New Bathrooms

I thought it would be worth mentioning our new restrooms that have been functional for about a year and a half now.  For the prior 16 years at Legacy Ridge we have offered the bare minimum for on-course facilities in the form of sheltered porta-johns.  In the spring of 2009 we broke ground on our two new restroom buildings located behind #5 Green and #14 Green. 

Each building contains ADA compliant Mens and Womens restrooms, a drinking fountain (potable water of course) and a vending machine packed full of your favorite non-alcoholic beverages. A lot of planning and coordinating went into the construction as we had to bring electric, sewer, and water a significant distance to reach the two sites. The majority of infrastructure was brought in via directional boring, which saved a lot of disruption on the course and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Another concern we had to address was that of sightlines from the homes near the new restrooms.  Understandably, none of our homeowners wanted to look at the side of a block building, where views of Mt. Evans and Longs Peak once were.  So the building sites were carefully chosen and the grades were literally cut into a hillside to minimize their presence for our residents.  In addition, we screened the buildings with a variety of landscape plantings that when mature, should hide any reminder that a building is present. 

As usual, access to the sites was an issue, so a great deal of revegetation took place following construction to repair damage from large equipment and manpower alike.  We even took the opportunity to renovate the irrigation for the surrounding greens and tee complexes to improve efficiency.  Overall we are very pleased with the finished product, and hopefully our guests feel the same.



#14 site shortly after grading began



Drill for soil analysis prior to grading



Not a job-site until the roll-off and porta-lou are here



#5 site prior to excavation

  

Excavation commences



Trenches for plumbing/sewer

Plumbing and sewer roughed in

Rebar installed for foundation

Forms being set for slab

Steel mesh for slab floor in, almost ready for concrete

Pouring foundation

Try to focus on the approach shot...

Foundation/footings in, pouring slab

Block wall going up

Setting door frames, they look plumb and square from here

Let's hope the wind stays down

Block completed, ready for a lid



Roof trusses and eaves going in.



Ready for stucco and a metal roof



New cart path formed on #5



Boom truck back for another appearance



New cart path poured and ready for traffic, almost



Grading, irrigation, revegetation all done.



Don't Tread on Me

If you have played golf here at Legacy Ridge before, then you are likely familiar with our extensive native areas and Environmentally Sensitive Areas, ESA for short.  These areas receive minimal input from the turf staff and are left to develop naturally.  It is for that reason, that we ask our guests to respect these areas of the course and keep carts out of them entirely. 

In an effort to reduce our facility's impact on the native ecosystem, we have maintained a buffer around the golf course of native grass and designated certain areas ESA to protect what is really a very valuable part of the golf experience here at Legacy Ridge.  

 

These native areas offer habitat for a number of smaller species like insects, voles, field mice, snakes, rabbits, squirrels and small birds, that in turn support the larger species of fox, coyote, raccoon, deer, hawk, geese, and ducks you will find around the course.  It is important that all of these animals are allowed to nest and flourish throughout our facility. 

These areas are crucial too in protecting our natural bodies of water around the course by absorbing and filtering any chemical runoff or overspray.  In addition, many areas that were out of play and not strategically relevant have been converted to native to reduce water, fertilizer, and other costs of high maintenance turf.  We ask that carts remain out of native areas at all times for these and many other reasons. 

The ESA's around the course that I mentioned are typically restricted to wetland areas, whose delicate ecosystem must remain undisturbed by both our maintenance practices and our guests.  That is why we mark these areas with signs designating them as such, and ask that golfers not enter them under any circumstance.  They are protected and will remain that way long after any of us are around.  A great deal of planning went into preserving these areas when the golf course was designed and built, so please stay out of our ESA's at ALL TIMES.  Thank you for your cooperation.

Just about ready

The driving range tee is coming along nicely and should be all ready to go in time for May 1st, which is our target for moving off of the mat and onto the grass tee.

Although the tee has been mowed a couple times and appears green and ready to go, the grass plants need the next week and a half to continue growing and filling in.  Once the tee is open, we constantly rotate the location of hitting stations to ensure that we utilize as much of the tee as possible before we inch closer to the front of the tee.  This buys us just enough time to reseed and establish new turf in worn areas before we need to start all over again.

We ask that all of our patrons try to keep a tight divot pattern in their hitting station whenever possible.  A consistent patch like this is much easier to reestablish and is a much better use of the tee surface than the sporadic, inconsistent one pictured below.  Though it appears to be picked clean, it is far more efficient to reseed, topdress and smooth this type of divot pattern than the latter. 

 

In addition, the next person who practices from this station will have to constantly search for a good patch of turf to use, instead of focusing on their practice session.  Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated by all.  Proper course etiquette is not just for the sake of the turf staff, but also for fellow golfers who abide by rules of the course as well. We will discuss more on the finer points of course etiquette in later posts.

Out with the Old, In with the New

There is something about watching water run in the morning that gets our blood pumping and readies us for the growing season.
 

Our irrigation system here at Legacy Ridge is going on 18 years old now and is starting to show it's age in some ways.  One of the problems with an aging system is a loss of distribution uniformity due to wear.  Our system is comprised mostly of full-circle, brass impact style sprinklers made by Rain Bird. In their day they were the best thing going for double and triple row irrigation.  Today, they have been replaced with plastic, "closed case rotor" sprinklers that are much cheaper to manufacture and significantly less durable in our opinion.    

Each sprinkler has two distinct nozzles, a "range" nozzle and a "drive" nozzle.  The range nozzle produces the large stream, irrigating a doughnut shape area around the sprinkler.  The drive nozzle actually makes the sprinkler turn, and irrigates the area inside the range or nearer the sprinkler.  Generally, the drive nozzle wear is more apparent, resulting in a green ring around the sprinkler with drier turf surrounding.

 

Once we have replaced the two worn nozzles and adjusted the spring tension, these sprinklers should perform as though they were new.  Our hope is to refurbish all 1000 or so 51 DRs to near-new condition to extend the life and efficiency of our system.  As environmental stewards, we aim to reduce our water consumption to only what is absolutely neccesary to provide firm playing conditions and maintain a healthy stand of turf for our guests to enjoy.      

If we can refurbish our current sprinkler system with minor upgrades like nozzles and save a few thousand gallons a night.  In a year we could realize thousands of dollars in savings that can be used for other improvements around the course.  We will talk more about irrigation as we the warm weather approaches, when our irrigation practices and system are put to the test.   

Changes

If you have been out to the course this spring, you may have noticed some changes around the practice area, specifically the Driving Range Tee. Our old driving range mat had received a lot of use and worked well for many years, but had a tendency to scratch clubs and suffered aesthetically when it had to be relocated four years ago. 

So the decision was made to tear out our old Artificial mat and replace it with a Tee line synthetic mat from Putting Greens Plus. 

The new surface feels more like real turf and accepts a tee as good or better than the old mat. It doesn’t require any topdressing or “fluffing” like its predecessor and installed quite easily.  If we ever need to replace it, that too is much easier than with the previous mat, largely due to the concrete base it rests on.

Most noticeably, we removed some of the existing turf around the mat and replaced it with concrete. The turf behind the old mat would get trampled so badly through the course of a season that it resembled a large apron of dirt. Originally it was intended to serve as a buffer from golfers using the mat and the cart path. In the end, it wasn’t worth the water, seed, fertilizer and mowing necessary to keep it looking as it should.  So, we installed about 40 yards of concrete as a base for the new mat and to tie in to the existing cart path.

The result is a much cleaner look, a larger area to maneuver carts and foot traffic, and a surface that will last for many years. We were also able to address some grading/irrigation issues along the front and sides of the mat as well. All together we couldn’t be happier with the result, and our hope is that our guests will feel the same way.

Greens Aeration

Monday morning we began our spring aeration of greens. With many important tournaments coming up in less than a month, we have made the decision to modify our agronomic plan to make sure our greens are completely healed and rolling their best in time for these tournaments. This year we will be forgoing the usual hollow tine aeration for a much less invasive solid-tine option.

Normally we will run our Soil Reliever with 12" solid tines over greens first, followed by an Aercore with 5/8" hollow tines set at 2"x2" spacing. Due to the large amount of surface area actually removed by the hollow tines, the green is quite soft and requires more time to become smooth again. As we mentioned in earlier posts, core aeration is crucial for our turf to weather the hot, dry weather typical of summer on the Front Range. While we are not removing any organic matter or thatch this spring, we are diluting it with heavy sand topdressing and by opening up the profile, we aid in water infiltration and gas exchange.

So, we will run our Verti-Drain as normal, but in place of hollow tines, we will double spike with our custom-built spiker.  Our Equipment Manager Jim Bloesch built this spiker last spring, and as usual his creation has worked flawlessly and been a great addition to our greens maintenance regimen. Jim can build and fix anything, and this spiker is a great example of his fabrication skills. Hats off to Jim for a job well done.

The use of the spiker will in effect create thousands of small 1/8" holes in the greens surface, allowing water and oxygen to enter the root zone. The holes will be almost invisible to the naked eye after a heavy topdressing is applied and the greens are smoothed with a 1-ton roller.

When the process is complete, we should have applied about 25 tons of topdressing sand to 21 greens.  Once the sand has dried it is worked in gently with a cocoa drag mat. There isn't a better opportunity to modify the soil profile with sand than during aerification. 

Open holes also present a perfect opportunity to introduce nutrients into the soil profile, so Gypsum, Sulfate of Potash, and Earthworks DPW will be applied before we topdress. We will soak greens heavily to help work the sand in and flush sodium out of the root zone that has built up over the winter season.

We understand the disruption caused by aeration, and only hope that our efforts to speed up the healing process will show our commitment to our guests and their enjoyment of our facility. I would like to point out that Tom Watson shot the course record 58 at Kansas City Country Club only two days following a core aeration of their greens, so a high level of golf is possible following aeration.