We have a had a good week of melting on the golf courses this week. There is still a considerable amount of frost in the soil. Many reports around our area say that the frost went as deep as 5'. With all of the water main breaks you hear around the city the past couple of months I would believe it. I can get a soil probe down in the bluegrass about 2.5" and I can get it down about 5" on the greens. So it is starting to melt. Until most of it is out a lot of damage can occur to the turf if there is traffic on it.
Good news on the golf course - the turf has survived the winter pretty well. I do not see any winter dessication to the turf, no snow mold and hopefully when we pull covers off we will see that the greens look very good. We have been able to get a few staples out of the ground to look under the covers. Where we have been able to look under it the turf appears to be in good condition.
We have 1/2 of our seasonal staff starting back this Monday. We have a lot of clean up to do, but if we can get out everyday this week, we should be able to get a lot of raking and stick debris cleaned up.
I have had a chance to tour all of the golf course and the ground is very soft on top. With all of the freezing and thawing I think we will have soft conditions until it rains and drives that frost out of the ground. Most of the sod that we laid last fall on the new construction is rooted down and doing very well. Some of the sod on the new tees we can still pull up. I anticipate that the NW 9 holes will be delayed a little bit behind the rest of the golf course but it should not be too long for you to wait.
I had a chance to get out and fly my helicopter over 2 of the holes on the North Course this morning. I wanted to give you a birds eye look of some of the new bunker work and how it looks from above. It was windy and cold so I did not stay out to long but you can see a little bit of it. Also you will notice 1 area that we still need to do some sod work but it is our intention to get that completed right away. Thank you and we look forward to getting the golf season started.
Rick
