Welcome

We developed this blog to provide golf course maintenance information to our members. From projects, small and large, to updates on course conditions, we want to provide as much information as possible. Although we hope this blog answers all of the pertinent questions regarding our operation, we always welcome more personalized dialogue. If you have questions beyond the information found on this blog, feel free to contact our golf course superintendent, Trevor Hedgepeth.

thedgepeth@kinlochgolfclub.com

804-840-8320


Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Aerification Is Next Week!!!

With aerification coming next week I found this great video explaining in detail the importance of aerification to golf course greens in particular. This process holds true for all of the playing surfaces, but is most critical for maintaining healthy greens. I hope you can take the time to watch the entire video.



We are mixing the aerification process up this year by poking a month earlier than the traditional final week of April. This year’s aerification timing is a test and we hope the soil temperatures will aid in a speedy recovery. This change will allow more healing time for the greens before our annual Member Invitational and will prevent having to close the golf course for a week in the peak of spring. This spring we will be aerifying greens, rough and deep tining fairways. We have been working on the tees and approaches during the winter months to help firm up all surfaces and take advantage of the topdressing that we continue to spread on our bentgrass fairways. Over the course of the past eleven seasons, our aggressive topdressing program has continued to firm up our fairways and aid in drainage in these heavy clay soils.

We will yet again, contract out the cultural practice of dryjecting our greens. Dryjecting is an innovative way to use a high-pressure, water-based injection system that blasts aeration holes through the root zone to fracture the soil, while the patented vacuum technology simultaneously fills holes with amendments. This process in combination with traditional core aerification will continue to relieve compaction, increase water infiltration, reach the root zone with oxygen and amend our soil profile all at the same time. This will help us create a healthy root zone to prepare us for the summer months and tournament style playability on the greens.

The weather forecast looks great, and we will work diligently to ensure a speedy recovery on all playing surfaces.

Monday, March 21, 2011

The Cottage Putting Green is ready for seed and sod!!!!

Construction of the Cottage area putting green wrapped up over the weekend. This green will add another great place for members and guests to fine tune their game. There probably won’t be any late night wagering going on once this green opens!!

The process of staking the green’s outer edge

Shaping begins

Filling the cavity with sand

Floating out the finished product


Stay tuned for a timeline of photos once the green is seeded in the next couple of days!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Winter Projects Are Wrapping Up!!

The golf course is starting to green up and all of our winter projects are coming to a close. The next series of posts will help bring everyone up to speed on our improvements throughout the winter.

14 Tee Expansion


We finished up the much needed expansion of the teeing surfaces on number 14 at the end of January. As you can see from the above photo, previously the narrow tee boxes caused for divot laced areas in our most used sections of the tees. The old complex had just two tees, in which the back tee played host to the black and gold markers, and the forward tee had the remaining three sets.


The new complex has created three separate surfaces. The back tee is a touch larger in width, the middle tee is almost double the previous width and the forward tees will now be separated up front. This additional space will aid in divot recovery and options for tee placement throughout the season.

13 Tee Walk

Last week, we completed our project on the thirteenth hole to help aid the walk between the blue and white tees when traveling to the fairway. For weeks, loads of dirt were hauled to the section to subtle out the severity of the walk between the two tees.

Before:

After:

Stay tuned, as we will be updating our blog in the upcoming days.