Hello Bentwater, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I wanted to take a moment today to update you on the Grand Pines bunker project.  We will begin today taking down the construction site in the country club parking lot and this will continue through the weekend.  We will be removing the 40' container and all the small tools left in that area and moving them to the back of the maintenance shop at GP.  Starting Monday 12/4 we will begin removing sand/gravel/drain pipes from holes 9 & 18.  Jeff Blume will be on property to oversee the rough shaping of these bunkers.  I think what you will find is that the bunkers will remain relatively close in shape and size to what is existing.  However one change you will notice is that the grass line will be lower on many of the existing bunkers.  What has happened over the years, after looking at older photos and talking with Jeff Blume, the grass line has been significantly edged up.  This isn't something that has been done wrong, but is common normal maintenance practices over the past 12 years.  The bunkers have lost some of the original character that was initially built.  We will work to restore the original look and character in each bunker.  I have been asked by many about removing some of the bunkers and I can only tell you, that I am not the architect and I do not intend on changing the design, especially with Jeff Blume on site.  There are a few bunkers that we feel we can reduce in size based on observations I've made over the past 8 months of play.  One thing to note, we will not be adding the liner and white sand to large bunker on #16 (original 7).  This bunker is obviously a very large bunker that will be played more as a waste bunker.  We will install the liner on the Bermuda grass edge closest to the green and we will purchase new sand for this bunker, but it will not be Arkansas White sand.  We will hand rake the sand closest to the greens edge but in the back of the bunker we will leave natural only raking this area 1x a week.  I know many of you are excited about this coming and needed change as well as I am, but one thing to note.  This is going to take several months to finish and we will need to close certain holes during the construction.  We do this for the safety of the workers and also to allow for uninterrupted work.  I will keep you and the proshop staff aware of what holes that will be closed as we move forward.  Look forward to seeing all of you out on the golf courses.

Donny Latham