GOLF COURSE SUPERINTENDENT Grant Suderman

Dear Members,

One of the most common questions I receive as a Golf Course Superintendent is “What do you do all winter?” It may come as a surprise that playing card games and hosting shop parties is not the answer! Our winter months provide the GCM team with a great opportunity to add value to the club through construction/capital projects, tree work, associate training and equipment maintenance. In this Newsletter I will highlight our recent major winter projects.

Cart Path Restoration

This winter Loch Lloyd Country Club completed a $250,000 capital expense project to replace many of the critically damaged golf course cart paths The plan was executed in five phases to accommodate golf course access throughout the project. A total of 18,000 square feet of new cart path was installed The project was completed in February and all paths are now open to golf. Please abide by all signage and roped areas redirecting traffic to protect sodded and/or seeded damaged areas from the project.

Bridge Repairs

The team of professionals working on the Loch Lloyd golf course maintenance team are second to none Much of the professional skill and hard work of the GCM team can go unseen. This can be exemplified by the task of reconstructing a bridge The GCM team was tasked with reconstructing a bridge after a main support beam had broken and the bridge was deemed unsafe for use After two days the team had the new beam installed and the bridge reconstructed. We do notice other bridges throughout the golf course need repairs and will continue to do so as materials become available this Spring.

Tree Work

Dead Tree Removal

One mainstay of winter golf course maintenance is tree work. We were no exception this winter as we successfully removed 78 dead, undesired and/or unsafe trees from the property. Although as high number of trees were removed only nine were located in highly maintained areas on the golf course. We have plans to replace any desired trees with new plantings this Spring. Unfortunately, over half of the removed trees were Green Ash trees that were susceptible to the Emerald Ash Borer This insect damage is widespread throughout the region as I suspect more Ash trees to fall victim to this in the future.

Dormant Zoysiagrass Weed Control

Zoysiagrass is the type of turfgrass installed in our fairways, practice tees and event lawn. This warm season turfgrass goes dormant during cold winter months. This dormancy provides an opportunity to apply a product removing any weeds from the zoysiagrass without damaging the zoysiagrass itself This application was performed in February to create a clean and consistent zoysiagrass playing surface.

Application to Zoysiagrass To Remove Weeds

Fairway Drainage

Last Spring we successfully installed drainage to fairways #3 & 10 eliminating chronic and unplayable wet areas. We have plans to install more drainage this spring to fairways #3, 16 and 17 to improve moisture percolation therefore improving the playing surface We are targeting mid-March to begin this project.