Looking Back and Comparing

As you can imagine, with the weather this winter I have not much to do on the course which is great because if I'm out there having to do something that means we've got a problem. Typically, I spend January reading and reviewing the previous years operations by looking at data we collected and then compare year over year.

When it comes to record keeping my motivation is to accumulate relevant information about KGC that I can use to make decisions to improve the upcoming year. Data entry and collection is time consuming so when I read how some guys are using online tools to collect and arrange data I started to do the same. I've been a user of Excel for decades but limitations in transferring files between computers made me look for an alternative. Enter Google Sheets.  It took some retraining and, initially I had to give up some options I depended on when using Excel, but I'm slowly making Sheets work. The one problem with changing and tweaking things is there can be a bit of a disconnect between data from other years so in presenting comparisons in this post I'm going to generalize a bit.

The biggest difference about the data for 2017 is I've included my hours and the mechanics hours spent on the course when we were performing tasks that in the past were normally covered by regular maintenance staff. Going with the adage a picture is worth a thousand words I'm going to post a few charts to look at:



I've done this before and the obvious take home message is the hours spent maintaining the course are trending down. I'm not too sure if everyone understands the scope of how much the hours between years differs so for the next two charts I will use the same data but I will use a different scale on the vertical axis:



The difference in the amount of time spent maintaining the course is more obvious. Now take a look at this chart:


 If we focus on 2015 to 2017 I can point out some interesting things. Certain members have been generously donating their time for quite a few years (go HERE) but we never had a formalized volunteer program until 2015 (go HERE).  Take out the hours the Greens Team contributes to the regular maintenance and you see how much the volunteers "free" labour contributes to grooming the course. It should seem obvious that volunteers are the only way I can keep certain maintenance tasks, such as hand mowing the greens, a regular part on the maintenance schedule here at KGC. Going one step further in collecting information in 2017 I began to track the hours myself and Neil L. spent on the course performing the basic daily maintenance that, in the past, was covered by seasonal staff. Combine mine and Neil L.'s hours together with the volunteer hours and subtract them from the total hours all turf staff worked in 2017 and you will get a number that will only be the total number of hours worked by seasonal employees. Comparing that number to hours collected in 2010 (remember that we had no volunteers and I wasn't tracking mine or the mechanics hours so the amount for 2010 is strictly the amount of time seasonal staff spent maintaining the course) and it reveals that we are spending close to 40% fewer hours in 2017 performing routine maintenance on the golf course as compared to 2010.

* As an aside, the blip in 2016 is the result of the early start we had (go HERE) that year *

Again, in general the staff is working less hours maintaining the course but I think the second chart example does a better job at making the point. I'm going keep beating that same old tired drum about smaller staff and fewer hours spent maintaining the course until everyone has a firm grasp our situation and realizes how unsustainable, as it relates to my department, this situation at KGC is becoming.

Early Winter Update

First week of new year out of the way, most of the visitors we had over the holidays are back home (one more group this weekend!) and now it's time to get back and establish some sort of routine. But first I'll fill you in on where we are now.

The first snow did eventually melt over a majority of the course which allowed us to get back out there and finish off the fall aerating. Neil L and myself were able to tag team  a very large portion of the front rough with the aerator during the last week of November which was a nice bonus.

The greens mostly managed to keep a thin layer of snow but for a select few that I choose to clean off and treat one more time.

2G - most snow melted but I did shovel off some

We went a for a stretch with cold temperatures and no cover and I am a bit worried about the impact on the Poa but the good news is since the ground had time to freeze (and is still frozen) I have a good hunch disease development should not be and issue this year.  The flip side, and there's always a flip side, the frozen ground will make for a slow spring start since the soil temperature will need to warm up before things will start to grow.

I made reference in the previous post about covering the small tee renovation we started this fall. Hopefully you were able to walk out and nose around to see the changes. I find it distracting to look for my camera to document progress and since my hands always seemed to be covered in muck I'm never too excited to reach into my pocket and grab my phone to take a picture with it either.....so there really isn't very many good pictures, sorry! Instead I'll try to briefly describe the impetus, the methods, and what is left to do this upcoming spring.

Here's a secret: I do watch you (members and daily fee players) when you're out on the golf course and make mental notes about some of your habits. I'm not looking so much for the ball mark repairing, bunker raking, and divot filling that is not getting done but more to the things that I think make your day sh*tty. Although I try to avoid generalizing too much, I sometimes think I can divide golfers into two groups: the self serving narrow minded group that want everything catered to their game and the over the top extreme group that thinks every shot should be skill testing and if you can't keep up then don't bother playing.  Ignoring either extreme, what I think is more of an issue is the impact mobility and length (yes, length!) seem to have on most players at KGC. We don't have the skill or resources, monetarily or otherwise, to tackle any major changes. Generally, KGC is short and, IMO, it is narrow and not particularly forgiving off the tee for an average player or high handicapper. Also, some tee complexes themselves are awkward and difficult to access and I know there are players who feel the same based on where they park their carts, especially on 13 tee. There in lies the impetus for tweaking the 13th and 14th tees: constructing a variety of tee decks for all level of players while improving the ease of access to the tee decks for all.

A discussion with Tom Yost opened up the opportunity for us to begin renovating the 13 and 14 tees late in the fall. Tom Y has the equipment and skill to do this type of work and offered to perform the work "in kind". For both tees the plan involved generating fill from the existing decks to create forward tees.

Before-ish Pict 13T

After-ish Pict 13T

By lowering and cutting away the banks Tom Y was also able to rough out cart paths for both decks that greatly increased the ease of access to the teeing surface eliminating the need to drive on the actual tee deck for mobility challenged players (or those of us with just sore knees!). In preparation for the excavation we stripped the sod from both tees but what we did this time was salvage what we could on homemade sod "toboggans".

Tom Y in excavator, sod toboggans in foreground

In the end we had enough salvaged sod to completely sod the new forward tee on 14 as well as 80% of expanded white/blue tee deck. As implied by the previous sentence 14 tee is mostly complete with the cart path and back deck to be finalized in the spring.

13 tee is roughed out with some irrigation installed on middle deck but final grading for the new forward and rebuilt white and blue decks still need to be completed in the spring.

Installation of irrigation on 13 T

It's tough to estimate time line to completion mostly because of the weather wild card but I suspect, just based on labour demands, you won't be hitting off new tees before May long weekend.