Turkey Season

November is coming, leaves are falling and its almost Turkey Shoot time. The weather this month has been great for grass with an almost weekly rain event,  warm days and some moderate nights. No frost delays as of yet at Bass Rocks but the sun is coming up much later and going down earlier. Its been a challenge the last few weeks getting out in the pitch dark with our smaller fall staff. I'd like to mention a few upcoming items as the season is coming closer to the end, mention a few items from this last year and look forward to next year.

One great question I was asked last week was about my staff and it was basically about the size and visibility of the maintenance staff. During peak season we run between 18-20 people, many if not most of them are part time staff comprised of high school and college kids as well as a couple retirees. They allow us to complete tasks early while the course is quiet. This is extremely efficient and  is a win/win for the club and the employees. We need them more in the morning and many of them don't want to work a full time job to enjoy their afternoons at the beach. Many of them punch out around 11am. After they go back to school, which is typically around Labor Day, our staff shrinks to 11-13 people depending on the way things shake out each year. The number of tasks actually increases as the fall goes on because leaves need to be blown off or picked up prior to mowing, outings and other course events are more plentiful, limiting on course maintenance time for the staff. The staffing decrease requires us to shift focus, prioritize tasks in a different manner and rework our typical regimen. We are now doing primary tasks then coming back around to complete secondary jobs. As you might imagine, doing this in the middle of play is more time consuming and I realize, at times, this may be inconvenient but I just want you to know we're doing our best to minimize disruption while still trying to do our jobs. As always, thanks for your understanding.

We still have a number of maintenance items to address over the coming weeks and months as the season starts wrapping up. Fairway aeration and approach verticutting are still on the docket; we plan on starting  next week by doing a few a day in house as weather and time permit. Please be aware of the staff and keep their safety in mind if you are playing and notice them out cleaning up. We will have Sportscapes Unlimited in to help us with some of the double fairways on November 18th and/or 19th and our annual deep tine aeration of greens is scheduled for November 11th. These are both contracted services. Deep tining gives us a long 9-10 inch solid tine hole with a "kick" that fractures the subsoil and aides in drainage during the winter, Greens will be rolled after but left open to allow water to exit the root zone. 

Multiple light sand topdressings will be made as mowing comes to a halt. The sand will help protect the putting surfaces from injury and aid in thatch reduction and green firmness. Frost will become a problem especially as it pertains to our ability to get out early and in front of play. November 12th is the day we've rented our compressor for irrigation blowout as well as winterization of the on course bathrooms, drinking water and pump stations. Our snow mold fungicide applications will be made as weather permits mid November and we will start covering greens and tees on December 1st. As always, temporary greens will be out there for you to play during the off season. 

The 7th green is coming along nicely, the roots are still very shallow but that is to be expected. I'm hoping for some decent spring weather to help us get the roots we need to open it as soon as possible and we will as soon as it is ready to handle the traffic. Thanks to Country Golf again for a great job making Robert McNeil's vision a reality. I think the Green Committee and the Board hit it out of the park with this project. 

Its been a busy year at the club with the patio installation, the 7th hole, some mound work we've started on the 3rd hole, a pond dredging feasibility study along with a few other things I know I am forgetting. I'm already excited for 2026 and will keep you posted with what is to come as we close out 2025. For now lets focus on Halloween candy and a Turkey Shoot that we know you'll enjoy. Kyle and Chris have been scheming up some things to give you all fits to close out the season.

Finally, I would also like to take the time to acknowledge all of the people on the maintenance team that make things go around. My assistants Kyle Franey and Chris Grady are two great men that truly care about the course and the club. Their tireless efforts and hard work cannot be appreciated enough. Jim Fox has things humming in the shop and keeps our reels sharp, equipment in top shape and has us all laughing with his silly one liners. To the main team of Chris Luke and our boys from EDA Jonny, Marcos, Jose, Hugo and Angel, thank you for offering to pick up extra weekend shifts with our busy schedule. These guys simply gets stuff done and they do it well, muchisimos gracias. The seasonal crew of Jim Doyle, Brady Sullivan, Charlie Donato, Aiden and Cole Doke, Ben Sperry, Jackson Colbert, Drew Johnson, Brooks Slingluff and Shawn Gildden who didn't get sent home early one time from rain this season; thanks for doing a lot of the little things that just need to get done to make things look good. Last but not least, Cheryl Bonin and Lorena from Plant Creations who make the flowers and perennials look better each and every year at the club.

October 9th Update

The season is chugging along, its hard to believe its almost mid October and Columbus Day is next week! We received 0.65" of much needed rain yesterday which should help perk things up and get us over the proverbial hump. The forecast for later this weekend and the holiday is pretty ugly with inches of rain and 50 plus mile per hour winds. I suspect Monday to be a wash and Tuesday may be as well. Expect some wind damage, flooding and a mess of leaves to affect your golf schedule but hope for the best. 

Fall is an extremely important time for turfgrass. Lower temperatures and reduced daylight tell the plant to start pushing roots and slow top growth. This switch tells the plant to get ready for the winter and our main turf type of poa annua is extremely sensitive to temperature swings. I think we will avoid a frost tomorrow with the warmer ocean temperatures but one never knows; if we do have one, there will be a delay. As always, pay attention to the tee sheet and prepare accordingly. I would suggest thinking about getting later tee times if you can moving forward. Walking on frosted turf can do severe damage or even kill turf. Please know its just as much as an inconvenience for the maintenance team as it is for the golfer, we have to bounce around much more and work where we can as frost comes off in order to get things done before golf. Frost may be off in one area of the course and still be on in others; I simply ask that you trust me and my team's judgement to get you out as quickly as possible.

Fertility is extremely important this time of year as well. We made our annual Polyon fertilizer application to fairways last week as well as some other fertilizer applications to roughs. I'm planning on continuing our spoon feeding regimen to greens until late October before making an application of SeaBlend to greens and tees. We will slowly begin raising cutting heights and reducing mowing frequency as we move through this month and I suspect we will cease mowing altogether sometime around Halloween. Weather will be the ultimate factor in my decision making process. 

We've come into some luck thanks to a friend and member, Mike D'Annolfo who gave us a really nice supply of beautiful sandy fill. We have started to move it onto the course, specifically on the 3rd hole. The photo illustrates the general areas where the native mounding will be created. We were planning on doing it this winter but the material is here and we need the space. Mounding is in the Enhancement plan for multiple areas on the left of the hole and behind the green. I flagged the areas for my staff under the direction of our architect and we'll be hauling when we have time around  our other tasks and of course the impending onslaught of leaves. 

The 7th green is starting to fill in and it looks good from a distance but its still VERY thin up close; the roots are only about 1/2 inch long where we have coverage. I am continuing to feed and topdress it regularly. It is currently being mowed almost daily at a higher height of 0.150"with a specially configured mower set up with solid front rollers. The rough sod has been mowed a couple of times and we are raking the bunkers weekly to keep weeds from germinating. I've taken the ropes down but the signs are still up so please continue to stay out of the area. I only wish I could keep the deer off the green and the coyotes from digging up the bunkers, they've had a few dance parties causing some minor damage. I'm still hoping that we will be able to use it some time mid June next season if things go according to plan. There is still a decent amount of tree thinning both to the right of the green and at the corner where the old irrigation box used to be. I've ordered the new yardage markers for the sprinklers as well. I suspect the hole will be re-rated at some point prior to opening but doubt the design changes and the added length on both 7 and 8 will really affect the rating much if at all. 

Really good from far...

Good from far...

Far from good and very bumpy 

7th hole Update and Drone Photos

The 7th hole is all but finished with 3 last loads of sod coming tomorrow morning, some cleanup work around the access roads and of course growing in the green. I'm waiting for the last few invoices to come in but my best estimate is that the project came in on budget and on time almost to the day.  Country Golf's main staff of Jim and Nick Deemer and I spent 12-15 hours a day for the last 3 weeks making sure we got things just right for what I think may be the best project we've done here at the club since I've been here. Rob McNeil's vision was spot on "Bass Rocks".  Thank you to the entire project team, my maintenance team, the Greens Committee and the Board Of Governors. 

We laid 3 truckloads of sod last week and the plugs we used for the green were spread on Friday. The heavy rains this weekend were perfect for both and we didn't have any significant washouts. The sod, plugs and seed will need to remain moist for the next few weeks. We've rolled the sod a few times in an effort to speed rooting and will be tending to the area regularly as you might assume.

Before I go any further, I realize its exciting but I would like to ask you ALL to stay off the sod and out of the area. It was a very frustrating day today with me having to ask at least 10 people to get off the sod. There are over 600 people that want to see what it looks like; not only is it wet and trying to root but you are wearing spikes. Now is not the time to walk past the signs and ignore the ropes; having to fix footprints and sod pieces that has been moved from walking on them shouldn't be necessary. 

Here are some pretty cool drone shots that we took on Friday and I've marked one  up with the location of the old green for reference

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7th hole Update

Here is just a few photos and renderings to update everyone on the progress with the 7th hole. As of this afternoon all of the greens drainage and bridging stone has been installed as well as all of the greens mix. The approach and surrounds drainage is almost complete with just a little remaining in the 3 bunker floors. Mound construction is almost done as well with just some plating and finishing left to put together. The cart path turnaround near the new tee for the 8th hole is still on the docket. 

We laid out the new irrigation heads and pipe routing this morning, those trenches will be dug tomorrow and the irrigation installation team from Tanto will be here on Saturday to install all valves, pipe and sprinkler heads. Once that is complete, we will be cleaning up the area, finishing up loam placement and do all of the finish work. Its still hard to say when each piece will happen after the weekend. Grassing, bunker sand installation will follow the finishing work.

Just a reminder that we will be harvesting cores from 15-18 and the chipping greens to plant the new green. This will require them to be closed for the greater portion of a day to be determined. Unfortunately, at this point we cannot tell you when that will happen but one thing is certain, it will be inconvenient for everyone. The September schedule leaves no room with outings, ladies days, member guests, men's day and of course Friday, Saturday and Sundays. We will be doing it on the first available day; you will know as soon as we know. Thanks again for your patience and most importantly your understanding.

I put together a couple of very rough renderings that depict what the hole will look like when completed. The new green makes the 7th hole play about 20 yards longer than the old hole and the new tee adds another 20 yards to 8 playing about 173 to the center of the 8th green. 

Aeration/7th hole

August 21, 2025

We started work on the 7th green on Monday and our "Fall" aeration of greens, tees and approaches is wrapping up today. We just finished applying sand to approaches, got another roll on greens and gave them their first mow this afternoon when the sand was dry. It has been a productive week for sure, even with the light misty rain we received yesterday totaling only 0.07". We are still continuing to miss the big hitting rain storm that we so greatly need while others around us even here on Cape Ann are getting a good drink; the deflector shields are real and they're up over the course. It happens to also be budget season so I'll be putting that together over the next few weeks for next year. August and September are probably the busiest time for our team as we also start to lose staff back to college and high school. 

Our college crew finished yesterday with us; special thanks to Aiden Doke, Drew Johnson and Jackson Colbert who will all be returning to their respective schools with an additional $400 from the Robert Porter Scholarship courtesy of the membership here at Bass Rocks. Thank you for supporting the team that we really rely on and best of luck to them this upcoming school season. 

As I mentioned, aeration is wrapping up; we utilized 3/4 inch solid tines on the greens and collars again this application with a solid dose of 1mm sand that was brushed in and rolled. Tees and approaches were cored or solid tined depending on the need for either and sand has been applied as necessary. I fertilized the greens on the Saturday morning of the Burke with 0.3 lb/1000 ft² of a soluble nitrogen product to get the turf growing vigorously this week. This will help the holes heal up faster and allow the grass to grow through any excess sand. This, and us raising heights to 1/8 of an inch will temporarily slow ball roll for roughly the next 10 days as they recover. Heights will be brought back down to our regular height once the sand has firmly settled into the turf canopy. You will notice that we did not aerate the chipping green or any of the greens in the meadows. Those greens are the ones we will be utilizing to plant the new 7th green; it didn't make sense to me to do them all 2 times in the same month with such an aggressive process so you'll enjoy those for the next few weeks until the green is ready to plant. Once 7 is ready we will need to harvest the plugs along with seed to start the grow in process. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a date for that as I don't exactly know when the green will be completed for planting.

So far the 7th green hasn't given me any surprises; everything under the surface, as of this morning is what I had expected and hoped for. We are encountering some boulders and some very cool ledge outcroppings that will make for a really interesting and challenging new green complex. Please resist the urge to enter the construction area for your safety and that of the contractors. People walking around are not only a distraction and a safety hazard but will also slow the process down. As expected, we are massaging the original plan, moving mounding, adding and subtracting bunkers and working with visual cues to place features in their proper places. The hole was laid out on Monday with our team which includes the architect Robert McNeil, myself and Jim Deemer, the incredibly talented shaper for Country Golf . We reconvened yesterday to assess our progress, make a few changes and rough in some more features. I expect we will do the same again on Friday as things really start to take shape and we get to the left side of the work area. I'll also be meeting with the irrigation team to lay that out on Friday and assess those costs. We harvested the sprinklers, valves and boxes for reuse from the old green and disconnected it from the irrigation system first thing this past Monday morning prior to ripping things up. I'm expecting the actual green construction process to start early next week with the drainage and gravel layers being the first order of business. The materials will be trucked into the sand bin storage area and hauled on site a small load at a time. Please realize there will be MANY loads of materials coming down the 12th and 3rd holes, behind the 11th green to the construction site. The construction team will have priority so please don't tee off of 3 or 12 when they are coming through. Also, be cognizant of them while you are putting on 11; this might be a great time to practice our putting with noise and distractions. As always, thank you for your patience and understanding. 

Things will really start to take shape and become more apparent in the next 3 days. Right now there are lots of stockpiled materials as we rough in features like bunkers, cart paths and obviously the green . Here are a few photos that won't mean much but might peak your interest. I may create another post after the weekend as the "piles" of dirt make it to their final destinations and the entire area has some form. It will still be difficult as its just a mass of brown but you'll start to get the idea.