An insight into some of the greenkeeping practices at Piperdam Golf & Leisure Resort
We have finished shaping the pond at the green side on 18. The new fairway slip has also been shaped and top soiled up.
Can I also remember all golfer to stay off newly turfed areas. The weekend showed up quite a few inconsiderate golfers. This is totally unacceptable. We have enough work to get on with without doing the job twice.
We have put in some mounding at the back of the par 3 15th green, this has also been planted up with trees. This will strengthen up the back off the green.
The new 5th tees have been rootzoned up and our digger driver has been busy top soiling around them. There's is a nice shape around them and really make for a really interesting hole.
The 17th green tee top has been finished today, we used all off the 5th green and 3/4 of the 6th green.
We have made a good start at turfing the new 17th green, we are using native turf from the old 5&6 greens. We have so far stripped the 5th green and this has given us enough turf to do about 2/3 of the new green top. We will finish the green top tomorrow with turf from the 6th green. The 14th green will be turfed on Friday with bought in turf from tillers.
Can I remind all golfers to stay off newly turfed areas as some are quite soft below. A little bit off common sense would be a great thing sometimes!
The tee at 15 has been turfed we used native turf off the 8th fairway. This will settle in nicely and a little feed at the start of the year will bring it on.
The two new greens surfaces have had top soil around the edges. Kenny from team Niblick has now gone over the rootzone on the greens with the bunker rake this will take out any imperfections and leave a surface ready for turfing next week.
The weather worked in our favour today. Conditions where very cold overnight and the ground was firm enough to drive on. Both greens have been rootzoned and we will hopefully tie up the soil around the edges tomorrow if the temperatures continue to stay cold.
The 17th green mounding at the back of the green has been shaped. This will incompess catch basins they have also been drained. The irrigation has also been installed around the green. Root zone has been getting delivered and this has been stockpiled in the car park waiting for a window of hard frost to get it onto the greens.
We've turfed the tee top on the new 9th mens tee, we will tie the rest of the tee bank with turf when time allows, the walk on and walk off has been turfed. The next tee we will be turfing is the new back tee @ 17.
The Tees have dried out enough over the weekend to get the root zone on. We got root zone on all new tees except the new set @ 5 & 16, we will hopefully tie them in tomorrow. The material gets loaded on with dumpers and then level out by the 360. We have a guy dipping for depths to make sure it's going on at the right depth. We then have a bunker rake working on top to give final levels before turfing.
The first pond at 18 has been finished, this moves the pond to the right, gives it a much better shape. This also allows us to cut the fairway through thus connecting both parts of fairway. The guys are just about finished turfing the slip of fairway.
We have stripped out the trees and built the tee. I've not got a picture of the tee but do have a view from the area during tree removal.
The drains and gravel carpet have been installed. There is still a little shaping to do on the back mounds, this will be done when u get a bone in the ground with the next period of cold weather.
The guys are in working Sunday making use of the good weather. They have now gravelled up the green site @ 14. We will continue to shape up the 17th green and pull the gorse from the landing area at the new par 4 16th.
The green, bunkers and catch basins were firm enough to start cutting in the drains. We have dug the lines and piped today, we will gravel up and put the gravel layer on the green surface tomorrow.
We've cracked on with the ponds on 18, we have completed the first pond and the 2nd Is being worked on. The plan is to close to move the pond to the right so it's more visible. Then put a slip of fairway through the middle to from the existing fairway to the approach.
The weather has turned against us a tad overnight, the new green sites are too wet to work on until they dry a bit. This has given us an opportunity to start the pond projects on 18. We have started on the first pond this will be reshaped and the left hand side will be filled in and the right hand side opened up. This makes it a much nicer feature that will be more visible for your 2nd shot and it gives more room to knock it up the middle.
