What a difference a year makes. As has been made clear before, the golf course overwintered extremely well this past year and the course has, for the most part, fully recovered from the beating sustained a year ago. This is a tremendous relief to the entire staff in that we are now able to focus on details on the golf course such as bunker edging and weed control. Taking care of the “little things” is something that we try to accomplish and this year has been conducive to that.
Putting greens at the moment are rolling as true as they have been for this time of the year and will continue to improve as we get into the summer season. We have intentionally been keeping the fertility on greens a little on the high side to continue the recovery from spring aerification. We have been working hard to keep greens true and they are. Speeds are a little on the slow side but this will change when we back off on the nitrogen and begin dialing things in for the summer. This year is really shaping up to be a wonderful one.
Moving on to staff for the year, we have added a number of new people that have been a tremendous help to us. We have “gone young” this year with many of our new additions and for me it has been invigorating. Having been in this profession for quite some time, the technical aspects of the work have become pretty routine and it can be easy to grow stagnant in your work. What makes things exciting for me is spending quality time with people eager to learn and having the patience to teach these new additions not only how to do the work we do but why we are doing it. The teaching aspect of my profession is what keeps things fresh for me and I am certainly spending a great deal of time doing this in 2019. It has been a blast.
See you on the golf course,
Vincent Dodge