Notes from the grounds office on the state of the eighteen — the surfaces, the prairie, the water, and the weather that governs all three.
People assume that because the holes are short, the maintenance is casual. It is the opposite. When the entire championship putting surface of a golf course totals less than sixty square feet — about the footprint of a single parking space — there is nowhere for an error to hide. A blemish that would vanish on an acre green is, here, the whole green.
Our surfaces are synthetic, which changes the work without lessening it. We do not mow the greens; we groom them — brushing against the nap, levelling the infill, reading the seams. We hold the fairways and surrounds firm and fast on a tall prairie blend, and we leave the native grass between the lines of play to do what it has always done. The lake, the dam, and the spillway we manage as one system. The weather we simply respect.
What follows is the report we keep for ourselves, made public. It is as honest as the course.
— Wendell Thatcher, Course Superintendent
Reconciled each morning at the practice surface and the first tee, before play.
Eighteen greens, each between two and five square feet, all synthetic, all groomed by hand. Together they make up the smallest championship putting complex we know of — and the most scrutinised, because every square inch is in play.
Grooming runs daily: a stiff drag-brush worked against the nap to stand the fibres, the infill levelled and topped where traffic has thinned it, every seam inspected by hand. We monitor the surfaces for UV fade and hold a small turf nursery — matched rolls from the original dye-lot — against the day a green finally wears through. Decompaction takes the place of aeration: quarterly, the infill is loosened and re-levelled so the ball rolls true.
See the surfaces hole by hole
The mown turf is a tall-fescue and bluegrass prairie blend chosen for the heat and the wind, held firm and run lean. We water to keep it alive, not green — a course that drinks little plays the way prairie golf should.
Heights of cut are stepped down toward the hole so the ground game stays honest from fairway to surround. The native grass beyond the lines of play is not rough in the punitive sense; it is the prairie, and it is part of the test.
The native stands between the holes are managed on a prescribed-burn rotation — a cool late-winter burn every two to three years, run by a small crew on a still morning, which clears the thatch, sets back the woody encroachment, and lets the warm-season grasses return thicker than before.
The prairie takes no fertiliser and no irrigation. It does not need them, and adding them would only invite the weeds we are trying to keep out. We mow the lines of play and leave the rest to the wind. It goes gold in August, leans with the weather, and swallows any ball struck without conviction.
The lake is the spine of the back nine and the soul of the fourteenth. We hold it at full pool; the spillway below the dam carries the overflow after a hard rain and keeps the wall sound. The whole of it is managed as a single naturalised feature.
Water clarity we manage the slow way — a sub-surface aeration diffuser and a planted shoreline buffer, not chemicals. Balls recovered from the lake are rinsed, counted, and retired to the practice surface; the fourteenth alone keeps the bucket full.
Read our stewardship programmePrescribed burn on the native stands when the wind allows. Every green seam inspected and re-glued; the dam wall walked for winter heave.
Surrounds and approaches overseeded and rolled. Infill decompaction across all eighteen greens. Nest boxes cleaned and logged before the first broods.
Daily surface-temperature readings on the synthetic greens. Lake aeration at full duty. Mow only the lines of play; let the prairie run.
Leaf management along Mulberry Alley and the woodland edge. Infill topped and levelled course-wide before the Invitational in its honour season.
Equipment overhauled, the turf nursery re-stocked from the dye-lot, next year’s burn map drawn. The course rests; the office does not.
We do. The synthetic surfaces take no harm from frost, but a frosted surround is slick and a frosted golfer is brittle. The delay is for footing, and a little for tradition. We lift it the moment the surrounds thaw, which on the prairie is rarely long.
Because the Stimpmeter, the standard ramp for reading speed, is thirty-six inches long, and not one of our championship greens is. There is nowhere to roll it. The practice surface is built to the same specification and gives an honest number; the course plays a touch quicker for being smaller.
We don’t aerate; we decompact. Foot traffic packs the infill over a season, so quarterly we brush it loose and re-level it. The roll comes back true without ever lifting a plug.
A modest store of matched surface — offcuts from the original installation, same fibre, same dye-lot — kept against the day a high-traffic green wears through. A repair you can’t see is the only kind we’ll make.
Tell us your dates and what you’re hoping for. We confirm every request personally, usually within a day.
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