There might be a couple of questions you might have regarding this project. Why start this now? A couple of reasons. The Bermuda was damaged coming out of winter and is slow in responding. Also, we need enough time to kill a majority of the Bermud and give the Zoysia a chance to root and grow before dormancy sets in.
Why not change ends of the range to the top. A number of reasons I explained to my committee. Cost would be much higher. A dozer would be needed to move dirt and build targets. Hitting balls down hill will increasing ball flight leading to more cost for balls and endangering my staff in our maintenance area. I'm sure we would be required to put up a very large fence to protect the metro link trains from being hit. Logistics of cart travel and walkers would be much more difficult and almost impossible. Shall I list more?
As mentioned in the earlier email, our operating budget does not have the money to fund this project. I had also stated the project would not be worth our time if we did not remove trees to improve turf conditions.
My apologies in forgetting the estimated cost of $ 15,000 in the email. Our staff will do all the work except laser-leveling the tee and some of the larger scale tree work will require some assistance. No additional labor cost will be required. Like anything else we do extra on the course, we will schedule our regular work and plan our extra work accordingly.
The long range mats will be open as much as possible during the process. The short range grass tee will remain open until dormancy so you have a place to warm up.
During the construction, I encourage everyone to stay off of the treated turf. You could track chemicals back onto good turf surfaces such as the practice green from remnants of chemicals used to kill the Bermuda. We have 9 trees to remove on the east side of the tee. One will die from a lightning strike that occurred a month ago and the other is a hazard tree we will be removing. The trees shade parts of the teeing ground as late at 10 a.m. each morning. We plan to keep the shorter scrub material along the creek to provide some separation between the first hole and the range tee but as trees continue to grow, they will be removed as they begin to create shade on the tee. We will remove some trees along the creek bank on the west side of the tee as well. These trees shade the tee from 3 p.m. on and reduces the total amount of sunlight to the turf. We need a minimum of 8 hours of sun or more to have turf that can repair itself quickly enough as we rotate stations through the tee. Additional sun equals a turf that dries quicker and can become playable that much sooner than the past wet, soggy turf that we have experienced on this tee. A drier tee surface also reduces damage from divots during practice time. The work on the tee should get us almost two additional hitting stalls and we should have at least one more days's rotation from the very front of the tee.
The following is a general work plan for the
project.
- Spray the tee with non-selective and selective herbicides. GECC staff
- Scalp and strip the remnants. GECC staff
- Cover the tee and attempt to grow the Bermuda again. GECC staff
- Spray herbicide application again. This total process should take approximately 6-8 weeks. Using soil fumigant could shorten window but might require total shutdown of all weather tees on the long range required by product label. GECC staff
- Install drainage in tee to improve the health of the zoysia and allow it to opened sooner after rain events. GECC staff
- Adjust irrigation heads as necessary. GECC staff
- Till and Laser-level tee. Contractor.
- Install big roll zoysia. GECC staff.
- Tree removal would be occur as needed. Couple potential removals could be during winter season but would need to evaluate. Staff and contractor
· The tee will not be ready for play until mid-May to the 1st of June 2015 depending upon completion date and grow in weather.
As always, I will keep you informed of the activities as they happen.
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