Gounds

Summertime is the time we get to enjoy the fruits of our hard-working Grounds Crew. Our
beautiful course has never looked better! Now if only my golf game could reflect the course
condition. Unfortunately, I cannot blame my poor shots on anything except lack of talent.
But this article is not about me but is meant to showcase the hard work of our Grounds
Crew, headed by Matt Wagner and his assistant Nate Brown, who have brought our
esteemed Bendelow golf course to its best condition in many, many years.

Of course, we are not done. Coming soon is our new practice Short Game Area which will
begin soon after Labor Day. This exciting addition to our already fantastic course is going
to be tremendous. The Short Game Area will include an elevated small green and bunker
with both a fairway cut and rough-cut grass approaches for chipping.

This year has seen some challenges with equipment breakdowns and availability of
replacements due to industry wide shortages. Many have noticed we do not have our
intermediate cut adjacent to the fairways this year. Although it is happening very slowly, we
are attempting to recover fairway a little at a time by cutting an additional six inches from
each side. Eventually the correct grass strain will dominate those areas. Your patience is
appreciated.

Our new fountains are flowing beautifully and we now have backups for most pumps. These
backup pumps will be instrumental in the event of future unforeseeable problems and should
ensure that we won’t have burnouts as have occurred in the past (with fingers crossed).
Despite that unbelievable amount of rain we received last weekend, the drainage did as
much as it could and we only lost one day of golf until it caught up. We are fortunate that
our Pott Grounds Crew is always anticipating and tweaking the many essentials that make
up our important foundation.

On behalf of the entire Grounds Committee, I wish everyone a great experience golfing at
Pottawattomie!

Bob Mathes