Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Spring is Here



 Spring has officially arrived and the golf course is starting to come alive.

The maintenance staff at HOA has been busy getting things back into shape for the spring and summer playing seasons. We put some fertilizer on the grass range tee to wake it up and get it growing, it has been mowed once so far and is looking great. I know people are itching to start hitting range balls off the grass tee and we are only a couple weeks from opening it back up. We have also done a few little things to make the course a little nicer. First of all we built a new scorecard and pencil box for the first tee on the river course, in the past we have used a mail box to house cards and pencils, the mail box never really worked very well and didn't look very nice. The new box is made from rough cedar and will match the other wood signs we have on the course. Speaking of signs, we completely re finished the sign at the entrance to the river course. Lastly we finally put out our new cups, flags, and flag sticks on the river course. We went with a new color combination this year, the flags are yellow and black checkered pattern instead of blue and white, and the flag sticks are yellow instead of white. We hope these yellow flags and sticks will be a little easier to see. 

We hope to see you out here, and never hesitate to stop and ask us questions or offer suggestions on how we can continue to try and make HOA the best golf course it can be.

Sam Marlin

Superintendent

smarlin@orion-mgmt.com


 






Monday, March 1, 2021

More tree work

If you read the last blog post you know that wee have started doing tree work on the river course. We started by removing some smaller trees on holes number Two and Four to open up the view from the tee on each hole, well the work continues to hole number Seven. I think we can all agree that number Seven is the most challenging hole on the course and possibly one of the most difficult tee shots in the KC Metro. The view of the fairway and landing area has become blocked by small trees that have grown between the forward tee and the river, and small trees growing on the river bank just in front of the blue tee have made the tee shot next to impossible if you cant get the ball up quickly. The work we are doing will address both of these issues.

We have cut down many of the trees on the steep bank just in front of the blue tee allowing shots that are hit lower to still get across the river. At the moment we have only cleared in front of the top tier where the tees are placed the majority of the time, we will continue to work on the left side to clear it out as well making the entire tee useable. The next issue we started to address is the large native area on the river side of the cart path, think of the left side of the path from the bridge around to the yellow tee. This area has become very overgrown with brush and vines as well as being littered with dead trees that have fallen over the years, we are in the process of clearing out all of the fallen timber and removing the under growth to open this area up similar to the section between the tees on hole Nine. Also there were a number of small trees growing behind the forward tee that were blocking the view of the right side of the hole, we have removed all of these trees and it has made the tee shot from the blue tee much more inviting while allowing golfers to see the ball land when hit to the right of the fairway.  

Some of the tree work we have done this winter may not be completely noticeable until spring and summer when the trees have leaves on them, but we hope that the effort we are putting in will increase playability, speed up play, and most importantly give golfers a more enjoyable course to play. 


Sam Marlin
Superintendent
smarlin@orion-mgmt.com