Llanerch Golf Course and External Activities

With the weather being unseasonably warm, we are installing Belgium block curbing. In the above picture, you can see we are working on the island between the Clubhouse and Golf Shop. We are hoping to finish by tomorrow. We are also cleaning up golf course in hopes we can open tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

We came to the course with a surprise 2 inches of snow! With all the wind yesterday, we were preparing to open the course today but were stopped in our tracks. That being said, I expect the snow to melt quickly. We will keep you updated as to when the course will reopen for play.

The week has been divided by us chasing the remaining leaves and aerification. In this picture you can see that we are deep tining the greens. We followed it with rolling and mowing the greens for the last time this year. We spend the rest of the week on irrigation winterization and cleanup.

Yesterday, we took covers out to the range tee. The right side of the tee has bermuda grass. The rest of the tee is a mix of bent grass and various types off fescue. The bermuda is the only "warm season" grass of the bunch. It, like most people, does not like the cold. We installed a turf cover to keep it safe from high winds and keep it a bit more warm opposed to not being covered. We are hoping that will keep it from "going south" when we take the covers off in the spring! 

Earlier this week, we had Aradar Tree Service remove the one of the two sawtooth oaks on the left side of 7 tee. Over the years it had grow to the point that it was "shutting down" the left side of the tee box for a left to right tee shot. It was also in declining health. Now, the left side is wide open! Next up, cleaning up and planting hedges along 6 tee.

Yesterday, we aerified fairways. Today, we are focusing on the approaches to the greens. We will be pulling soil plugs and shoveling them up. This reduces thatch and helps the soil "breath". Next week, we plan to aerify tees.

Over the last few days, we have been spreading sand! Each Fall, we spread over 125 tons of sand on fairways to smooth out the surface, increase drainage and improve the soil. We broom the sand into the canopy to help achieve these goals. We are just about to finish the last few fairways by Monday.

After over 27 days, we finally received almost an inch of rain! Some of the low lying fairways and rough are wet but carts are available today! As we prepare to topdress fairways next week, we will be concentrating on cleaning up from the winds overnight.

After a spring and summer of what felt like it rained every other day, we have run straight into a mini drought. We have no significant rain in over 21 days. The dry has great for the bent grass on greens,tees and fairways. It is a little bit tough on some areas in the rough. We are are spending most of our time hand watering in these localized dry spots. The trees are doing all they can too to get any water. That is why you see some brown grass at the base of the trees. If the forecast is right, it looks like Sunday and Monday will be the first chance for rain. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

In preparation for the Llanerch Cup last week, we trimmed the fine fescue on the bunkers.We also added some sand to a few bunkers. We will continue to edge them later in the month. This week's focus is preparing for Championship Saturday! 

We started to aerify 18 fairways and the par 3 fairways today. As you can see for the picture above, we are pulling a 1/2 inch size plug. They should heal in about 10 days. The rest of the fairways will be aerified in November.

As we continue to heal from aerification, the staff is rolling the greens with more frequency to try to smooth out the putting surface. It also helps us provide a cleaner cut. With all the recent sunshine, we have seen the greens begin to heal quicker. 

We have just finished the aerification of the greens, approaches and tees. The course will be open today at 8:00am. The size of the holes on the greens are medium in size and already healing. We will be aerifying the fairways in the first week of November.

Two weeks ago, we installed some bermuda sod on the range tee. We have been spreading sand on it and rolling it to smooth it out. We will start mowing it next week. We are hoping to open it in the very near future.

After a heat wave and close to 2 inches of rain over the last 36 hours, we are doing a mild aerification of the greens. As you can see in the first picture, the holes are a little less than a quarter inch in diameter. We starting to roll the greens to make them smooth again. This procedure will help the greens breath and dry out faster. 

The Grounds Department has been mainly concentrating on daily maintenance with one exception. We removed the tree near the 9th tee on the left side to "open" the tee shot more to the golfer who hits the ball more left to right.  We did this in conjunction with trimming some large branches all the fence line on the 9th for safety. Next week, we will be trimming the hedges behind the 6th green to increase the amount of morning sunlight.

Well, Saturday was interesting! at 4:45am we had a light passing shower and the course was fine. At 5:45am the bottom dropped out! We received almost 1.25 inches of rain in about 15 minutes! This picture above is of the radar just before the storm hit. After some frantic clean up and squeegeeing, we were able to open the course at 12:00 noon. I appreciate all the patience everyone afforded us!

We have been very busy since the sudden change in weather. We went from rainy, cloudy and in the early 70s to blistering heat, full sun and record high daytime temperatures. . The long term weather looks to cool down after today. We are staying focused on the process of grooming the course for daily play. Hope to see you on the course!

This cloudy landscape has dominated the last two weeks. The forecast is calling for the sun to return for a brief appearance on Thursday. We are taking this time to continue fine tuning the property for daily play, install new horticulture around the renovated Golf Shop and open the pool area.

For the last 3 days, we have been spreading sand on the fairways. This helps the fairways drain better, smooths out the surface and give the ball more roll. We will finish today once the 5th fairway is completed.

Today, we spent some time deep tining tight soils in some fairways. The deep tine is 8 inches long and a half inch in diameter. It goes much deeper than a traditional aerifyer.The tine increases water movement and increases needed gaseous exchange in the soil. 

After a snowy March and rainy ending to April, we are finally seeing the course wake up! We are concentrating on sodding a few small areas where we did some tree work in the early spring and preparing the course for everyday play. The 9th green is healthy but we will be keeping a close eye on this summer as it faces it's first summer.

We have decided to open 9 green today! I hope to see you out there playing it soon! Thanks for your patience!

Yesterday, we spent the day solid tining fairways. The aerification will help the fairways drain faster, improve rooting and reduce thatch build up. We completed almost all course yesterday and will begin tees and approaches today and tomorrow.

We aerified 9 green today. It will also get topdressed and rolled. It is getting very close to greens height. I feel it needs a few more weeks to mature. I can't see it being closed any later than the end of April. Thanks for your patience!

With the warm weather, we aerified greens. They are very small holes but will improve the health of the soil profile. We rolled them smooth right afterwards and added some sand. We are mowing them this morning. They are very wet from last night's rain but should be playable later today.

Yesterday and today represent more "first" mows on the golf course. We have mowed all the approaches and fairways yesterday. Today, we are mowing all the greens and starting the rough. With a forecast of heavy rain coming tomorrow, we are racing against the clock to get the course as "mowed out" as possible!

Just as we started to mow fairways for the first time of the season, here comes thunderstorms?!?!? It is highly unusual to have thunderstorms in March. We just received 0.3 of an inch of rain in 20 minutes. We have no other choice but to restrict carts today and only hope for better weather tomorrow. The one good attribute about today is that we are still in a "drought" watch in the Philadelphia area. So, we do need as much rain as possible.....just more in the evening and not during the day! 

On March 1st it was 72 degrees and we were mowing the 9th green. Today, its 19 degrees in the morning with  3 inches of snow with a coating of ice. The forecast really only seems to warm up after Sunday. I am hoping that most of the snow is gone by late next week. We will keep you and the Golf Shop updated.

After taking the cover off for a few days, we started to mow #9 green. With the exception of a few very small spots, the green is growing in well. Later this month, it will start being treated just like all the other greens to prepare it for play. We plan to open it sometime in April. Thanks for your patience.

With all the warm weather, we were able to "sneak" in an addition aerification of the greens. We used 8 inch long solid tines to help promote better roots, improve water movement and increase oxygen in the soil. We rolled the greens right afterwards to minimize any potential "bumpiness". 

We were pleasantly surprised by a quick half inch of snow this morning on the course but it won't last long. As the sun comes out, we have already seen close to half of it melt away. As for us, we are spending the day cleaning up stump grindings and filling the cavity with soil. We will continue to trim trees starting tomorrow.

Over last weekend and Monday, we experience some severe winds. As you can see in this picture, a 55 foot Eastern White Pine literally split in half! With the help of Aradar Tree Service and their 100 foot crane, we were able to remove this tree before it fell. We are spending the rest of the week cleaning up all the tree debris from this windy storm.

The snow has all but melted on the course except in some bunkers and isolated areas. We also received almost 0.25 inches of rain last night. The course is very wet, to say the least. We will be open for walking only at 12:00pm today.

As we enter the 2017 season, snow has finally arrived and so has some very cold temperatures. Yesterday it was 9 degrees on the course in the morning. We have used the cold weather and frozen ground to preform some tree work. Saturday, Monday and today will continue to be marked with Aradar Tree Services pruning and removing trees. With very warm temperatures coming back later this week, we are hoping we can re-open the course very soon again.