Welcome back. As I haven’t truly gone public with my blog by the time you read this the golf course will be open for play. We opened Bull’s Eye on Wednesday March 24th and Tri City on the 17th of March. (Peg and Sue had the first tee time of the year.) Now you will see the mountain of work before use as we clear roughs of the numerous boughs snapped during the Christmas Eve’s rain/ice storm. All primary playing surfaces; Greens, green banks, bunkers, approaches, tees and fairways are to be cleaned before we tackle the mess in the roughs. So please bear with us.
We’ll chip away a couple of holes a day and should have the place cleaned up by the 15th of April.
The first thing that you’ll notice new this spring will be a change in flags as we moved away from our custom stitched flags to a less expensive print screened logo flag. This was the flag style we used in the early 90’s. We also used a shrink wrap product to freshen our flag poles to make them look freshly painted.
Three changes not as apparent will be that of the retirement of Leland ‘Ole’ Olsen who’ll be living in Arizona year round to be closer to his family. I’m guessing Ole has been with me for a good dozen years. Ole’s sense of humor will be missed by all. On a sad note Gary Fries suffered a very severe stroke on December 4th 2009. Gary is currently in extensive rehab in Madison at the UW Hospitals. Gary worked full time Spring/Fall taking the summers off so that a college student could earn some tuition money. You never know when it is your turn as Gary was one of the best fit person’s on our staff. A “short” bike ride for Gary was ten miles….one way. Thirdly, Brian Matthews has applied for medical disability that will limit the number of hours he’s allowed to work while his case is pending.
At present we do not plan on replacing these men with new hires as their replacements. It is intent to bank these labor dollars to beat budget numbers with the hope that we can avoid another layoff next winter.
Mark Kienert, CGCS
