Monday November 17, 2008

Busy morning today getting ready for the Orange Ball Tournament. The greens were rolling at 9.3" right after we double cut them. We also painted the cup holes white for the tournament. Those two tasks alone take over 6 extra man-hours more then we normal use to prep the course, which means that we must skip some other jobs that day, such as mowing tees or roughs or edging bunkers. Then we have to play catch-up for the next few days. That's the main reason why we only do those things for our members major events. But it's worth it on those occasions if everyone enjoys the course and has a great day.

There is one issue that I want to address. You may have noticed that we have had some difficulty at times keeping the old cup plugs level. The problem is that if you don't add or remove the exact right amount of soil to the replacement plug, they will rise up or sink slightly in as soon as an hour sometimes. It's not unusual for this to occur. What we usually try to do is repair any high or low plugs the following morning as we change the cup for that day. Unfortunately, the guys are starting before it is light outside and they cannot see any bad plugs until about the 4th or 5th hole. Now if it's a double tee or a shotgun start that morning, we have two guys changing cups, so that's 8 to 10 greens they cannot see bad plugs on. Each guy has additional duties he needs to get done after he finishes changing the cups, like mowing roughs or fairways, so he needs to jump on that right away in order to get those done. In the past my Assistant Richard or Foreman Ed would go around and check for any bad plugs and take care of them. But with our Foreman Ed plus our Irrigation Tech Victor, both out on medical leave, Richard has not had the time to go around and look to see if there are any bad plugs on a daily basis. Instead we have had to send someone around just once a week to correct any that are bad.

Speaking of Ed, I talked to him this morning and he is out of the hospital and feeling better, but the Doctor said he will be off work for at least 6 weeks this time. Let's just pray he recovers without any complications.
Victor is using his vacation time to take care of his medical issue and will be off work for two weeks.