Minikahda Club XGD Demo Day
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity of a sales trip to the upper midwest locales of Chicago and the Twin Cities in MN. I dovetailed it on a XGD Demo day we held for all clubs in the region in conjunction with a two green install we completed at the historic Minikahda Club near downtown Minneapolis. We couldn’t have been more pleased with the turnout of approximately fifteen club superintendent and general manager types. This club has such a long and storied history that in order to do it justice you need to review it in the link to the club above, but my quick and dirty version includes a Donald Ross restoration in 1920, and most recently followed up with a Ron Prichard upgrade in 2001.
The project scope for our crew was changed up for us a little on their first hole as we also lifted some sod on about 600 square feet on the left front corner and gently recontoured that area to allow for positive surface water flow off the green in that area that traditionally had been a bird bath.
In the picture above we lowered this corner of the green about three inches and tied it in to the green and rough area. Superintendent Jeff Johnson has a nice blog post referencing the success of this specific project on his turfgrass blog.
This picture exhibits the finished sodding job later in the afternoon of that first day on the site, after the sun came out with XGD Projects Manager Matt Magarian, Jeff Johnson, and assistant Nick Folk looking on. A few rolls of the greens sod couldn’t be salvaged as you can see by the off color pure bentgrass pieces in front of the bunker, which the club was happy to provide to aid in their management practice of increasing their bentgrass population over the past few years.
I also wanted to give a big thank you to Jeff and the staff here as they helped us out with the coordination of a very successful XGD Demo Day, and for the opportunity to see how our process might aid in bringing their greens to a more sustainable level for the long term. Our oldest greens drainage installs have been completed over 20 years ago, and are still functioning as well now as when they were first completed. A testament to the success of our process providing our clients with a long term ” bang for their buck” so to speak.
Later, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer
