Llanerch Golf Course and External Activities

We start the last week of April with some rain. If you played the course in the last few days, you know that it was playing a bit firmer than usual. It was because of the sunny skies, low humidity, light breeze and us holding off using irrigation water. This current rain will "soften" the greens and fairways. I also expect to see the rough get really get thick over the next 10 days.

Over the weekend, we opened  9 green for play. The green is still a little slower than the others but will get faster as the season progresses. The green was closed for a couple days this week to allow us to do some more additional maintenance to it. We are opening it today and for the rest of the week and weekend. I hope you like the new par 5! 

We have spent the last three day topdressing fairways to improve playability and drainage. This is a long process but well worth it when comes to the increased ball roll and firmness. Last night, we received close to half an inch of rain but we still have carts today! The rest of the staff has been busy raking bunkers, sodding thin areas in the rough, mowing tees, greens and fairways.  We hope to see you on the course!

The snow has arrived at Llanerch again! We have 2 inches of snow on the ground as of 11:00 am today and its 34 degrees. This day last year, it was 62 degrees! The forsythia were already in full bloom and we had completed installing mulch. I am hoping will we see the forsythia blooms by the weekend and have mulch out by Friday. Then again, with this unpredictable weather, who knows!

Yesterday, we were able to accomplish aerifying all the greens and most of the fairways. We used a 3/4 inch solid tines on greens that went 7-9 inches deep into the soil. This assists drainage, gaseous exchange and promotes root growth. We added dry topdress sand to the greens to fill the holes. We also rolled the greens to smooth out the surface.  The fairways were aerified with a 3/4 inch solid tine. We will start topdressing fairways today and throughout next week. The course is open for play today at 12:00pm.

With the weather going from bad to worse in the past few days, we have postponed greens aerification until tomorrow. We plan to be finished aerifying, todressing and brooming the greens by noon on Friday. This is all weather dependent.  We are hoping to have the course open by noon on Friday. I am sorry for the delay. I will post an update tomorrow to inform everyone on how the aerification is proceeding.

Attached is a picture of the single stem arborvitae shrubs that are going to be planted along the fence on #5 and behind #5 green on Township Line. We spent yesterday planting these same type of shrubs along the fence parallel to #3 tee and some behind the #2 green to the left. The shrubs will help reduce the noise and reduce the view of the street. It will take until some time next week to finish these plantings.