More Fall Projects

#11 is the scene of most of our projects this fall. You may remember that we built a new tee already. (You can see this tee here)

On the left side of #11 near the green, there has been a continual problem with an area of peat mixed with clay. This area holds water and is impossible to mow and also causes some unfair lies. Here is the area in 2009.

The area in August of 2011.

I went in and removed the peat and clay areas with a backhoe and replaced it with pea-stone. We put in catch basins connected to existing drainage.

We then covered the pea-stone over with about a foot of soil and graded it out to a gradual slope that forces surface water into the catch basins.

This is after we got 1.27 inches of rain last night, hence the puddles.

In the spring, we also had a large issue with standing water on the right side of the fairway, about 250 yards from the green. The water would come out of the woods and collect in a hollow near the tree line. We had so much rainfall this spring that the water would overflow and flow across the fairway. This created a huge mess and cart traffic had to be routed through standing water to play the hole. Earlier in the fall, we put in a catch basin in the hollow and we are now working on connecting the catch basin to existing drainage near #13 tee.

We will be working on trenching across the fairway next week. 

On a different note, today is the last day for golf at Leslie Park for the year. As a reminder, our sister course, Huron Hills will be open until the snow flies. It has been a good year and I hope to see you out on the course in 2012!

Picking golf balls

Every few years, a company comes in and drags the ponds on the golf course for golf balls that have been lost to the depths. The have a couple of utility vehicles with a winch system rigged up. They use the winch to pull a ball picker back and forth between them. They collect all of the balls and clean them. They then send us a portion of those balls that they recover. Here is a video of them dragging #17.

October 2011 Weather Summary

The high temperature recorded at Leslie Park in October 2011 was 79.7 degrees (Oct 8th.) The lowest temperature was 27.4 degrees (Oct 30th.) There were 4 days where the temperature fell below freezing.  The average temperature was 52.0.

2.73 inches of rain fell in October. There were 10 days with more than a trace of rain, 7 of which had more than a tenth of an inch. Only one day was there more than an inch of rain. On the 19th, we got 1.04 inches. That brings the total rainfall for the year to 34.51 inches at Leslie Park.

The high wind speed was 32 miles per hour (Oct 15.)