WOW, it has been over a month since I last posted.  We've been busy doing some projects and I apologize for not posting.  First let me start off with it has been a crazy wet cold winter here, as you all know.  However, I am so happy to see the fairways, tees, greens and now the rough starting to green up.  We will work on scalping down the rough to allow sunlight and new growth to emerge over the next few weeks.  We will keep the rough down to 1.25" until we are mowing too much that it must be raised.  We will work very hard this year to have a nice thick 1.5" of rough.  The greens have certainly started to green up nicely and we are now cutting daily as they are actually actively growing.  I completely understand that the greens speeds have gotten slower, but as we start to manage them daily we will get them where we want them to be.  My goal is to have 10'+ on the stemp meter daily.  We can provide these speeds for you day in and day out I am confident. 

As many of you have seen, we are working diligently to sod and reshape/soil many bare areas along cart paths.  It was my goal to remove many of the stake and ropes around the course, however, with new sod and new traffic patterns, we must protect certain areas during heavy traffic times.  We will start to roll out more traffic control methods, but instead of unsightly signs or stake and rope, we will be using split rail cedar posts.  This is a cleaner and more natural look.  I think you will agree it's a better appearance.

The bunker project at Grand Pines has had its ups and downs.  The weather certainly has not made it easy to reshape or install bunker liner and sod.  I am confident that the project will still be completed in April. We have all items in place and now we are full steam ahead once this current rain lets up.  We are almost done shaping the front 9 of holes and will move to the back 9 soon.  The back 9 certainly should progress quickly as the overall square footage of bunkers are much higher on the front 9.  I look forward to hand raking these bunkers daily and providing you all with an outstanding golf course and bunker conditions. 

That's it for now, I will include some pictures in my next post once the rain stops!

Regards,

Donny Latham