Golf Course Survey

I want to thank all of you who took the time to complete the evaluation of the golf course. Beginning last evening and today, I have been reviewing all the responses thoroughly, and will continue to do so until completed. I am excited to have finally dealt with our bunker issue. Although, not every bunker was completed on the course, we have completed nearly 85% and the remaining are some fairway and range bunkers.

My plan, once my full evaluation of your responses are complete, is to put together a response describing my teams action plan for each of the concerns. Many of the issues that have been expressed are already being dealt with and will be dealt with if we get a little better cooperation from Mother Nature. In this business, if you are not consistantly evaluating yourself and your programs, you will never succeed. In my 16 year tenure in this business, that is exactly what I have done and I believe it is what has led my teams to be successful.

Although the forecasters are predicting this above normal precipitation pattern to continue into the spring, there are some programs I am evaluating to possibly help with green speeds when we see this type of weather pattern. The recurring theme at every single golf course in 2009 was green speeds. To put some perspective behind the concern, in June and August, it rained for over half the month. In June we had 15 days of all rain and August was 16 days. These weren't days that had afternoon storms or showers, it rained and it rained all day. In 2009, not counting January through March and December we had nearly 57.5" of rain. See chart below.



On the flip side, there were several comments regarding the quality of green speeds this past fall. We received a break from the rain. Once the rain had at least slowed for us, we were able to become more aggressive in our management, cutting and rolling more consistently, topdressing more frequently and brush and cutting more frequently. Each of these practices are in our yearly program, but can't be initiated when we receive this type of precipitation. To help communicate our green speeds on a daily basis, I began posting the stimp reading for the day on different greens. This also began in the fall and feel this was a success in getting out in front of concerns.

We are all looking forward to the 2010 golf season. Once again, when I am able to fully digest the entire survey, I will create an action plan for your concerns and communicate them to you. If you have any further concerns please do not ever hesitate to contact me directly by email at bbrown@hartefeld.com. I would be glad to chat and answer any and all questions.