manage to get everything treated but with the rains nobody is certain we will have the best season long control.  I feel fairly confident in our application but will continue to monitor the turf throughout the winter and may need to reapply if necessary.  Ideally, we would apply our protectants the first or second week in November and not have to worry about things until spring.

On the other hand the weather has been ideal to work on the golf course.  I am sure you have noticed
a nice addition to the back side of the club house with the addition of 5 nice pine trees.  We transplanted the trees from our tree nursery on #4.  12 years ago we planted the pine trees from 6 inch plants.  We still have a few more that we may move onto the course in the future.

after

before

We also completed a few small sodding projects this month on 5,9 and 17 greens.  basically, we removed worn out areas, regraded and installed new sod.  #9 we worked on the rough line that was worn out from the many balls that roll back down the slope from the green.  I was able to grade this area a little to help divert balls to not all roll down the same path.








The addition of our new fescue a few years ago left a few irrigation heads that are no longer needed.
 This fall we removed the rest of the sprinkler heads that have been abandoned on the course.  I also added a few irrigation heads to areas that are hard to water properly.  My goal is to reduce to amount of supplemental irrigation water going into the fescue to the best of our ability.  We will continue to adjust the sprinkler heads for better coverage. In the photo is a perfect example of this.  We replaced a full circle sprinkler in the middle of 5 tee with a part circle that will only water the tee.  We had to move the sprinkler with the addition of a few feet of pipe to make this work properly.  There are limitations to this in that the main pipe system is placed in such a way that we will have sometimes to make major changes.  Right now we are working with what we have achieve better results.  These changes are saving a lot of water each year.  Before we converted the rough to fescue we were averaged well over 25 millions of gallons of water for the course.  This year, we used the least amount of water in 15 years just over 15 million gallons.  We did have a very dry end of September and the first part of October which was very unusual for us.  Our yearly total would have been much lower had we had a "normal" fall.

after

Lastly, you may have noticed the "bunker" on #1 at the start of the fairway has been removed.  Pretty much an eyesore for a few years.  This bunker is not in play serves no real purpose other then visual so we decided to remove the bunker.  I wanted to keep the visual aspect of the feature by steeping the face and creating a nicely formed slope to fit into the hillside.  This area has been seeded to fecue and will serve the same purpose without the look of an unmaintained bunker.

before

 In a nutshell lots of work has been done to continue to improve, enhance the course. We will continue to work outside as long as possible this fall.  There are a few more items that I would love to complete before the ground freezes.

I hope that you had a great year. I feel overall we had some great conditions on the course. My staff did a tremendous job this year and feel very proud of what we have been able to accomplish on the course. As my 15th season comes to an end here at Hawks its always amazes how time flies by I am already getting excited for 2016 planning and preparations for the spring.  I hope to see you very soon  have a healthy and happy holiday season.