After another busy season, 9 tee has not been able to withstand the traffic. Every year this tee gets completely chewed up due the heavy amount of play teeing from the blue tee markers. There are several determining factors impacting this tee.
1. The tee is tucked against a housing community and with numerous trees surrounding airflow is lost.
This increases the time for the soil to dry out and will typically lead to shorter, compromised roots.
Additionally, when summer arrives and the sun is directly overhead the turf and soil heat up
rapidly causing extra stress on the plants.
2. Sunlight is reduced in the morning and afternoon due the above conditions and this will lead to thinner,
weaker plants as well as increased drying times.
3. Between 75-80% of rounds played annually are taken from the blue tees.
This causes an issue for tee placements as a broad range of player abilities are hitting from the
same tee. This limits the space we have to chose from as higher handicap players will have
trouble reaching the fairway and better players must wait for the group ahead to clear the green.
4. The issue this season was the excessive rain in June and first half of July caused the saplings of typical
"weed" trees such as cherries,poplars, and sumac to grow quickly partially blocking the view of the
right side of the fairway. The extremely steep bank to right of the tee makes access difficult and unsafe.
Spraying isn't option right now as the vegetation is stabilizing the steep tee bank.
The wear on the both tees is concentrated on the left side only due to the obstructed view. I have cut down the majority of saplings on the right side so the whole tee can be utilized.
When teeing off on nine, Please use the whole area between the markers.
I measured the wear areas yesterday for re-sodding and it was approximately 350 sq. feet. This is the same size as the gold tee on number 1.
My plan early this fall is to extend the white tee back to the front of the blue tee. There is 18 feet of rough separating the tees and would give us 6-8 additional tee placements by renovating this area. This will provide 12-15 tee positions, or approximately two weeks, to allow more plant recovery time. Once winter arrives we will take steps to find and make a safe access point to address the trees on the right throughout the season.
I will post our progress once renovation begins.
