Strange things can happen in the dark

The month of October can bring us some good golf weather at Glendale. As the days get shorter, it obviously stays dark longer in the morning. The first tee time today is 7am, but sunrise is not until 7:05 am. Our crew started work at 5:30 am, so we were working for at least the first hour in complete darkness. It might as well be 2am, the conditions are exactly the same.  I took the photo below at 6:00am this morning of Genaro mowing #1 green with lights on his mower.

I don't like to mow greens in the dark because it's hard to do a good job. You can't see all of the ball marks and it's real easy to miss a small rock that got shot out of a bunker. If the mower catches a rock just right, it can bend the reel and the bedknife of the mower. That small rock can wind up costing us about $750 in parts and labor to fix the mower. Several other things can happen affecting course setup that don't occur in the light of day. Tee marker alignment can be way off. I'm sure some of our early morning players have come up to the first tee and seen the tee markers lined up way off. Hole placement is even worse. I have chosen some hole locations in the dark that looked fine, but in the light of day they were terrible! You can't see subtle slopes on a green with a flashlight in the dark. We lose an additional 3 1/2 minutes of light everyday this month, and on Halloween sunrise is at 7:53am. So the next time you are out playing early in the morning and you have to play an odd hole location, just remember that strange things can happen in the dark!  

More golfers are using our forward tees

More and more golfers at Glendale CC are using our forward (Gold) tees. When they were built about ten years ago, NOBODY used them. The membership thought it was a total waste of money spent on the project. As time went on, some of the ladies nine hole players tried them and really liked the shorter yardages. Then some senior men and junior players moved up and continued to use them also. This past year the USGA has been pushing their "Tee it forward" campaign. They are trying to get more people to play the golf course from yardages that are more suited for their ability. I'm a single digit player but don't enjoy playing a 7,200 yard course and getting my lunch handed to me. I'd much rather play from 6,700 yards or shorter and have a good time. It's no fun hitting fairway woods and long irons into every par 4 on the course.
 Since our gold tee boxes were never designed for the amount of rounds they are getting, some of them need to be enlarged. The photo below is of the gold tee on #7. Check out the amount of divots on this tee, and it's a par 5 where golfers are teeing off with a driver.

 

More rounds cause more divots to be taken. Since the tees are too small, all of the divots occur in a small area at the center of the tee. As our crew continues to fill in these divots each day, that area gets raised up over time and creates a crown in the center of the tee. Check out the photo below of #6 gold tee and look at the raised area between the markers. Sometime this fall or winter we are going to have to take the sod cutter and cut the sod off the tee, level it out, and put the sod back.  We sure never have a shortage of projects on the golf course!