Gordon River Extension Project Update

The river project is in the last phases of clearing.  I thought a quick picture of what the new look is would be appropriate now.  I'm going to show shots take from the tees moving forward to the green.

The blue tee's view

The white tee's view

The red tee's view

The gold tee's view

The view from the 15th green



As you can see in the picture above, the view from the 15th green is really not that different.  It's a bit more open but not completely bare.  The vegetation in the background is outside of the area that is being excavated so my expectation is that it will remain.

The first Monday closed

Today is the first Monday we are closed and my staff is wasting no time making improvements for next year.  One thing that has been on my mind all season is how low some of the sprinklers have become around the greens.  When the golf course was rebuilt, all of the sprinklers around the greens were perfectly flush with the grass.  The reason the heads are so low now is due to all of the sand that we apply to the putting surfaces to make sure they are smooth.

Here is our new 2nd Assistant Superintendent, Trevor Floyd.  He is digging up green side heads and leveling them to the turf.

Another project going on today is verti-cutting the greens.  #1 green in the picture above has already been verti-cut and cleaned off so you can see it isn't majorly invasive.  It is very important to verti-cut the greens regularly to control thatch and grain, both of which are detrimental to playability.

On the clubhouse front more work continues as well.  Little improvements will hopefully add up to a lot of un-noticed high quality touches.

In this picture you can see this electrical outlet that just looks awful.  I have no idea why this outlet was put here and have never seen anything plugged into it.

So I had Roberto kill the power to the outlet, remove the ugly electrical box and outlet and then plaster over the hole.

Now the entry into the main dining room is neat and clean.

As promised, Roberto keeps working on replacing 20+ year old hardware around the club.  The majority of the rusted out door hinges have been replaced, but while Roberto is waiting for the remaining hinges to be delivered he got a start on some of the rest room hardware.

 

Bomb Squad shows up at CCN

Seriously!!!!  I'm not kidding, the bomb squad came out to the club yesterday. 

As I was cruising up to the front of the Club to check on the flower install that I had going on I noticed what looked like a big delivery truck at the front of the clubhouse.  Then I noticed the name on the truck and saw the little robot rolling round.  Now I'm thinking that this can't be good! 

Turns out that the Thursday morning Rotary Club invited the Sheriff's Office Special Operations in to speak to them.  Next time, I'm thinking they should give us a little heads up so people don't get the wrong idea.

The US Open Qualifying Tournament held yesterday

Yesterday every member would of been so proud of your home course!  It proved to be a lot more course than most gave it credit for when trying to qualify for 5 spots in the next step to playing in the US Open.  With the green speed well over 13 and tough pins, most golfers were left wondering what happened. 

During the pre-tournament meetings with the USGA, it became very obvious that the defense of the course would be solely on the putting surfaces.  A lot of players assumed that at only 6700 yards their 300 yard drives would render the course defenseless.  Knowing most of the players would be hitting long bomb drivers and then try to throw darts at the flags, I had a plan from the get go to defend our home turf - speed, speed, speed!  If you want to get an idea of what the putting conditions were like, take a golf ball and roll it on a granite counter top!  The small size of the greens and the tremendous speeds proved to be more than most could handle.  After rolling several balls off greens a lot of guys got gun shy.  To continue to defend our course, I have been continually cutting the fringe around the green shorter and tighter to increase the ball roll of the approaches and collars.  This meant that if a player started getting really aggressive at trying to attack the pins and missed, the ball would just keep rolling, and rolling, and rolling all the way down the slope, right off the green and to the bottom of the hill. 

It was a great day for the Club.  The comments from the golfers ranged from "what a great golf course, I didn't even know it was back here" all the way to "those are the best greens I've ever played."  One of my Superintendent buddies caddied for his Pro and text me on his way home that he's never, ever seen greens that were that fast.  I have to admit, the greens exceeded my expectations.

I want to make sure everyone knows that Erick, my assistant, is largely to "blame" for the success of the tournament conditions.  He's been a one man wrecking machine getting the course in such great shape.  If you see him around the property, please stop him and thank him for all of his efforts.  There's no way I could of done it without him. 

Below is the link to the local newspaper article about the tournament for those interested.
Naples Daily News Article on the US Open Qualifier Tournament

Gordon River Extension Widening project

The river extension widening project is well underway. Although I can't understand what the contractor is doing with the clearing phase, it's pretty obvious what is going on with the excavation phase. The excavation has just begun and as you can see, they are really getting into their work.

US OPEN SECTIONAL QUALIFIER

As many of you know, tomorrow The Country Club of Naples will host the area's qualifying sectional tournament for the US Open. My staff has been busy preparing for the tournament for a month now. It's easy to host a tournament when the course is as close to tournament ready everyday as it can be.

To get tournament ready I started our in April by slowly lowering the heights of cut on our playing surfaces. The fairways, tees and approaches are cut tight to force the hopeful qualifiers to strike the ball perfectly in order to produce the ball spin they want. For those who miss hit the ball and land off the short grass, the roughs have been allowed to grow up to make it more difficult to strike the ball. A lot of player are going to that "flier lie."

The desired putting conditions for the qualifier is as fast and as firm as I can make them. Because we also have to accommodate member play, as well as reciprocal guest, I have limited the green speed to under 13 feet on the stimp-meter. Trust me, that's all the players will want. To get those speeds we have been double cutting and double rolling the greens twice a day for the last week, even Sat and Sun. Anybody watch the PGA tournament at
Sawgrass this weekend? Their greens are the same grass as ours, and ours are rolling just as good.

It should be a great tournament and spectators are welcome. So please come on out and watch the areas best play your beautiful course. Spectators are not allowed to use carts, so bring your walking shoes and stroll around and see what kind of score the players are shooting. You are allowed to walk the fairways and be around the greens. The tournament committee just asks that you not engage the players and give them plenty of space.

Hope to see you out at the course on Tues.

TPC Sawgrass, a different perspective

Check out the agronomy department's website. Cut and paste the URL address into your browser.

http://www.tpcsawgrassagronomy.com/?m=1

Our latest USGA report card - report link fixed

As promised, here is our latest USGA report card from the recent visit.  Please take a few minutes to read over the report and become familiar with the current state of your course.

The Country Club of Naples' USGA report from April

Golf Maintenance, What's been going on?

It seems like it's been a little while since I posted a true update about the golf course, other than about the birds anyway.  Really, that's a good thing.  If it's just business as usual, then everything is in pretty good shape and there's nothing to tell.  Despite my efforts to hold off summer, it is coming anyway so I thought I would share so recent activity around the club.

Hopefully everyone received the Club's communication about the Gordon River Extension project Collier County has planned.  Well, the project is underway.  The contractor is on site and is starting the clearing phase.  Here are a few pictures I took from the RP side.


In this picture you can see 15 green in the distance

Here is an area that is completely cleared out.

Next week there will be a lot of work done in the clearing phase.  Once the area is cleared out, the contractor will do the earth work on their way back out.  I will be posting a lot of pictures of the project so stay tuned.

A recent addition to my responsibilities at the Club is the supervision of the clubhouse maintenance.  One of the things glaring at me was how bad some of the fixtures around the clubhouse have degraded.  So recently I have had our maintenance person, Roberto, going around and changing out a lot of the 20 year old hardware for new.  The little bit of attention to detail goes a long way for the finishing touches.

Here Roberto is changing out tarnished door hinges with new brass ones to match the rest of the door hardware

20 yr old tarnished brass hing

Installing new shinny brass hinges



Examples of other things that will be replaced are items like hardware in the rest rooms.  This sort of thing does not represent the Club to our high standards.



Roberto will be working hard this summer to do a lot of things that probably will go unnoticed by many, but I wanted to highlight a few of the small things he is working on now that needs attention.  Things like smudge free walls and hardware changes when things look wore out are all stuff that takes constant work!  Hopefully you never notice it, but just know I am constantly looking at the details along with the big items.  My goal is to have the clubhouse looking new all the time.