August 13....grow-in continues

I brought me son out to the course the other day to check things out and he had this look of boredom on his face, so I asked him why the sour face? He said, "it's not fun out here anymore now that the big machines are gone." I just grinned and thought "out of the mouth of babes." The construction phase of the project was a lot of fun; I mean who wouldn't like to play on a bull dozer for a while!

On the flip side, now we are doing all of the little stuff to get the course ready for play. There is no longer daily tangible evidence of progress as it's hard to quantify grass spreading compared to watching a bull dozer shape a hole. Yet, I can tell you....the grass is spreading, and quickly. These days we are planting landscaping, setting sprinklers, fixing a few wash outs, fertilizing the whole course twice a week, and mowing a lot of grass.

The following is a hole by hole visual on the course's grow-in progress, starting at the practice range and moving on to hole 1 through 18. Some holes are about 99%, while others are still far away from even being mowed.


The range, last to be planted


the new putting green by 1 tee


#1 tee


#1 middle fairway


#2 from the white tee


#3 from the blue tee


#3 from middle fairway


#4 white tee


#4 middle fairway


#5 blue tee, better hit it straight


#5 middle of the fairway


#6 tee, welcome to "EMERALD CITY"


#6 green


#7 tee

#7 middle fairway


#8 tee


#8 middle fairway


#9 blue tee


#9 middle fairway


#10 gold tee


#10 middle fairway


#11 blue tee


#11 middle fairway


#12 white tee


#13 blue tee


#13 1st landing zone


#13 2nd landing zone


#14 white tee


#14 middle fairway


#15 white tee


#15 silver tee


#16 blue tee


#16 middle fairway


#17 white tee


#17 middle fairway


#18 white tee


#18 middle fairway


As you can see, we have every phase of grow-in going on; from almost ready to play to barely having some green showing through the dirt. Well, I'm off to watch the grass grow :)

July 31, construction is over!!!!!

This blog post is going to be short and sweet. CONSTRUCTION IS OVER!!! It is true, construction is over. We sprigged hole #1 on Wednesday and finished the 4 month process on Thursday with the grassing of the practice area.

Here is #1 being planted


Here is the back of the blue tee on #1 looking across the new putting green to the range tee


Here's a pic of the contractor laser leveling the range tee. It took a couple of hours to move all of the dirt around to make the tee perfectly level.


Here's the new range bunkers being filled with sand


Then we sod the bunker complexes and sprig the rest


All of the tees on the course, including the practice tee, were "hand shook" instead of machine planted. We do this to ensure the new perfectly flat teeing ground isn't disturbed by the big tractor dragging the sprigging machine. The range tee took a couple of hours


The chipping green area


As a side project, not directly related to the project, I had the area along Solona Rd stripped and regrassed with Celebration.


Next week I'll do the hole by hole pic show again, but right now I'm going to just relax this weekend. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm glad that part of the project is over.