It’s been a busy year in 2012 already and the time seems to be flying by with everything going on at the Golf Courses. As we all know we had a horrible time this spring with transition at Cowan Creek in regards to the greens conditions. We worked with the USGA on recommended cultural approaches and the Staff implemented a plan that turned the Cowan greens around in a short period of time. They are much smoother and healthier now and continue to get better. We are still not 100% satisfied with a few of the greens and have found underlying drainage problems that were caused during construction that have finally manifested into poor turf quality in low lying areas of the greens. We will continue to identify these areas and address them as we move forward.
Many of the other issues we have dealt with this year so far have been more of the mechanical type failures. Legacy Hills has had to replace two irrigation pumps that went down and the loss of power to numerous irrigation controllers at both White Wing and Cowan Creek due to lightning strikes.
On a more positive note we have been very fortunate to receive some summer rain this year. This has helped out tremendously in the areas that suffered from last year’s drought.
The cultural practices that we have put in place are paying off and the courses
are showing it. We have aerified all of the fairways and tee boxes at each course and are now focused on weed control and detail work in these areas. The greens are always our number one priority and we are finishing up core aerifications on them this month. We have two more good months of growing weather and intend to get everything as healthy as possible before heading into fall.Last year we started working with the Golf Course Playability Sub-Committee so that we could get resident golfer feedback from the perspective of our own golfers. We meet twice a year and tour the courses with the Committee members, Golf Pros, Course Superintendent and the Director of Golf Course Maintenance. We establish a list of items that would improve playability for all golfers and use that as a punch list of items to be addressed by the Maintenance staff. This has been a great Committee to work with and it allows them to see issues that we deal with on the courses and for us to see the playability issues that affect your everyday play.
Another one of our focuses this year has been to get more communication out to the Sun City residents about what goes on behind the scenes in regards to Golf Course Maintenance. In March we introduced the Golf Course Maintenance Blog. www.sctxgcmaint.blogspot.com This is a site that solely pertains to the maintenance and care of the golf courses and includes information in the form of a posted letter or article that covers many of our cultural practices and daily maintenance items. Feel free to visit the site at any time for updates.
