Please don't do this!!!!

#16 fairway

Yesterday we found 4-5 divots very close together on #16 fairway where someone had taken several shots from the same area.  We discourage this greatly and hope that this will not happen again.  We would like our members to take pride in our course and course conditions. 

Golf Course Care

The staff at Sagamore would like to emphasize golf course care going into the 2011 golf season.  We saw many ball marks and divots left unrepaired last year and we are asking for your help in keeping our golf course in the best shape possible.  We will be adding sand refill containers on every other hole to help refill sand containers on the golf carts.  We will also be adding an "adopt a hole" program this year in which members will be adopting an hole to help take care of these items.  Ultimately it is up to the golfer to fix their own ball marks and divots.  I have added this link sent to me from Paul Hansen on golf course care.  It is a great article written by the USGA.

Please click Here for article:

We look forward to seeing everyone on the course this year and we appreciate your help in keeping our golf course great.

Golf Course Opening

We will be opening the golf course on Thursday, March 17th.  We will be allowing golfers to play starting at 12:00.  We will be cart path only on Thursday and re-evaluate conditions for Friday.  Our staff will be mowing and rolling greens in the morning and we changed cups today.  We continue to work on the bunkers and probably will for the next few weeks due to the significant damage from storms over the winter.  We look forward to another outstanding golf season.

New Intermediate Cut Installed

We have incorporated a intermediate cut back into our golf course maintenance routine. We will be mowing the intermediate twice a week. The machine that you see in the picture will be mowing around the fairway and we will be walk mowing three passes around the green complexes. We hope you enjoy this added feature.

Proper Ball Mark Repair

I have noticed starting out the year already how many ball marks go unrepaired. Proper ball mark repair is crucial for keeping tournament conditioned greens on a daily basis. Even ball marks that are not repair correctly can take weeks to heal themselves. Our maintenance staff will be repairing ball marks on a dalily basis before mowing greens but it's ultimately up to the golfer to repair their own ball marks. This will reduce the time our staff has to dedicate to ball marks throughout the year. I have including a short video on how to properly fix a ball mark. Thanks for your help in keeping Sagamore a great place to play!!

Bunker Etiquette

The Sagamore crew has worked very hard this week re-sodding bunker faces throughout the golf course. We are doing this for several reasons. The first is to replace weak or mismatched grass around the bunker edges. We are replacing these areas with a new type of fescue that will handle heat and traffic better. The second reason is to repair certain areas that golfers have worn out from entering and exiting the bunker via the bunker face. I have including this video for proper bunker etiquette.

Divot Repair

Taking care of the golf course is your responsibility while you are playing a round of golf. What you do or don’t do will greatly affect the players immediately behind you, as well as the membership as a whole. The golf course is a living breathing thing that requires cooperation on your part to help keep it in the best possible condition. Aside from repairing ballmarks on the greens, the second single most important thing you can do is to replace your fairway divots. Doing so will help some of the collection areas in the fairways recover more quickly by reducing the reestablishment time of the divot. A sizable divot that is replaced with start to knit back in after several days, opposed to a sand and seed mixture that will take several weeks to equally recover. Please watch the video below because it shows how to properly replace fairway divots.

Frost Delays

How can a footprint be a killer?
It's hard to believe that simply walking, or driving a cart across the turf covered with frost can cause so much damage. The proof will be there in a few days as the turfgrass dies and leaves a trail of cart tracks or brown footprints. That's why most courses will delay starting times until the frost has melted. And it's also why golfers who appreciate a quality putting surface will be patient during frost delays.
Why does frost cause problems?
All of the turf on the course is fragile. The putting surface, or green, is an extremely fragile environment that must be managed carefully and professionally. Remember that every green is a collection of millions of individual grass plants, each of which is a delicate living thing. Obviously, Mother Nature never meant for these plants to be maintained at 5/32 of an inch for prolonged periods. This stress makes greens constantly vulnerable to attacks from insects, disease, heat, drought, cold -- and frost.
Frost is essentially frozen dew. It can form when the temperature (or wind chill) is near or below the freezing point. The ice crystals that form on the outside of the plant can also harden or even freeze the cell structure of the plant. When frosted, the normally resilient plant cells become brittle and are easily crushed. When the cell membranes are damaged, the plant loses its ability to function normally. It's not much different than cracking an egg. Once the shell is broken, you can't put it back together.
The proof is in the prints
Although you won't see any immediate damage if you walk on frosted turf, the proof will emerge within 48 to 72 hours as the leaves die and turn brown. And, since just one foursome can leave several hundred footprints on each green, the damage can be very extensive.
Its not just golfers who cause damage
If you are out early in the morning walking your dog or jogging when frost is present, the damage is still the same. So during these times please use the cart paths rather than going across the fairways and greens.

Give us a break

It takes a lot of effort and man power to maintain the golf course at its current high level of conditioning. With the significant amount of daily play that occurs time is critical for my staff to accomplish daily tasks ahead of play. A task that should take only three hours to complete without play, takes four to five hours to complete in the middle of play.

Recently one of my staff was mowing on the course and a member approached him and said “this is for golf not for mowing” referring to the fairway that was being mowed through play. It is hard to believe this mindset exist and there is not a clear understanding that with out necessary maintenance of the course there would be nothing to play on.

It is our goal to complete as many tasks as possible before play each and every day, but at times it is not possible due to many factors such as the weather having the largest impact on the timing of events. My staff is trained to be sensitive to play, but there certain time s the job at hand has to be completed even though some disruption to golfer will take place.
The following animation is from the USGA and it talks about how play and maintenance can co-exist together..

Golf Cart Etiquitte

Proper use of the golf cart is equally important for both the occupant’s safety as well as minimizing damage to the course.