From the FLCC Golf Blog...

From the FLCC Golf Blog...

We are taking every step to ensure the safety of our members and keep the golf course open. Golf is a very important part of our physical and mental fitness during this crisis. As you probably noticed, our member golf rounds are up significantly.  This increase in play creates a few operational challenges when it coincides with our limitations to add staff at this time. We are attempting to meet those but please bear with us along the way.  The staff works very hard during normal times, they are working extra hard now.  PLEASE THANK THEM WHEN YOU SEE THEM! 

• Practice range mats:  Typically, we open the grass hitting area for use in early May.  Once that happens we spend roughly 5 hours per week in daily tee cleaning and set up.  We also have about 8 hours a week in divot filling.  Altogether it’s right around $700 in labor per month.  If we keep practice on the mats until we get through this issue, we can save a lot of labor.  Not to mention, the range tee is one area that we might see a lack of social distancing.  Remaining on the mats will save much needed time and money.  

• The first tee time of the day stays at 8:30:  This will help our maintenance staff stay ahead of play.  Smaller staff means fewer bodies to do all the early tasks. Course set up, spraying, mowing greens, tees, collars, fairways, and approaches to name a few are jobs that are best performed in front of play.  We struggle to stay ahead of the first groups now and will be getting caught by hole 7 or 8 if the first tee times moves up to 8:00. 

• Start all play on hole #1:  Tuesdays and occasionally on other days, we’ve had 2 or 3 groups go back as far as 16 to start their round.  It is challenging with a full staff and more so with a small staff.  Anything we can do to streamline our labor and maximize efficiency will help us maintain conditions through this crisis. Straight tee time starts will help keep to the CDC’s recommended gathering maximums of 10 as well.

• Carts on paths & 90-degree rule:  Now that we are riding in separate carts, we are working on ways to mitigate the traffic issues.  From time-to-time, we may alternate front nine/back nine as cart path only or ask that no more than two carts leave the path on any given hole (this is our normal rule but we have relaxed it for now).  We don’t have the manpower to allocate resources to traffic control and traffic-related repairs.  Moving posts, signs, added fertilizer in wear areas, are a few of the cart traffic specific tasks.  

• Hole Sponsor:  Any members want to sponsor a hole? Hole sponsors will be provided sand bottles and asked to fill divots in the fairway and on the tee once per week.  We’ve done Divot Days in the past but this is something different.  Details from Dave coming soon.

• Aeration:  Scheduled for April 20-22.  The course will be closed.  We know this is an inconvenience to our members, especially this year but it is critically important for our greens.

Our goals are: 1) keep our members safe; 2) keep our course open; 3) avoid damage that will take years to fix after this crisis is over.  Thank you for your continued support during these difficult times! 

FLCC Golf & Green Committee’s