Today concludes the first week of work for our 2011 seasonal staff. We have a very good staff returning this year- we only had to hire one new employee. We are lucky to have a very experienced crew at Wakonda. Our full- time staff (6 men) has an average tenure of 11 years at Wakonda and a combined 92 years of experience in golf course maintenance. Our seasonal staff consists of 18 crew members with an average Wakonda tenure of more than 6 seasons. To quote Superintendent John Temme addressing the crew on April 1st: "You're here because you are the best."
During the past week our staff focused on cleaning up sticks throughout the golf course. Our hard- working crew hand- raked the entire rough in four days! This week they have also been working on installing fresh hardwood mulch throughout the clubhouse grounds. The fresh mulch gives the club a much needed spring "face- lift."
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| Staff members installing fresh mulch near the front entrance. |
With the stick cleanup effort complete we will change our focus to the turf. Spring aerification is already upon us. We will be deep- aerating the greens next week Monday and Tuesday- tees and fairways to follow. We have already started plugging individual poa annua plants from collars. We will also begin sodding cart path edges starting with the 4 new sections which were installed last fall. Also of high priority is to check bunker sand depth and add sand where needed. We are anticipating needing a larger quantity of sand than usual this spring because of the extraordinarily bad season we had in 2010.
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| A muddy mess near the cart path on #15. |
The bulk of the work has also been completed on the culvert in the stream on hole 5. We need to let this area settle a bit and hope to get some dry weather so we can replace the concrete for the cart path and the sod surrounding the area.
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| Jaret Vasey places plywood across the void in the cart path. |
