Hello All-
I was able walk the course last week once most of our snow melted. From what I could see, the turf looks to be in good shape coming out of winter. There was no visible snow mold, a pathogen that you often find under snow cover. I was pleased to see that no major ice damage has occurred.

The course is still very wet. The ground has an ice layer still that will take a while to thaw. We had a rapid melt in the snow; the water was not able to penetrate far into the soil due to this ice layer. Not a problem for the turf, the water will continue to sit until it either finds its way off site or is able to find thawed soil.

As I see it now, our biggest challenge coming out of winter will be course clean-up. There were a number of branches around that will need to be cleaned once I start to bring some employees back. I am anticipating bringing a few back mid March to begin cleaning the course and prepping for spring. This will be a good time for us to get a few drainage projects out of the way as well before we begin to get busy.

Overall I am very pleased with how everything looks. I am optimistic that the weather will soon begin to level out and we will be able to get outside and begin spring preparations.

I hope you all have had a good winter and are as anxious as I to get outside and play golf.

See you on the course

-Elliott

Hello from your new Superintendent

Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Elliott Dowling and I have been named the new Superintendent of your golf club. I am extremely excited to work at Cress Creek! My official start date will be February 14th. Although I have not yet officially started, I have already begun planning on how to make 2011 a great golf season at Cress Creek!

I am coming to Cress Creek from Ivanhoe Club, where I served as the Superintendent for 3 years. I have also been a 2nd Assistant at Oakland Hills Country Club outside of Detroit. I earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University with an emphasis in turf management. I am continuing my formal education in turf management through an online program with Penn State University.

Personally, I will be getting married this fall to my fiancée, Jen. She is a counselor at Hampshire High School. My favorite sport to play is ice hockey; I have played this all my life. Despite living in the Chicago area, I have to admit I am a lifelong Red Wings fan. Of course, I love to play golf as much as I can too. 2011 looks to be a great year for me both personally and professionally!

My goal is to make sure you have the best possible golfing conditions while at Cress Creek! I cannot wait for the cold weather to move out and the golfing season to begin. I look forward to getting to know you, the members of Cress Creek. I am always accessible by email at elliott.dowling@cresscreekcc.com. My office number is 630-355-5736. Please feel free to contact me.

Looking forward to seeing you on the course!

-Elliott

The Course is Open!

There are so many items that must get done before the course can officially open. We normally don’t have weather like we are experiencing this year; therefore we can get most things done at a more casual pace. This year is the most unusual of my career. We will have mowed the greens three times before April 1 and sand top-dressed them as well.

Here is a picture of Nelson Avila cutting the green for the first time this year. We measure the height of cut in 1000’s of an inch. It is very clear where he has cut - notice the mower lines.

All the ball washers are going out along with the benches, tee markers and bunker rakes. Everything we worked on this winter is going out for use. Our course weathered the winter wonderfully; our fairways, in my opinion, have never come out of winter looking so good. In one of my earlier posts I showed a fairway unit getting rebuilt. Well here it is cutting grass on hole 5 driven by Jose Garcia. This machine is cutting grass at a ½” or as we measure it .500”.

It takes a lot of work to remove the stumps of the ash trees we cut down this winter. Here is a picture of Guadalupe Gonzalez stump grinding; we then come back with soil that we composted in the dump and fill the holes. They then will be sodded and will be temporarily ground under repair.

New bunkers deserve close attention. Before we start raking the sand bunkers, we want to make sure that they are edged properly; and here is a picture of our crew hand trimming the edge to the bunker. It is detail work like this that will keep our remodeled course looking good.

Well, anyone who felt we had a short golfing season here last year better make it over to Cress Creek to take advantage of this very early spring weather. Please bear with us as we try to get everything done early this year. The course really is in great shape for April 1st. No fooling!

Getting Ready!

Getting a golf course ready for play for the membership is like spring cleaning your entire house but a hundred times over! You have seen in my other posts that we have to re-build equipment, paint, cut down trees and 100’s of other little jobs. We hope everything is tuned up and ready to go. Once the outside work begins, then the real work starts - dealing with Mother Nature. I drive the course and see all the clean-up needed, and then I look at the weather forecast … rain. We are limited to the number of men we can call up to work. As we all know, sometimes they get the forecast correct other times they don’t. So I bring a couple of guys in to start raking and when I say raking, we are talking truck-loads of branches. Every part of the course needs work, but we begin by hand raking green and tee banks.

I would love to bring in more men and really knock this work out quickly, but I have to worry about keeping them busy once it does start to rain. We need the fairways, tees, and greens to be dry so we can use the bigger blowers. The greens and tees can be done with hand held blowers, but we use cart driven blowers to clean the fairways. Then we need good, dry ground to go around picking up the piles of debris. The week of March 15th looks to be promising to get clean-up work done. I have a dual-edge sword when asking men to come back. Once you call them in, they expect to work every day. Well, as we all know, we could have two or three weeks of frosty weather after a good week this time of year. Here you can see the men have their carts full of branches that they were picking up near the cart paths when the rain became too much. In the background you can see the puddle starting on the green.

It is amazing when you drive the course and see all the mess yet, in just a few weeks, you will see mowers and golfers. I have opened the greens for play just twice before April 1 in the past 15 years. I believe the weather went right back into freezing temperatures afterwards. The one key to knowing your grass will be growing and staying green is when the soil temperatures stay above 55 degrees. About three straight days of above 65 is when the fairways green up. We really need actively growing grass to support golf. If the grass is not growing, the ballmarks and divots really start to build up. Additionally, the rough can’t take the cart traffic.

Every fall we spray the playing surfaces for snow mold. It would be too costly to spray the rough. But it does get attacked; here is a picture of Justin Kirtland looking at some pink snow mold in the rough. This is one of our worst spots, but it will grow back quickly. Bentgrass fairways, tees and greens don’t recover like the rough and are a lot more noticeable. Fortunately, we are extremely clean from tee to green. Fungicides, while expensive, are imperative to winter survival.

Well the Masters is around the corner. All it takes is for our membership to watch that for a day, and I know what to expect! So as much as you want to come out, we want to get things cleaned up for you. It is just frustrating while, as I write this, we have had another ½ “of rain.

How Far We Have Come

Often, people forget what things used to look like “back in the old days,” and why we have done so much to renovate our course and clubhouse here at Cress Creek Country Club. I was going through some pictures recently, and thought I should bring back some memories that our longer-tenured members might remember and enjoy. And, show some of our newer members how much we have changed.

Welcome to Cress Creek Country Club

This was the view as you came up the front drive when I first took the job in 1994.

Once you arrived, the Pro Shop entrance was in the back.

I used to like to step back and really take in the beauty of the back entrance to the Pro Shop.

While members enjoyed the golf, they used to send their kids over to the pool. Yes, Coach Rob could be found there coaching some of his swimmers.

You will notice there are some swimmers in the pool picture. I remember how proud we were of the shade awning on the right.

One of my happier days was when we removed the snack shack. It was a shame to loose that wooden shade awning that the customers enjoyed.

While the work on the new clubhouse was going on, it became very apparent the drainage in the bunkers had stopped working.

Francisco Garcia was always willing to help pump them out.

People often complain today about clear shots to the greens; well we didn’t seem to mind them as much back then. Two of the bunkers that made me sick just to be near were the two fairway bunkers on the left on hole #2.

Not everyone wanted to change the bunkers. The ducks were always ready for fun.

You had to careful of falling trees as you played. Wind and willows don’t mix!

After a round of golf, you could always enjoy a good time in the men’s grill. People forget what a real card room looks like.

Our algae was so strong back then it could grow through the ice!

I have not included any “after pictures” because we know how things look today. Thanks to the men and women who made all of this possible.

Winter Work - Still a Busy Time

Over the course of my 15 years here at Cress Creek Country Club, I have been asked many types of questions, good ones, helpful ones and the occasional silly one. Without a doubt the number one question I receive is “what do you do during the winter.” While some think we play gin rummy all day, we really are just as busy as in summer. The nice thing is we may get a little vacation time in.

All the snow plowing for the Club’s winter events is done in house by the Grounds Crew. This can make for some late nights. We have been lucky lately with the snow falling mostly during the day.

Our days our filled mostly by repairing and rebuilding every piece of equipment we own, from equipment to ball washers, to the complete overhauling of a fairway mower. The mower below is getting a rebuild.

Below is a photo of Phil Kassinger getting a mower blade ready for sharpening. Our mowers are set to thousandths of an inch to give the precise cut needed for greens, tees, and fairways.

Below is a picture of Lalo Garcia sanding all the ball washers for Guadalupe Gonzalez to prime and paint. You will see we set up a temporary painting booth.

The past two winters have been extraordinarily difficult with tree removal. Last year we removed trees for the renovation of the golf course. This year we have been working on removing ash trees ahead of the emerald ash borer that is within one mile of Cress Creek. The effect of the ash borer can be seen in the picture below. The area is in front of the Jewel store on Ogden, across from the main Post Office.

Interestingly, I was the person who spotted the affected trees and notified the city. I had seen so many trees at “ground zero” in Michigan, that I knew the signs of an attacked tree right away. If you see an ash tree with dying upper branches or with a D shaped hole the size of a pencil eraser on the trunk at waist to neck height, chances are you have spotted an ash with emerald ash borer. There are 53,000 ash trees in Naperville. Soon, glorious trees in our area will be coming down on a daily basis. Our department has researched this subject aggressively. The reports vary widely. One professor from Illinois feels that there will not be an ash tree standing in North America in ten years.

Below is a log picker that hauls away the ash logs at no charge to us. Only certain companies are licensed with the counties and state to accept this wood.

Wes Munson (a member of the Grounds Committee) and I went around the course this fall and selected some key ash trees that could be treated, with the hope that they could survive this attack. Our hope is that, if we treat for ten years, the borer will do its damage in the area and have moved on. Additionally, this will give us time to plant other types of trees in key areas. Note that the cost of treating all the trees is prohibitive for us.

Below, Ted, our course dog, keeps a close eye on Andy Perry, (left) and Justin Kirtland (right) as they paint the tee markers before they go out later to work on the trees. Note the dedication, care and precision they are demonstrating!

We hope this blog will allow the Grounds Department to keep you up to date on things happening in our area and the course. Please feel to ask questions or comment on our posts.

Welcome to Our New Blog

Welcome to our new Cress Creek Grounds and Greens blog.

Our main purpose is to provide articles of interest to our members about:

• What is currently happening on the golf course,
• Plans for work on the course,
• Course improvements,
• Projects that we are involved in that are not directly course related.

This will be somewhat of a “behind the scenes” view with more information about these subjects than we normally communicate to the membership.

We expect to make posts to this blog every week or two, depending on what activities and projects are being done.

We hope that you will find this interesting and check it periodically for updates. Also, we encourage you to suggest possible topics for us to write about.