Hello Ocala Golf Club Members and Guests,
We have created this blog page to keep everyone up to date with everything going on at the club. Please take some time to read through these weekly updates.
MAINTENANCE UPDATES:
Starting next week, 3/18 through 3/22, we will be working on the cart path between Holes 1 and 2. We will have a Back Nine start all week to allow extra time for the workers to the job with no golfers. We ask the golfers to please be aware of their presence and to holler FORE if your ball is going towards them.
We will be opening up the "General Areas". We need to relieve compaction and allow water, nutrients and air into these areas to allow for healthy Bermuda growth. The Greens will also see a light top dressing to fill in ball marks and again to allow water and nutrients to get into the ground. The work on the green should assist with the smoothness of the ball rolling. The General areas work will be a work in progress but play the ball up and you will be fine.
BUNKER BANK WORK:
We are proposing in the short term that we work on the bunker banks that have completely failed to look like the one we just did on hole 3. This will give better presentation and playability. The negative is that even small amounts of rain will create bunker work. The long term will be to redo the Bunker banks, but this time secure them so that rain storms do not create the washouts we currently have.
IRRIGATION:
We have a couple of challenges in this area, but we are working through them. I am sure you have noticed the irrigation heads that continually seep. The seeping will occur when the system needed to be shut down to fix a leak or a broken pipe. However, the most recent issue was a break in the electrical wires. We were able to bring in an outside source to locate this break. It happened to be where the main water line break we had last summer on Hole 17. This has been fixed and all of our boxes are back up and running. We currently are in conversations that will move our system to a Toro or Rainbird system. This will replace the Hunter System currently installed that has been difficult to get parts and service from. The good news is that we recently located the electrical break that shut down the system.
CURRENT CONDITIONS:
The condition of the course you are playing is certainly not the condition we want to be in, but it is the condition we need to be in to continue the process of the weed eradication we started in June of last summer. This battle took all allowable applications to start to see the weeds start to die. So, with the weeds gone it was our next responsibility to keep the weeds from taken hold of the bare areas created. So, this is when we use pre-emergent to keep weeds away while we do what we can to promote Bermuda growth. For those of you who may not know Bermuda grass goes dormant in the late fall and winter months. It turns brown as well. The Tift eagle Bermuda on the greens will turn a purplish color when it is dormant.
In the last couple weeks, you have seen the Bermuda start to grow because we have received some warmer weather during the day, however, the Bermuda doesn't really start to grow until it starts receiving night temperatures of 70 degrees or higher. Once the Bermuda clicks in, we should see a vast improvement over last year. We will stay aggressive with our battle with the weeds. This is an ongoing battle and one that will always be on the radar.
Thank you all for your support of the club, and don’t hesitate to reach out to myself or the club with any questions, comments, or concerns.
Jason Lenhart | General Manager