Golf Course Report

June 2015

The golf course is in great shape and is getting plenty of use.  As expected the rounds were up significantly in May and the trend continues through the first part of June.  We are progressing through our cultural practices and the turf is responding well.  With the rapid growth rate of our Celebration Bermuda grass, a divot made on Sunday is gone by Thursday.  That’s the challenge of Florida golf courses; we receive the lowest traffic during our growing season and our highest traffic during our slowest growing months. 

A recap of the first closure includes a big “Thank You” to Mother Nature.  The weather was near perfect during the closure and allowed our staff to accomplish all the tasks in a timely manner and leave room for recovery.  A complete course aerification; verticutting of tees, fairways and greens; topdressing of tees, greens and select fairways; wall to wall fertilization and a few small landscape projects.  These processes that I squeezed into two sentences would take a month to do with a “run of the mill” staff.  Fortunately, we have a team in place that takes great pride in being the best.  We are looking forward to the next closure; we have a few more tricks up our sleeves.  In the meantime we are treating everyday like opening day. 

We are crossing our fingers for good weather the remainder of the summer.  Every little imperfection has a plan of attack.  We are looking for big improvements over last year. 

A side note on the Common Grounds portion of my responsibilities:  the Immokalee Road landscape has received a facelift.  The decaying hedges were replaced, a fresh set of Ligustrums was installed on the West side and new turf was planted this week.  I have focused on presenting Stonebridge as a first class community, we tailor our maintenance around this concept and we purpose our projects with this goal in mind.  There are many more improvements to come.  Thank you for all your support as we work our way to a better Stonebridge!