Heritage course opener

The Driving Range and the putting greens are officially opening today on the Heritage course 4/8/2017.  A quick turn around in one week especially considering the temperature was not high.  Full sun melted or softened the snow enough for us to shovel off and prepare the turf.  

 

When will the Heritage course open?

15 Red tee still has snow on it, the right side of 15 is still snow covered, 13 green just melted off 3 days ago but snow remains behind it with ground frost making cart traffic impossible plus 7 green still has a snow drift on its right side.  The 60 degree temperatures this weekend should melt it off enough allowing the remaining ground frost to melt out of the soil.  The ground will then drain and have an opportunity to firm up enough to tolerate traffic.  

Signs, ropes and traffic directional stakes will go out this week and the Heritage will be open by next weekend.  

After I shoveled the rest of the Heritage greens off on Thursday the sun melted the frost layer out.  We were then able to run the brush reels on the greens to clean off excess sand.  We followed that with a mow using our sacrificial sand reels at the higher than normal height of cut.  This process really cleans up the putting surfaces and stimulates spring growth when temperatures warm.  

 

 

We also mowed the approaches and tees on Friday, just skipping the surfaces still under snow.