October 28, FINAL BLOG POSTING FOR THE RENOVATION

More of the same on the course. We have been continuing to do all the little stuff like yardage tags on sprinklers, distance markers in the fairways, and mulch. One major effort was the installation of all the winter annual flowers.

As promised, I had the island on #7 planted with flowers to show case our initials. You can see the bougainvilla in the background really starting to bloom with vibrant color as well.


Here flowers are being laid out behind the green on hole #5, next to tee 6. This bed is a break from the normal uniform planting of one variety. It incorporates 6 different flowers.




Here we are laying out the beds at the driving range parking


Here you can see the geraniums around the new oaks at the range, looking back across the new putting green towards the Clubhoues


Here's #12 tee



Here's #15 tee.


We finally took delivery of the new granite yardage markers for the fairways the Foundation purchased for the Club. There is a red 100, a white 150, and a blue 200 on all par 4's and 5's.


Some other small projects being done.....

We have to now re-install all the ball washers


We also just received all the new hole signs that have to be installed.


Add a little bit of last minute tree trimming


Can't forget to put out the rakes in the bunkers


Getting all of the fountains running was difficult. After sitting all summmer, it took the better part of two days to get the fountains on 15 & 16 running. What do you call a crazy guy in a 12 john boat that leaks like a sive & uses a broken peice of a pallet as an oar?....the Superintendent!!! Sometimes you just gotta "ger r dun!"


A last minute addition to the project list was to redo the safety railing along hole 15.


Since the grow-in went so well, the Club has decided to open up the practive facilities a couple of days early. Starting on Thursday the 29th and Friday the 30th, you are welcome to come out and practice on you very own new practive facility.
She's all ready!




Roberto was also able to paint the bridge over Mary's Pond red, to match what it used to be.


I'll close me final blog with a little teaser of a pic taken on hole #4. The entire course looks beautiful. Its a new golf course with an old Florida feel. Welcome home everyone....welcome home!

October 17, 2 weeks to go

It has been more fine tuning for the golf course this week. We are still working on mulching, drainage, defining fairway cuts, compacting bunkers, and all sorts of stuff.

Here the staff is running a compacting plate tamper in the bunkers. We are trying our best to compact the bunkers as much as possible to avoid the "fired egg" lie.


After compacting the sand, we run one of our new sand rakes through the bunker to smooth out the surface.


Drainage work contines. Here we are installing some extra drainage into the road side swale by #9 green.


Casey is checking the grade to make sure it will drain properly


And the proof is in the pudding....


We have been very busy finishing up all the little bit of sodding around drainage basins that held water, trying to get everything perfect for opening.


This is not one of those crazy murals you stare at until your eys go out of focus and then all of the sudden a space ship pops out from the back ground. These are all of the yardage tags for the sprinklers. We are going to mark the heads between 50 and 230-ish yards.


Establishing the perimeter cut of the fairways is a difficult ordeal. As you can see here, I moved the line in a little bit more to get around the drain basin a little better. We have to repaint the cut line a couple times a week, sometimes adjusting the line so we get the perfect contour, until the roughs are thick enough to have a very distinguished differential.


Part of the preperation process is smoothing the ground so there are no sharp creases. A great way to do this is to aerify. We have already done the greens a few week ago, and now we are doing the collars and approaches. After aerification, we will roll the areas to really "iron out" the wrinkles.


Here is pic of the new sign landscaping after having the area mulched, flowers go in on Mon Oct 19th. The grasses that were planted are just plug size, and need some time to mature. When they fill out to their mature size the area will be solid with native grasses.


Just a reminder for those of you that are in Naples, be sure to sign up for the last "offical" tour of the golf course on October 27th. Come join your friends on a guided tour and see the course, get all your questions and curiosities answered, and then stay for dinner. We look forward to seeing you and sharing your enthusiasm for the new course. It's absolutely spectacular!!!

October 9th

Ever hear the saying "the difference is in the details?" Right now, that is the mentality for the remainder of the project. The golf course is done, and 98% grown in, but there is still a tremendous amount of stuff to do. We still need to install ball washers, put back benches, spread mulch, level depressions in fairways, level sprinklers, establish fairway cuts, install some sub-surface drainage in wet spots, just to name a few "to do's."

But I have to tell ya....the course looks AWESOME! You're going to be blown away when you see it for the first time. Here's a quick update of what's going on.

As I said before, details, details, details!!! Everyday there are at least 5 guys going over every inch of the "short grass areas" checking to make sure there isn't a bad seam line or an irrigation head too low. When they find an area, they cut off the sod, regrade it, and then put the sod back.


Even with our new super efficient drainage system, we still have a couple of wet pockets of soil. I had the staff out putting in some sub-surface drainage lines to wick away the water to firm up the playing areas. This one is right in the landing zone on hole #1.


Here, one of my staff is checking the grade with a laser transit to make sure everything drains as planned.


All of the immature landscape areas are getting mulched


As well as all of the tree rings


Tony had a new range net installed for all you long hitters


Here is a pic of the Clubhouse green showing the new flag pole donated by Mr. Studley


A last minute addition to the project as a result of a newly identified problem is this drainage mainline install through Mr. Finigan's yard on hole #9. Now that we have an excellent drainage system to get the water off of the golf course and into the lakes, we discovered we couldn't drain the lakes on the front 9 fast enough to keep up with all of the water being added from the golf course due to a small pipe size restriction at the discharge point. The small pipe size was causing water to back up onto the golf course during periods of heavy rain. To correct the problem we installed an additional 18" drainage mainline into the system of pipes that carries the water to the lake on 13 tee where it is discharged into the Gordon River Basin. By installing this pipe, we increased the drainage flow out of the front lakes by more than 50%. A super huge, enormous, tremendous thank you goes to the Finigans and their neighbor to the north, the Metcalfs, for working with the Club to allow us to do what was needed to correct the problem. As you can see, we had to literally thread the needle with this pipe to get it into the drainage easement between the two houses.




As you can see, it's detail time. Marshall used to say, "It's time to put the make-up on the pig." Now, it's time to put the make-up on the beauty queen. I hope everyone is as excited as I am, can't wait to play it!!

Sept 21

The word of the month has been PROJECT!!! We have been working on the Clubhouse landscaping primarily. A late addition to the scope of the project, the Clubhouse landscaping needed a good overhaul. We have installed new palms on the East side of the Clubhouse in all of the open spaces.


And we have cleaned up the porte-co-chere area. Before, you couldn't see the Club's logo from the road.


Now we have removed all of the overgrown materials and accented the columns nicely with the new palms


The south side of the building has been relandscaped. The hibiscus bushes shown below that were around the south entrance have been transplanted to #12 behind the green.


In their place, I installed Christmas Palms. The idea was to increase the verticality to reduce the building's elevation impact.


The west side of the building has bee relandscaped too. We removed all of the overgrown bushes and palms. You can see on the left side of the pic the old palm that has bent out and has grown up above the eve of the roof.


And replaced them with new material. I added a palm on all of the columns and fresh ground covers.


We have also dressed up the south end of parking lot by adding some landscaping on the Cypress Point side.


The entrance off of Solona is in the process of getting revamped also. Everyone should know by now that we have installed the new golf course grass on the north side of Solona where it used to be all weeds. To compliment the newly grassed entrance, our Golf Course Architect and I came up with a new landscape plan for the sign area. We built a new rock wall around the old sloped flower bed, so that we can "raise" the bed above all of the new landscape grasses we are going to install. You'll also notice that we removed the two black olive trees (transplanted them to the course) and installed some new royal palms. The idea being to have the sign area represent what you will see on the course. Once the grasses are installed around the sign, I'll upload a new pic.





Out on the course it was time to dress up the island between #7 and #9. As promised, the north side was covered with 5 different varieties of bougainvillia. We installed some on the little peninsula on #16 too.



FPL has finally been on site to remove the overhead power line on #16 tees. Now I have to get an electrician come in and run power underground from the pole to the comfort station.


Long before we started with the project, I've been working with the County to see where and what could be improved drainage around the neighborhood. As many of you know, we replaced the old rusted metal street drain pipes that cross the golf course. I was also successful in getting the County to clean the drainage ditch between my building and RP's golf maintenance building, thus draining the box culvert along Solona quicker, and subsequently Burning Tree quicker. Additionally, I was able to get the County to grade the slopes of "the ditch" along Burning Tree Drive, from Cypress Point all the way to Solona. After the County graded the slopes, I installed new sod for erosion control. Now the "ditch" looks a little more respectable.




The coolest thing happening right now on the golf course is the separation of the roughs from the fairways. Folks, it's here.....the golf course is here. First, I paint out all the perimeter cut lines, notice the faint orange lines.


The perimeters are cut first...


Then we mow em just like any other day. PRESTO....you have a fairway. Here you can see the new Silver tee. My plan is to cut the fairways as close to the Red tees as possible so there is not a long carry to the "short grass."





This week we are finishing up on the majority of our projects outside of the golf course. Our next big push is to start dialing in the details. By that I mean, defining all the differnt playing surfaces, getting the greens tuned in for play, leveling bumpy areas, mulching areas, finish planting a few landscape beds on the course, etc. Very, very busy still.....you think there's any chance we could push back opening two weeks? Just kidding!!!