Lake Geneva Country Club Putting Surface Enhancements

Keith Kirsch and crew are just wrapping up a three green project here at Lake Geneva CC, WI, about an hour  northwest of Chicago. This club is steeped in tradition as a cottage get away from Chicago, and when the Chicago Fire occurred after 1871, several people took up permanent residence in and around the property at Lake Geneva. There are even some members of the Wrigley family that have an estate in the area as well.

So in 1895 Robert Foulis completed construction of this golf tract, right around the same time he completed the initial layout at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, MN. Foulis and his brothers came over from Scotland earlier and were under the tutelage of Old Tom Morris while in their formative years. Robert has other great layouts to his credit in the St. Louis area as well while his brother was the first golf pro at The Chicago Golf Club. That is just a snippet of the accomplishments of this golf family.

But back to Lake Geneva CC, I wanted to show some of the green expansions superintendent Andy Kronwall and staff has been completing in an effort to restore the greens back to their original greenpads:

Check out these “square” corners on these greens. They look fantastic and really old school. Golf architect David Esler has recently restored the bunkers here as well.

Above is the sixteenth green again with both green corners at about 90′.

XGD will be returning here in mid August to head up the regrassing of all the greens to a modern stand of bentgrass of the club’s choice. Andy has chosen to scarify and aerify the existing green surfaces in advance of fumigation, and then a heavy topdressing in to the existing thatch layer. There are many ways to do this, but this method is advantageous, in that it provides a great, protective seedbed for the new seedlings to germinate and thrive and is much less susceptible to seed movement from a heavy precipitation event.

We look forward to returning to this historic facility in a few months and help the club complete this greens restoration project. Stay tuned for further blogs in August as we ramp up to complete the project, and in the meantime feel free to contact us for some budget numbers for your facility.

Later, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer