#12 @ Wild Horse

#12 @ Wild Horse

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Winter update

It's been awhile since I have posted anything here partly because fall flew by and partly because I thought "who reads this s____ anyway?"  Apparently there are a couple others besides my mom so it is time to get back to keeping  you informed on the goings on here at Wild Horse maintenance.

October was very chilly and we even dropped below zero in October which really slammed the door on the season.  The turf browned off considerably and I thought uh-oh it could be one of those tough winters.   But December was relatively mild and the turf is looking pretty good at the halfway point of winter.  We have had some moisture through snow and rain which has been beneficial.  Below are the wind-whipped drifts left behind after the late December snowstorm.




Todd Bubak continues to prep our equipment for the summer season.  Each cutting unit is disassembled and checked for any repairs necessary.  Then they are ground (sharpened) and  reassembled.  This is a necessary task but it can be a bit tedious and time consuming considering we have 36 cutting units to service most years.  So if you ask what do we do during the winter?  Servicing equipment is our main task and while we don't have a large fleet it definitely keeps us busy.

Before we moved into the shop for the winter work, Todd was able to build a new cart path up to and around 5 green which will be put into play this spring.  This will eliminate the traffic in front of six tee making that a more safe situation.   Also the flow of carts should be better with less congestion near the bathrooms.  We are also in the process of adding gravel to paths to keep them in good condition.

Opening date this spring will be March 15 (not March 1).  We felt this was a better timetable to put traffic onto the course.  If conditions warrant we will allow play before that time.


August 15 Update


Maintenance Update August 15, 2019

Summer is starting to fade away which means aerification season is just ahead.  The schedule follows:

August 18-22 Fairways

August 26-27  Greens surrounds

September 4-5 Tees

October 14-15  Greens (same as we have been doing with small ¼” tines)

This schedule is pretty much the same as we have done previously so you can expect similar conditions as last year.

Everyone keeps telling me how easy it must be this summer with all the rain.  Well we haven’t ran much irrigation but that hasn’t decreased the workload any.  The heavy rains have kept us busy fixing cart paths and bunker washouts.  It may look like everything is fine once you arrive, but the crew has been busy putting the place back together.  The rain and continued wetness have also increased disease pressure but we are trying to weather that storm until better drier weather arrives.