Seed, Seed, More SEED

 

With these great spring temperatures and rain, we've had good success with our seeding to bridge the gap between what was done last fall and where we need to be for opening the course to play.  

Unfortunately, much of the seed that was planted late in the fall and dormant seeded in the winter was either washed away by the heavy rains or frozen off shortly after germination with the incredibly low temps we got a couple months ago. 

In response to this, we have seeded over 4000 lbs of tall fescue in the rough, one 4-foot pass at a time. We also have been using our hydro-mulch unit to cover seed on steep slopes and tough to establish areas. Though the weeds are also taking advantage of the rain and temperatures, we are confident we can have things cleaned up in time for golf. Spring seeding is an adventure.

I want to take a moment to shout out our small, but incredible crew here at Swope. It is clear that everyone has a clear goal in mind and is working their tails off to make it happen. I know it has been a lot to ask of these guys, but every one of them has absolutely risen to the occasion. 

Antonio, Julio, Alex, Carlos, Ulises, Bill, Sam, and MJ-- Hats off to you!

Behind the Scenes this Winter

 If you've ever had the pleasure of purchasing golf course fixtures, you will know that the cost can get unreasonable very quickly. With a finite budget for the renovation at Swope, we wanted to put every dollar possible into making the course incredible. To offset some cost of the fixtures and furnishings, we have taken on the project of building as many as we can in-house.

We started with a stack of plastic wood composite to match furnishings we've purchased

The stack is processed into individual components 

Here is a sneak peak at the tee markers 

Small trash cans for every hole

Overall, we still have work to do on everything we want to make for the course as well as growing in the course and getting it ready for play this summer. My hope is that everyone is even half as excited as we are here to roll out this reconstructed piece of history!

 

Ready to welcome back GOLF

Though we don't have a solid timeline of the official reopening of Swope Memorial, we do know that it will be very exciting when it happens. As of now, we are shooting for early July and if weather continues to be favorable, this seems to be an attainable goal. 

If you have not had the chance, I encourage you to visit the Swope Memorial Youtube page to see videos of all the construction that has taken place on the course. 

 https://www.youtube.com/@swopememorialgc9587

With the heavy equipment gone, the detail work has been the focus of our crew here at the course. The amount we would like to do before the opening seems daunting, but our number one motivation here is to provide the best possible product we can for our golfers when those gates swing open.

We look forward to seeing you this summer!

Wet, Wet, Dry, Wet

I hope you all are enjoying May as much as we are at Swope Memorial. While you wait for our reopening we do encourage you to support our other Kansas City facilities including Shoal Creek, Hodge Park, Minor Park, Heart of America, Adams Pointe, Winterstone, and Sycamore Ridge. As the title of this blog suggests May has been a very wet month for us here at Swope. We start and end this month with lower than average temperatures as well as ample rainfall. This has been a blessing to us as we currently have our irrigation system down for the renovation. This has also allowed us to continue our sodding of new fairways edges discussed in our previous blog.

Widening of old #7 new #3 Fairway

Transporting Sod from #12 to new #3

New Sod on #3

While the majority of the month has been wet we did experience a dry spell towards the middle of the month that tested our ability to keep our new sod hydrated without active irrigation. Our staff came up with several ingenious ways to water this sod, including converting our spray rig typically used for chemical applications into a watering unit. We were also able to convert an old 1250 gallon water tank typically used by the city for snow melt applications into a hydraulic pump supplied watering rig.

Converted Spray Rig at direct filling station from Fire Hydrant

Renovation Update and In House Projects

As you all know Swope is under a very extensive renovation. While this process in underway by Mid America Golf Construction there are many in-house projects we have our Maintenance team tackling. One of our primary focus points from the past several months has been to reshape fairway lines as well as repairing any low or high areas in fairways that struggle to maintain quality turf grass. This process involves stripping any existing turf, leveling the new areas, and finally laying zoysia sod back into the area. One major cost savings during this process has been the use of existing zoysia on the course to replenish these new fairway edges.