Wedding in the dominican

After 4 years of dating we finally said our "I do's". I want to thank the club members for giving us such an amazing engagement party back in the summer. We spent 10 days in punta Cana for the wedding/ honeymoon. A total of 27 family and friends attended our wedding. Here are a few pics from our trip.

Tree work

IWith all the rain, and the fairways too wet to aerate, tree work has started around the course. We are currently working on holes 6-8 right now. We are raising the canopy of all the trees that are along the cart paths, and even removing a few pines to let sun in on a few holes. It's been a tough winter trying to accomplish all of our winter work due to the excessive amount of rain.

Rain, rain, and more rain

It's a little wet out. If we could just get some cold weather to match up with all this rain there would be a ton of snow. I will tally up the year end rainfall next week. I'm pretty sure we will hit 100" for the year. Happy new year everyone!

Random morning/ evening shots

Putting her to bed

We spent this last week pressure washing and waxing all of our turf equipment for the winter. Most of the machines have had their oil changed, and next comes the grinding of reels and bed knives. The 6" of rain last week has put our fairway aerification behind. We will attempt to do as many holes prior to the ground freezing.

Wildlife

It always nice to see wildlife enjoying the golf course. These guys seemed to have a good time running up and down 10 and 17.

Greens aerification

I'm a little late posting this, but greens were aerated the first week of November using a 1/4" tine. This is the first time we have done this small of a tine in the winter. We are hoping that we can increase some play over the winter as this size tine doesn't affect ball roll. Greens were topdressed as well using a damp medium sand. Come march we will either use a graden verticuter on greens or aerate using the same size tine.

Core collector

We purchased a core collector for fairways. This machine picks up the cores after we aerate the fairways. This will save a lot of man hours, as before we manually picked up the cores by hand. With all the wet weather we have had this fall, we are behind schedule for aerating. Hopefully before the ground freezes for winter, we can make a dent in some fairways.

Finally some frost

This mornings low was 32*. We actually had a light frost back in September . This will slow the grass down a bit and we can focus on some other much needed projects around the golf course. Greens aerification is the first week of November, with fairways right behind that. Tees were wrapped up last week with some fertilizer applied to the roughs. Another round of fertilizer will be in 2 weeks applied to 30 acres of fairways.

Native areas

We have begun to mow our native areas down for the winter. We have about 10 acres of native fescue grass around the golf course. I am also applying a herbicide to clean up some weeds that have established themselves in these areas. The goal is to keep them weed free so they look good come spring.

Recovering from back surgery

It's been 3 weeks since my surgery, and I feel great. This was a tough summer for me working with a bulging disc. It's been said, the best way to judge a manager is how well his crew performs while he is away. Thankfully Irvin was able to keep the crew going while I was recovering. I am slowly getting my energy back and look forward to being 100% by spring. With 13" of rain in the past 2 weeks, we are slowly getting the course back in shape. Please be patient while we continue to mow the golf course.

Insect repellant

I just want to remind everyone that uses bug spray to please spray yourself on the cart paths. Deet  is very toxic to bent grass as you can see in the photo below. You can actually see the foot print where this was applied on the 10th tee during the women's classic. Over time the bronzing should go away.

GSGA top 60 women's classic

Last week we hosted the top 60 women in georgia. A lot of course preparation goes into setting up the course. We started most mornings before 6am so we could stay out of their way. Congrats to Avery George who one the tournament at -1.

Wild flowers

The wild flowers that were planted behind 18 green are starting to explode right now. This gives a nice color contrast to the back of the green. We also planted flowers on 15 and this fall we will explore more areas to seed. Over time, the golf course will evolve with more color. Stay tuned.