Monday, June 30, 2025

Planned Santa Anna Expansion

Last week as planned, we started preparation for expanding our Santa Anna Hybrid Bermuda in some high traffic areas on the golf course adjacent to the cart paths. These areas include the left-hand side of #8 near the green, the right-hand side of #9 middle of the fairway, the right-hand side of #12 near the concrete bridge, the left-hand side #12 near the path entrance to the restrooms, the left-hand side #13 where all of the cart path traffic exits and finally the left-hand entrance area to the fairway on #15 after crossing the shared #15 & #16 bridge.

Our previous course update described the process of us stripping the old sod in these areas followed by conditioning the soil by adding sand and rototilling the compacted soil existing in these areas. These six areas totaled about a half an acre in size and will be re-grassed utilizing the cores from our upcoming fairway aeration starting the week of July 7th. Below are pictures of the process for all who are interested.


Step #1 is to remove all of the battered sod in the individual areas. We use a sod cutter to make strips of sod so we can easily pile up and remove with an excavator or front-end loader.



Removing and finding a home for all of this old sod is strategic as too far of a haul would add to the length of the job and we were under a hard deadline of getting the areas stripped and prepped prior to fairway aeration. We gave ourselves a couple of weeks for preparation and that ended up being about right as we stripped the sod last week and are preparing the soil this week, while setting up and maintaining the golf course for Member play.



The areas on #8 & #9 we hauled around #9 fairway to the pond edge near the new as of 2021 fairway bunker on the left. The addition of this bunker created a tricky maintenance scenario along the water's edge that needed some expansion to make it right. Above we are compacting the sod and soil placed there that was removed for #8 & #9



Above is the #13 cart exit area which has always been some of the worst turf on this golf course because all of the cart traffic exiting the fairway near the green to the left, a classic golf course pinch-point. In 2009 during a bunker renovation, we hauled tons of old bunker sand into the area to improve the grade and soil conditions which made the area better but still didn't solve the problem. 



Part of the problem on #13 is it's a very small area to concentrate all of the cart traffic and we don't have enough square footage to spread it out. If you remember there used to be a much larger rock at the end of the cart path curb that was removed during renovation in 2021. Unfortunately, there were some smaller, at least on the surface, rocks that remained that were now an obstruction to softening the grade to facilitate more exit areas. We were going to dig around them so we could jackhammer off the tops and re-grade, but once Enrique started digging, he was able to extract some of the rocks and move the other side of the cart path. The rock pictured above however was too big to extract for our equipment, so he kept digging and was able to push it into its own hole and bury it with dirt allowing us to re-grade and soften this area creating more exit spaces.



Above is a good look at the rock before Enrique pushes it on its side into the hole.



Our next step after stripping all of the sod off of all of the areas was to condition the soil prior to
re-grassing. Part of the reason these areas struggled with traffic was the underlying decomposed granite soil that the turf was trying to grow in. Here we are rototilling the area near #8 after we added sand.



The tractor mounted rototiller can't maneuver in the tight spots or edges, so we utilized our walk behind rototiller in these narrow areas.



This is the alternate exit on the left-hand side of #12 after stripping and before soil preparation with the rototillers. It's a good example of the shape we plan to re-grass with Santa Anna Hybrid Bermuda in these carved out traffic areas. We plan to mow it at fairway height providing a smooth exit transition off of the fairway and onto the cart paths. The hybrid bermuda will be much more durable than the cool season turf blend that was there prior, especially in the spring, summer and fall where the course receives the vast majority of its traffic.

We will post another update soon, showing the grading and re-grassing of these areas.

Thanks for your support!

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