Stonebridge Country Club Golf Course Updates: February 2019

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.......

Mid February is usually the point in the Season where we have acclimated to whatever the weather phenomenon is in place for the given year, we have also had the chance to witness the effectiveness of the programs put in place to enhance your experience on the golf course this year. We have had a few bumps along the way and we are hard at work trying to correct those issues. As always, high traffic and minimal space can be attributed to a lot of our eye sores. We will continue explore options on compaction relief and traffic dispersion to aid in reducing this issue in the future. Member awareness and education of the effects of cart traffic will be a key factor in reducing this impact.

Our "Guest" events are right around the corner. We will be putting in that little extra effort to make you proud. As always, our goal is to produce conditions that are worthy of company. To that end, you will see me and some of my staff on the course at some odd hours over the week to ten days. We have two products that cannot have traffic on following application. We will accomplish this by spreading the product after the last tee time and before the night time watering. One of of these products was said to handle foot traffic on dry turf so we tried to apply it around a few greens last week. The picture below will show that we do have some people that do not keep their carts on the path on #5 and we also had some tracking from foot printing with this product. This tip burn will mow off in a couple of days.

On a positive note, the putting surfaces are reacting well to the changing weather. From hot and humid, to cold and dry, to cold and wet, to wet and seasonal and finally to seasonal. The root structure and the soil profile is as good as it has ever been in my tenure. We still have a couple of our shaded, low air-movement areas that will always give us issues. I feel confident that we can provide optimum conditions throughout our guest events.

We certainly look forward to helping you present your club for your guest but we also take a lot of pride in making you happy to be a member at Stonebridge. If you haven't had the chance, come join us for a tour of the course to witness the abundant wildlife that calls Stonebridge home. You have a very unique piece of property that offers a very diverse ecosystem. Brian Beckner does a wonderful and entertaining job of explaining all the different creatures that live in your backyard. I have included a few photos of our latest tour.

I am always available for your questions or concerns. Feel free to call or drop by at any time.