5 Tee Renovation

Today we started work on the 5th tee.  This tee was hard hit by our wet, hot summer due to poor surface drainage and poor soil structure.  This tee has always had a hard time in summer, but this year was especially difficult.  Our goal with this renovation is to correct these underlying problems so that we have a healthy tee in the future. 

Here's our progress so far in picture:

First, we surveyed site elevations and marked out the center lines and the shape of the new tee.  As you can see, the turf is not happy in this photo.  This area was around 2 inches lower than it should be:

Using a sod cutter, a sand trap rake, and a tractor, we stripped the first inch of material from the tee:

Here is the tee with the sod stripped and groomed a bit.  The sand on top is from 7 years of topdressing and divot filling:

Unfortunately, the sand layer doesn't go very deep. It's only about an inch.  Below this layer is where the problems start, as you can see in this photo:

After about 3 inches, the material is what one consultant called "construction gumbo": clay, gravel, asphalt, rocks, rebar, etc.  So . . . we're going to build upwards by adding several inches of a soil/sand mix often used in tee construction. 

While we had the sod stripped, we took the opportunity to aerify the sub-soil.  We hope this will help meld the sand and soil layers at the base of the tee:

This soil was then groomed and worked to approximate the finished grade after our new material is added.

The last thing we did today was rough grade a drainage swale between the upper and lower tiers of the tee.  This swale will move excess water flowing down the hill away from the lower tee instead of flooding it:

Next week, the maintenance crew will be moving material to this tee and grading it.  The tee will then be seeded.  While seed takes longer to establish than sod, it will result in a longer-lasting, healthier tee.  A temporary tee area will be in use while the tee is renovated.  Our target date for opening the re-grassed tee is June 1st of next year.