Ringing In The New Year

As you can imagine it has been a cold and dreary week here at Creekmoor. We have been under snow and ice for at least 7 days and the temperature has been cold and windy. My staff has been confined to working on inside projects in our maintenance facility and everyone is getting a little antsy to get outside again. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the weather is going to allow that any time soon. Nonetheless we will continue to get our inside projects completed (tee markers, equipment rebuilds, painting, and cleaning). We weren't able to get equipment out to go to #6 to work on the tree. My hope is that next week sometime the cart paths will melt off and allow us to get equipment out. Right now they are iced over with snow drifts at least 3 to 4 feet in some spots. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year. My staff and I have been truly blessed this year here at Creekmoor and are looking forward to a prosperous 2010!

Snowy Conditions

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas with family and friends. Over the Christmas holiday we were blessed with some significant snow fall. By all accounts around Creekmoor it seems we received anywhere from 4" to 8" of snow depending on where you were on the property. The worst part of the storm was the high winds that caused some severe drifting and extremely cold wind chill temperatures. The last couple of days we have been shoveling, plowing, and removing the snow and ice around the clubhouse area and our maintenance facility. I have uploaded a couple of pictures that were taken in our maintenance facility parking lot this morning. I hope over the next couple of days that the snow will start to melt a little bit which will hopefully allow us to get over the #6 to remove the big dead tree on the right side of the hole. If we can't get out we will continue to work on inside projects(redoing tee markers, painting trailers, rebuilding reel mowers, and some deep cleaning and reorganizing). I can't believe it is the last week of 2009! Where did it go? Hope everyone stays warm and has a great week.



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Christmas Time Is Here

To quote one of my favorite Christmas carols "It is the most wonderful time of the year". I absolutely love Christmas time and the opportunity you get to spend time with family and loved ones. Here at Creekmoor we have been staying rather busy with some warmer weather. This week we were able to get the drainage on #8 fairway completed just in time before this wet winter storm hits. We were also able to mow the greens and clean them up a little bit on Tuesday. Also we finally got all 18 greens with two cups on them. I would like to still encourage everyone if you play to move the flag stick to the other hole after you complete the hole. This will help move the play around and not wear out one area of the green. The weather over the holiday is somewhat of a mystery. All the weathermen thought they new exactly what was going to happen over the last couple of days. We are suppose to get a substantial amount of rain (i.e. .5- 1") and then it is going to turn into snow overnight and into tomorrow (2-4"). A fun little fact that the last time we had a white Christmas was 1969, so it has been an awful long time here in KC. The Creekmoor maintenance staff would like to wish each and everyone of you a very Merry Christmas. I hope everyone stays safe if you are traveling and look forward to seeing you all again real soon.

Two Cups on Greens

I have been getting several questions about the greens having multiple cups cut in them. I go to this practice this time of year due to the ground freezing and continual play. If I was to leave a single cup on the greens the areas around the cups would get worn out and start to show signs of stress. By putting two cups in the golfers can rotate the flag between the two cups helping to spread out foot traffic and wear and tear. The greens that we have yet to change are showing this now as we have been having some nicer days allowing there to be some golf played. We are in the process of trying to get two cups in every green. However we have been having a hard time doing this as the ground ended up freezing earlier then I anticipated and has delayed this process. I hope to try and have them all done by the end of this week. We also have been working on the drain complex on #8 fairway. I hope to have this completed by mid-week. This should help us out tremendously in being able to control the moisture and water run off in this area. I hope everyone had a great weekend. It is going to be a short work week this week with the Christmas holiday. I hope everyone has a very safe and Merry Christmas. If you are traveling make sure and check the weather status before you go. It looks like we are going to have a pretty significant winter storm front coming in over the next couple of days causing some major travel headaches.

A Little Balmy

I hope everyone has had a great week. The week started off in the deep freeze and has since bounced back and warmed up on Wednesday and should continue into today. I know my staff is appreciating it tremendously as we are continuing to work on some of our projects. We have continued to install drainage in the fairway on #8. The crew has completed half of it and will continue to work on it today and tomorrow with the hopes of completing it on Friday. We are also continuing to work on the rock work along the cart paths in the high traffic areas. I am hoping that we will be able to mow the greens today at some point. We will have to wait on the ground to thaw out a little bit before we can do this. It is not preferred to mow the bentgrass when the ground is frozen as the mower tends to cause some damage and doesn't seem to mow as even and at the high quality we look for. Also we will hopefully be installing the rest of the two cups on each green so that we can rotate play around the green during the winter months while the greens are frozen. This practice keeps us from wearing out one area of the green and also provides a variety of hole locations for the golfers. During the freezing cold mornings and days we have been able to work on a variety of projects inside the shop. We have been redoing our tee markers, enter/exit stakes, and ball washers. We also have been continuing our annual equipment rebuilds on our reel mowers and trailers. I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and I look forward to seeing you all real soon.

Frosty Frosty Frosty

The last couple of days has been nothing short of cold and frigid. The ground has been full of snow and frost the entire week. It has been somewhat a shock to my system, as I wasn't ready for it to go from 50's & 60's over Thanksgiving weekend to 10's & 20's for highs this last week. Needless to say our opportunities to get out on the golf course this week has been rather limited due to freezing temperatures and the snow fall that is on the ground. However we were able to get the drainage complex in #1 fairway completed on Thursday. We are looking to go to #8 hopefully sometime next week if the weather cooperates and install another drainage complex. My staff also had the opportunity to do a major cleaning of the shop. We pulled everything out and completely cleaned and reorganized it to make it more efficient and presentable. Also we have been working on redoing our bird houses, enter/exit stakes, and ball washers. It looks like the weather is going to rebound a little bit over the weekend. Hopefully the temperatures will rise enough to allow the snow to melt so that some of the die hard golfers can get out and play. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

First Winter Storm

It looks like we are going to have our first winter storm for the year. Depending on how the storm moves we could get anywhere from 2-11" of snow. The weathermen at this time are unsure of how the front is going to move across the state. It sounds like we should be on the southern edge and hopefully won't get the brunt of the storm, but we have a 100% chance of getting rain or snow. We have been continuing our work on drainage projects. My staff has moved over to #1 fairway and are in the process of installing the drain complex in the enter area of the fairway. As long as the temperatures and windchill hold steady above single digits we will continue to work on the drainage and rocking of the cartpaths. If temperatures and windchill's are in the single digits we will be working on some inside projects. We will be refinishing our bird houses, Enter/Exit stakes, and tee markers. We are also going to be continuing our rebuilding of our reel mower equipment and all other equipment needs. I hope everyone had a great weekend and stays warm over the next couple of days.

Colder Weather Continues

Temperatures have continued to stay cold and windy. It sounds like we are going to have a pretty good chance of seeing some snow by the end of the weekend or the beginning of the week. We were able to get the drainage complex completed on #9 fairway this week. This will be a huge advantage for us as we move in to periods of wet and cold weather. The drains should go a long way in helping us eliminate some of the winter kill that occurred in this area last year. We are continuing to work on installing the rock along the cart path areas. We have finished #11 and are now working on the area next to #10 green. This is a heavy traffic area and the rocks will hopefully provide a spot for the golf carts to scoot over and park and let other traffic get by them easier while the golfers are putting on the green. I hope everyone has a warm and enjoyable weekend.

Winter Is Finally Here

Well it looks like temperatures have started to turn colder and possibly our first chance of snow is in the very near future. As the weather people around this area typically try and be the first ones to predict snow, I will believe it when I see it. My staff has continued to stay very busy working on projects and doing some occasional mowing. Warmer temperatures over the holiday week and weekend continued to make the bentgrass on the greens and tees continue to grow, thus we have been doing our every other day mowing on these surfaces. It looks like the temperatures are really going to dip over the next couple of days which will cause the cool season grasses to really start to slow up and almost stop growing. We also started on one of our major drainage projects in #9 fairway. I have enclosed a photo of the project below. This is our worst area for standing water and was the area we lost most of our zoysia in a year ago due to the excessive amounts of moisture and cold temperatures. We will hopefully complete this project this week and will look to get started on hole #8 as soon as possible. I also have uploaded a picture of our cart path project we have been doing since last year. I used a lot of the native stones that are here on site and have installed them along the edges of the cart paths to help with rutting and excessive traffic. It went over very well and I have received several compliments on it. We are continuing to do this in some of the high traffic areas again this year. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.