Llanerch Golf Course and External Activities

The golf course sustained 4.75 inches of rain over 48 hours! The winds knocked a great deal of the leaves out of the trees. Oh, it also knocked down a few trees, too! We have roughly 10 trees down through out the property. Some are along fence lines on Steel Road, Edmounds Avenue and Township Line. Others around tees and greens. Some parts of the black and cyclone fences will need to be replaced. None of the greens, tees or fairways were damaged. The construction on #9 green held up great. We are planning to have our arborist out starting on Monday. We have to wait that long for the course to be dry enough to accommodate the tree trucks. The course will be open for play after 12 noon tomorrow. The carts will only go out if the course continues to dry out over night. I will be adding another update tomorrow. Sorry for the delay. We lost power at the Grounds Maintenance Facility (not restored) and back at my house (just restored). Most importantly, I hope everyone and their ...

   Well, it looks like we are staring right into a Frankenstorm! We are doing all we can to prepare for a storm that might either be epic in proportion or amount to some minor rain. Or something in between! We are preparing the golf course for the worst. We will be applying products today that protect the turf from all the diseases that might result from heavy rain. We are also going to tamp sand down in bunkers in a pursuit of reducing bunker sand wash outs. Staff will be checking all the drain basin to make sure they are clear of debris to promote as much storm water draining into the creeks and ponds as possible. All these tasks will work to some extent but if we get hit hard with several inches of rain over a long time period, it might not be enough. We are just hoping the storm moves away, dissipates or just simply misses us. I believe we will have a better idea on Saturday when the updated forecast models come out.      

Today, we started to sod the fairway and approach on #9. It will probably take close to 2 days to get all the bentgrass sod installed. We will then add the tall type fescue sod. Our goal is to be finished construction by this Friday!

We are spent yesterday adding greens grade soil to the greens complex. The construction company also worked on edging out the fairway bunker. We are spending most of the day preparing the hole for the installation of irrigation. We are planning to smooth out the soil that was built up on the left side on Wednesday and Thursday.

The weather has been very wet which slows down construction but we have been able to keep moving forward. As you can see from this picture, we have shaped out two new bunkers and added drainage. Drainage work is also progressing for the green. Today, if it does not rain, we will finish drainage on the two green side bunkers, add top soil to the surrounds and have 50% of the green drainage done.

The tropical storm that came a few weeks ago created some disease damage to the rough. We have used the last 14 days to slit seed the rough with tall fescue and bluegrass seed. Some of the seed has germinated and we are hoping to see more germination with in the next few weeks. You will also notice that we are using divot mix in the rough on a few hole to "jump start" the seed. As for #9, I am meeting with the golf course architect Stephen Kay today to review the progress of the project. We have to bring in and shape roughly 30 more tri-axles of soil to get the shape that Mr. Kay has designed.