Opening Day

Wild Horse will be opening on schedule March 1 with carts allowed.  Each opening day brings anticipation from you the golfer but we as a maintenance  staff are always anxious to get back in the swing of things too.  Here are some reasons we are excited to begin another great season of golf at Wild Horse.

1)  The turf is looking great!  Winter has been much more kind to us this year so greens and fairways should be coming into spring in fine shape.

2)  New greensmowers!  We just received a new model of greensmower that we are anxious to use this season.  While there will be some minor differences to adjust to for us, this new mower style should provide an even better quality of cut resulting in a smoother putting surface.  With the recent weather we might get to use them earlier than ever!

3)  A bolstered fairway mowing fleet.  We purchased a used fairway mower to give us more reliability and flexibility in our fairway mowers.  Our fairway area of 54 acres is nearly double that of most other courses.  We spend around 800 hours mowing fairways in a season so having dependable equipment is crucial.  

4)  A completed transition to bluegrass/ryegrass greens surrounds.   We have talked about this often in other posts and we are thrilled with how well this transition has went.  While it might not seem like too big a deal to many of you, switching turf species with relatively little disruption is tricky but will pay dividends long term in how we manage that turf and how it affects playability around the greens.

5)  Better looking bunkers.  This is a subtle nuance that you will probably not notice.  However a before and after picture would clearly detail the last fall's renovation of some of the bunkers to a more rugged look.   Over time bunker edges had become too "smooth"  so we tried to return them to the blowout styled edges that were originally conceived by the designers.

6)  An intact staff.  I am very lucky to have a great group of guys that really like coming to work and take pride in providing a great product for you to enjoy.   Many have been with me for a few years and I am happy to say they all return for 2016.

7)  Last but most exciting for our facility is that the lodging cabins are nearly complete and ready for your stay.  This is a whole new venture for Wild Horse that we think will add to your experience here.

Blizzard

It's been several years since we have had a snowstorm like we had last week.  I forgot how much snow can pile up in certain places as seen in the picture just above.  It took us an hour to get this far on the cart path from the parking lot to #1 tee.   We will continue to clear out some cart paths so that we can start to get around the course and possibly be ready for carts on March 1.  That is still a long ways off so we will see what Mother Nature deals us in the weeks to come.

The top picture shows #1.  As you can see all is white except the fairway and green.   The second picture shows #9 green completely void of snow.  The wind whipped all 10" of snow off the turf and deposited it in the rough or beyond.   So all the benefit of a good snow was unfortunately negated by the strong winds.  The turf only has 25% coverage and greens even less than that with 10% covered.  That being said the turf still looks pretty good at this point of the winter.  We are looking forward to getting back out on the course and starting up the golf season.