Not frozen yet

We have been able to get done bonus projects done this past week with the ground not being frozen. We have added some drainage to bunkers on Devlin that hold water, edged and cleaned up the clubhouse landscape and also opened up the corner of #7 Devlin. Below is a picture of Jeff clearing that corner. We are going to keep that area mowed down this year to speed up play and open up a better view from the left side of the fairway.

#7 Devlin hillside

Tree work

Over the summer months, we are able to observe which trees on the property need to be taken down. We look at safety, health of the tree, health of trees around them, health of the Turfgrass, playability and other factors. We mark trees that are dead while leaves are still around and also mark trees that are safety hazards. We had a big storm this summer that exposed trees that were still alive, but had become dangerous and prone to fall. We look closely for those trees so we don't put ourselves in a situation where we have to affect play with trees that fall across playable areas in the golfing months. Here are some pictures of some trees we have already removed for those factors.

#11 Weiskopf (3 dead trees removed in front of tees)

Rotted out

Up through #2/3 Devlin

More in front of #2 Devlin tee

Winter golf

During the winter, we have put temporary flagsticks out in the fairway on the Devlin course. They are on holes 1-5, 10,12-14,16-18. When the ground is frozen or in a freeze/thaw we will use the temporary flags to protect the regulation greens. Please stay off the greens during this time. Please skip holes 11,15 on the back as there is no where to put a temporary flag. 

On days where we are not frozen over the next few weeks, the Weiskopf course will be open for play and the entire course including the greens will be available. Please check with the pro shop each day to see if we are on temps or if the Weiskopf is open. Today we are on the temporary flags on the Devlin course.  Thank you for your understanding.  

Snow, Equipment maintenance and Tee Markers

Winter work started a little early this year and so did the questions, "What do you do all winter?"  Well, snow plowing is our everyday #1 priority to keep the walks and parking lots clear. Other tasks include cleaning and painting all amenities such as ball washers, trash cans, tee markers, benches, signs and anything else that needs refreshed. Tree worked is performed as well as any drainage work we can accomplish once the ground freezes. All maintenance on equipment takes place and 2 employees tackle that from mid November to mid March. We have six full time employees including myself that are constantly busy in the "off-season". Please stop down at the maintenance area to see all we have going on in the winter. Below are some pictures of today's work.

All walking greensmowers cleaned and ready to be serviced and reels ground and sharpened

Tommy Wetmore cleaning reels

Kenny changing gear oil in one of the sprayers and winterizing

Mike Baglia paiting the black body on 1 of the 360 tee markers that need painted

The difference of a fresh coat of paint on the bodies(was done last winter as well).  After all the black bodies are done, the colors are painted on and are ready to go in the spring.

DryJect demo on #5 Weiskopf

We did a demo of a different kind of aeration last Thursday on #5 Weiskopf. The machine uses water pressure to create channels in the greens to then fill with sand. This may be an option in the future at Quail Hollow.

The Green sand shows how deep and how well the sand gets in compared to regular aeration

You can see the new white roots from the aeration hole from 3 weeks ago

Our recent aeration has been great for creating channels for air and water to get into the soil

#17 Devlin fairway

You will see #17 Devlin fairway with a roped off area for the next few days. We had a 6" mainline blowout occur sometime Thursday night or Friday morning. It looks like it was an old fix that was done in the past. We have valved down the Devlin irrigation and will fix the break sometime next week as the weather permits.

not good

after water was shut off

Weiskopf aeration

Today we finished up our fall aeration on the Weiskopf course. We aerated the greens with 3/8" cores. On Devlin we used 5/8" so these are significantly smaller and should heal faster. We pulled cores on the tees and approaches and spiked all the fairways. The course will be open tomorrow depending on the forecasted rain.

Jeff Austin aerating the cart barn putting green today

Up close view of green before the sand

Club's phone system and network down currently.

Rain

We received almost 2" of rain yesterday. Throughout the day and last night we got another .1". It is very wet on the course as we still have some standing water on greens, tees, fairways and rough. We will be Cart Path Only today with no blue flags. We will evaluate throughout the day, but with a chance of rain again tomorrow we may be on the path again. Thank you for understanding. 

Men's Member Guest

Last weekend was a great weekend to be part of Quail Hollow's Member Guest. Weather was great, and participants had a great time. A big thanks to our staff in GCM for all the hard work and long hours to provide top notch conditions.

Lining up at #1 Devlin tee waiting for last group on Friday night

Our version of Augusta fairway mowing

Rolling #1 Weiskopf and irrigating hot spots around bunkers

Divot patterns on range

Our range tees at Quail are not that big and by this time of the year they are taking a tremendous amount of play and divots Monday through Thursday on the hotel side of the range and Friday through Sunday on the cart barn side.  I have been seeing a lot of divot patterns that make it hard for recovery quickly.  Please scatter your divots out or use the single row method with grass in between each row.  This helps promote lateral recovery as well as seed.  Please do not hit from an area that causes a whole area to be void of turf.  The only way this will recover is from seed and that can be tough on a sand based driving range tee.  Below is a picture of proper and improper patterns.

Divot Mix

The divot mix in the buckets on the carts and in the bottles has a mixture of sand and bentgrass seed in it.  Please use this mixture on the tees and in the fairways only.  Do not use in the rough as the rough is a different mixture of grasses(bluegrass, ryegrass and fescue) and we do not want anymore bentgrass than we already have in the rough. We fill divots on the tees everyday while doing tee setup, but please do your part and take a bottle to the tees(especially the par 3 tees) to make sure we have the best tee surface possible.  As always, feel free to contact me with any questions.

Devlin yardage markers

The Devlin yardage markers, from the flip down stakes in the step-cut, to the discs in the fairways were anywhere from 3-15 yards off.  We have used a yardage gun to shoot these yardages to the middle of each green.  The discs in the fairways 6-18 are now correct and we will be making sure 1-5 is finished tomorrow.  Once all of discs are correct, we will move the flip down stakes so they match up to the correct yardage as well.  In the meantime, the stakes have been removed until they are correct.  More new ones were ordered as well.

Storm damage

We had some storm damage from last night. Some big trees fell around the course and there is debris everywhere. We are open for play with greens being cut and sprayed, cups changed and tee setup being done. All other efforts will be do dedicated to storm cleanup.

#1 Devlin Fairway

#15 Devlin

#8 Devlin Fairway

#8 Devlin by the cart path heading to maintenance shop

New 2014 Equipment

In the past two weeks we received 2 new greens Toro Triflexes and a Toro ProCore 648 aerator. The greens mowers have 14 blade reels and have no hydraulics going to the reels. The aerator is state of the art and is one of the best pieces of equipment made in the last ten years. We have beeen borrowing one the past two aerations and the recovery and quality of holes is greatly improved with this machine.

Karen trying out the new mower

Up close on the new greens mower

Toro ProCore 648 with Core Collector

Update on rain

As of 10:30 Wednesday morning we are at 5.1" of rain and counting for the last 42 hours. Devlin will remain closed all day and Weiskopf for a while until the rain stops and drys out a little. 

Rain

As of 5:00pm Monday night we were already at 1.3" of rain. I'm sure by now we are well over 2". It's going to be a wet couple days so please obey the cart rules and allow the course to dry out.

Jeff unclogging the drain on #7 Devlin

Why the drain needed unclogged

Weiskopf halfway house

The landscape around the Weiskopf halfway house needed a major upgrade. We started this spring immediately around the building with the bushes, grasses and roses. We mulched and made the area look much better, but the whole area coming from # 6 Weiskopf still did not look good. We gave some of the seasonal employees a task to make it look better, gave them some leeway and they made it look great. Thanks to Eric and Doug Jeddy, Ken DiCillo, Ross Dawson and Matt Thomas for turning an eyesore into a much better area.

Before

After

Sprinkler heads all at once

This morning we had a broken hydraulic pipe at around 9am.  With our old irrigation system on the Devlin, this caused all the sprinkler heads to come on all at once.  Once the hydraulic system loses pressure there is no way to get the sprinkler heads down without valving off the system and waiting for the water to bleed out.  It is one of those worst case scenarios. We wanted the golf course to be as dry and healthy as possible during this heat stretch and adding extra water is not what we intended.  Everything will be alright and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused on the Devlin golf course this morning.  If you have any questions please give me a call or send me an email.  Thank you.

Cart barn putting green aeration

Today we finished up our spring aerification. We had done both courses and the other two putting greens this spring, but had left the cart barn green untouched so there was always a putting green without holes in it. We will leave it closed for a few days and have it opened for the weekend. This is the only green we did and the other 38 are in great shape and will not have a core pulled on them until fall. 

Bunker project

The bunker project on the Weiskopf course is starting to wrap up. The crew from Golf Creations did a great job and would have been done in less than two weeks. Weather the past two weeks delayed them from spraying the last 16 bunkers with the Better Billy Bunker polymer liner. The moisture in the gravel must be less than 15% and they have to have a certain temperature to get a good spray. They have worked the past two days trying to finish the project this weekend. The ones that are complete turned out great. We will do everything we can over the next few months to pack the sand. The new sand will be fluffy for a short amount of time until it gets packed in much better.

Golf Creations spraying the polymer

over 400 tons of sand were delivered yesterday

#3 Finished product from the tee

#4 Finished

Sand bottles

In the past there have been sand buckets with seed on the par three tees. This year we have removed the buckets because we are filling the divots everyday with sand and seed as part of the morning setup. This allows the divots to be taken care of daily and one less thing for the mowers and setup guys to move. As part of morning setup, they are trained to empty trash, move tee markers, seed and sand divots, change water coolers and check ball washers(this has been added as it was not getting done ). Please still take sand bottles from your cart to fill divots on the tees as there will no longer be buckets. We are working with the pro shop staff to make sure the bottles stands on #7 Weiskopf and #10 Devlin will have replacement bottles when you are out of sand. 

Valve project coming along

One if the main reasons of the capital valve project was to completely isolate the irrigation on the Devlin course from the Weiskopf. The valve that shut down the Devlin would not shut all the way. Precision Golf came in and put a new valve to isolate the Devlin. Between 8-10 more isolation valves will be replaced or added and all the holes that have been dug will be gone. They should finish up early next week.

8" main shutoff valve for the Devlin

Bunker project

The Better Billy Bunker project will now start on Monday, May 5th. With all the rain forecasted this week it has been pushed back a week. We have all the drainage supplies and polymer material at the shop and ready to go. Golf Creations out of Chicago is the company doing the project and their equipment will be rolling in all week. We will be doing all the green side bunkers on the following holes on the Weiskopf course.  Numbers 3,4,6,7,8,13,14, and 17. We also will be doing the fairway bunker on 6 as well. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Better Billy Bunker Polymer at the shop ready to go

Big Day

The greens on the Devlin course were deep tined aerated today. An outside company brings in two machines and the process takes about 7-8 hours. We were able to go about 7-8" into the greens which is about 1-2" deeper than last fall. Since the Devlin greens are "push-up" greens, they are native soil and have no internal drainage. We did not pull a core this spring, but choose to create more deeper channels into the greens. This should help push roots deeper and allow water into the greens. A 0-0-50 fertilizer was also applied to the greens today. With Devlin closed, we were able to mow all the approaches, fairways, step cut and all rough on the Devlin today.

The greens on the Weiskopf were lightly topdressed as well this morning. We also continued with spring cleanup, more mowing and the capital valve project. The fairways on all 36 holes were also sprayed with plant protectants, fertilizer and pod annua seed head control. 

Deep Tine Machines in process

Finished product after sand and dragging 

Ray Hartman spraying fairways

Good look down #14 Devlin fairway from the green

Snow melting

The snow yesterday and this morning has melted off and we will be ready to go once we thaw out in the morning. Lots more cleanup work, bunker repair, greens being mowed and sprayed are on the agenda for tomorrow. Here are some pictures from today.

Snow on #1 Devlin around 11am

Snow melting on #2 Weiskopf

Looking back towards 2 devlin from 2 weiskopf

Ready to get this mulch out!!!