Outdoor Patio

Many of you have seen the new brick paver patio behind the pro shop, and look forward to enjoying this space as the season progresses.  I would like to share a few pictures we have of the construction stages and how this area came to be.



Breaking Ground

Excavating soil to prepare the Sub Grade

Sub Grade Installation

Final Grading

Installing Brick Pavers

Bringing in the Forest Lake Emblem

Installing the Emblem

Irrigation installation

Regrading landscape

Sodding

Project Complete

Course Update

Following the best month of March weather wise we have seen in many years, we have experienced a dry, cool and windy April.  As the growing season has now begun, grass has started to slowly wake up and the maintenance crew has started focusing on the detail work around the course.  Fairways and short grass areas are starting to show their striping patterns and features around the course are starting to take shape.

The golf course greens have played extremely fast and have rolled smooth to date.  As the temperatures warm up over the next weeks we will see a decrease in green speed.  This is due to the flush of growth we come to expect every spring.  The greens crew will be working hard at balancing the turf growth with maintenance practices to provide good greens and speeds.

We have a couple of low lying areas on fairways that water accumulates in, after rain and heavy watering.  We have started addressing these areas around the golf course.  The photos below show the before and after of an area on the left side of #16 fairway.

Fairway and rough heads on the course, provide yardage to the front, middle and back of our greens.  We trim around these sprinklers once a month as grass encroaches into the sprinkler.  Before and after pictures shown below of the grass surrounding the sprinkler heads trimmed to expose the yardage and a clean look

Trees

Due to the high winds on Monday night, we spent most of Tuesday morning gathering sticks and debris.  Also we had 2 of our trees fall over.  The first was a Silver Maple beside #13 Ladies Tee, and the second was Oak along the roadside of #18 Green.  Both of these trees were aging and in poor structural shape.  As you can see from the pictures below the centers of the trucks have been decaying for awhile.

#13 Silver Maple

#13 Silver Maple Base

#18 Oak

#18 Oak base

Cart Path Traffic

New look same message! 

We have put out the crossing posts on our par 4 and 5 fairways.  They now have a stained natural wood look.  We are still trying to accomplish the same goal of dispersing cart wear within the greens approach and surrounds areas.  We would appreciate if carts would move towards the cart paths once they reach these markers.  This seems simple but it is something golfers can do minimize turf wear and improve turf quality in these areas.

Also we would like to remind cart drivers, when on the cart paths, please keep all 4 tires on the path.  There is tremendous amount of wear on the edges of these paths, especially the turf on the edges of turns and corners. 

We will be sodding these edges in the near future.



New Cart Post

Old Cart Post



Spring Color

Signs of spring have shown up earlier this year.  Many of our trees have begun to grow buds and new leaves. We would like to take this opportunity to show a few of our landscape plants the enhance the beauty of Forest Lake Country Club in the Spring

Bradford Pear

Flowering Crab

Forsythia

Course Conditions

There has been a great deal of praise for the golf course and the condition of the golf course greens.  There are many things we do to maintain greens speed, firmness and how they play, throughout the golf season.  But there is 1 major influence we do not control and that is weather.  Starting out this season we have been able to produce good playing conditions with the main factor being the environment.  The cooler dry weather we have been experiencing in late March and April has slowed turf growth to a halt, and the lack of rain has allowed us to keep the greens dry and firm.  Thus producing fast smooth greens.  We generally enjoy similar conditions in the later part of fall as turf growth slows for the winter.  As spring temperatures increase, grass will start to steadily grow.  This is where our maintenance plan adjusts to try to compensate for the changing environment, best allowing for consistent conditions, and desired green speed.

The fairways and short grass areas on the golf course are showing a lot of contrast making them appear spotty or patchy.   These areas consist of many different grasses, primarily Annual Blue Grass (POA), Bent grass and Rye grass on fairways and tees.  Also with in these grass species there are many different varieties. All of these grasses grow and gain quality green color at different rates during the spring in colder temperatures.  We have treated these areas with a plant growth regulator (PGR) to best eliminate the production of seed.  These PGR's effect grass species in different ways adding to the patchy yellow appearance.  This visual distinction will slowly disappear when these areas start steadily growing. We will soon be able to determine how effective our treatments were on seed production.  Seeding POA on golf course greens effects the smoothness of ball roll, and as well the stalky seed can effect the quality of mower cut on greens,tees, and fairways.