The bridge structures are complete. Bruce Hepner, golf course architect, is due to arrive the week of April 20th to complete shaping and cart path routing in the areas around the bridge abutments. The snow is completely gone from the golf course and the turf appears to be in good shape. Things are beginning to green up and we are on target for an opening day of April 17th. If it would stop raining for more than a day, I would consider mowing the greens for the first time this season!
The remainder of the post will be dedicated to how the maintenance staff occupies its time during the "off-season". We maintain more than 130 pieces of equipment, and below is a sampling of some of the work this entails.
This pictures shows a group of fairway reels waiting to be assembled. We mow fairways with 2 tractors. Each tractor has 5 cutting units that do the actual grass cutting. We maintain a back-up set of units for each tractor, for a total of 20 cutting units. When one set of cutting units become dull, the back-up set is put into use, and the dull set is sharpened, minimizing downtime. Each unit is sharpened 3 to 4 times per season. The units have a lifespan of 4 seasons, at which point the reels become to small to re-sharpen and other parts of the unit wear out. When this occurs, the units are torn down, the individual parts are evaluated and replaced as needed, and then the unit is re-assembled.
A close-up of the parts that make-up a cutting unit. The red parts are original, they were cleaned and repainted by the staff. The black and yellow parts are new replacements of the originals.
Equipment technician Peter Rumery (right) and Ray Platt re-assemble a cutting unit.
A row of re-built cutting units ready to cut grass!The next post will be on April 17th, our anticipated opening day.
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