Palmetto closing
 

According to the paper i can’t link to, Plametto is closing friday (3/24)

The Executive Golf Division said, “This closure will give the maintenance team time to execute cultural practices on the greens and tees such as aerification and sand topdressing to aid with drainage, relieve compaction and provide oxygen to the root zone. Additionally, the maintenance team will work on eradicating disturbing winter weeds.”

So which is better? Playing on a course on bad condition? Or the course being shut down and not being available?

Shutting down the course to let it heal and let it be repaired.

Any idea how long this will take? A couple of weeks, a couple of months, half a year, or more??

Needs a complete overhaul. Nothing was salvageable. New maintenance head is needed

To do it right, months. Need to kill and re seed the grass, let it grow nice strong root system.

Wasn't Palmetto closed for an extended period of 2022?

It was, i recall they were working on the cart path along #8.
Don’t know what else they did.

Keeping any sports area in good condition, proactive is so much better than reactive where maintenance is concerned
Very few Executive courses in TV are in front of their problems, and Championship courses not far behind, resulting in ground crews forever playing catch-up.
It is a seasonal losing battle, and has been getting worse over the years, with the time that the courses are acceptable for play, getting shorter each year.
No doubt the deniers will come out with the usual excuses and condemnations of any adverse remarks, but it will not alter the fact that the majority of courses are in a dire state.
JMO.

Closed
 

Right, and so were Mangrove and Sweetgum, and more than once. Is there some environmentally strange about those three neighboring courses? Lot of marshland higher humidity in that area.

Executive courses
 

The courses that are maintained by people that know what they are doing are in great shape all year long. Lopez and Glenview, and the four execs are all in great shape. It is NOT because nobody plays them, it is because they have a crew of professionals that know their job. The courses that are suffering are because they have grass cutters trying to maintain a golf course.....you can see the result. The shame of it all is that they will rebuild a course for a year then not maintain it, and two years later it is garbage again??? Why??

It is sad that Palmetto has to be closed due to the maintenance contractor, ASG failing to perform their end of the maintenance contract. They have been cutting every corner that they can get away with. I cannot figure out why Mitch Leininger allows it. It is also taking place with the other two maintenance contractors, Brightview and Down to Earth. The Scope of Work is posted on a Google blog, executivegolfmaintenance. You can get your own copy by contacting the District Clerk, Jennifer Farlow. Ask for the RFP for the Lindsey Lane Contract which is one of the two most recent contracts awarded. This contract is for Mira Mesa, Chula, Hill Top, Silver Lake and De La Vista. The Scope of Work is buried in the middle of the RFP. It is 17 pages of details. If these contractors followed the Scope of Work we would all be happy golfers.

It is too bad Palmetto has to be closed because they do not have enough golf courses.
They are short 10 executive golf courses south of Hwy 44. There should be 15 executive course there now based on the population and we only see 5.
The developer has saved the cost of construction of those 10 courses and then profited from the sale and construction of homes on the land that should have been used for executive golf. It is a problem that cannot be fixed. This area has been built out and has no room to add these courses.
The math is simple. There are 36 executive courses north of 44. Divide the population of 100,525 by 36 and you have 2793 for each executive course. Take the south population of about 41,475 (it is higher now) and divide by 2793 resulting in 14.85 courses.
Short 10 executive golf courses.
The championship courses are worse. They are short 12 nines. No room to build them.
They is talk of building more courses further south. I would say those new courses won't be enough to handle the 60,000 new golfers that will be coming to the Villages to play golf.

I think people that are retiring now don't play golf as much or at all. The South is built for that along with more walking trails, dog parks etc. I think the sweet spot for golf is between 466 and 466a and if you like golf, you should buy in this area.

Where do you suggest that they could have added more executive courses in the areas that have been built out south of 44?

Please be specific...

I make executive golf tee times for two groups and the increasing difficulty in getting tee times each year would suggest that a lot of people are playing golf and the number of houses per executive course keeps increasing. Demand on the executive courses seems to independent of location; the courses south of 44 are just as busy.

What I think they were trying to say was that they sacrificed executive courses for pitch and putts so that they could maximize the number of houses.

Looking at the tee times each day those pitch and putts are sitting mostly idle whereas if they were executive courses they would be packed and relieve the stress on the other executive courses.

And they would be wrong...

There was simply not enough land to put in a full executive course where they put the pitch & putts... Especially south of St Catherine's...

They could have possibly squeezed one into Richmond, but that area already had 5 executive courses nearby...

Now that they've started building on the wide swath of land on the other side of the Bexley Bridge, they have already started construction on one (of 5) new exec courses and a new championship course (with 2-3 more already planned)...

It must be all of the new people who are moving in who have no interest in playing golf... Wait, what?

You probably answered your own question!

Only 13 posts until it became the developers fault for a course they built 10-15 years ago, and have no responsibility to maintain.

Yes, there’s lot of play on the executives. But i think the problem is the maintenance contractors.

Palmetto Executive Golf Course

In our efforts to provide optimum conditions on the Executive Golf Courses, the Palmetto Executive Golf Course will be closed Friday, March 24, 2023 for several weeks to undergo necessary maintenance work. This closure will give the maintenance team time to execute cultural practices on the greens and tees such as aerification and sand topdressing to aid with drainage, relieve compaction and provide oxygen to the root zone. Additionally, the maintenance team will work on eradicating disturbing winter weeds like Poa annua grass. We thank you for your patience during this closure.

So who has the responsibility to insure that the contractor responsible for course maintenance is performing their duties according to the scope of work outlined in the contract ? That individual is ultimately responsible.

I believe the OP was saying they should have planned for more courses before it was built out!

I looked at the area between 44 and turnpike on Google maps. There’s not much space. Lake Okahumpka and continental are on the north east side, takes up a lot of space.
The only spot was where southern oaks is. They may have been able to get 3 executives in vs 1 championship, but there are a lot of executives south of turnpike.

And yes, the developer has to build homes, that’s their business.

Stop cutting the grass so short. It takes more water, burns out easily, takes more fertilizer, NOTHING TO CHIP OFF OF. It's not supposed to be like the top of a billiards table. Greens yes, the rough and fairways NO.

I wonder what our neighborhood yards would look like with a continuous flow of Golf Cart traffic and foot traffic day in and day out all day long in a drought conditions.

I've repeated this exact thing, multiple times...

It seems like wasted breath...

Not unusual to see a well maintained practice putting green next to an exec course with horrible greens. Maybe no ball marks on the practice green, but same weather and plenty of foot traffic.

As complaints grow over the condition of golf courses in The Villages, bids are being received this week for improvements at two more courses.

Bids are due by 4 p.m. Friday, March 24 for planned improvements at Hilltop Executive Golf Course on the Historic Side of The Villages and the Briarwood Executive Golf Course in the Village of Briar Meadow in the Marion County section of The Villages. Both of the improvements would be funded through the Amenity Authority Committee.

A mandatory pre-bid meeting was held last week.

Estimates are the work could top $300,000.

I'm thinking they do that so the old duffer can top a golf ball and let it bounce and roll 110 yards on to the green while the other three in the group yell "nice shot!":eclipsee_gold_cup:

Shut down. No choice. Very bad shape

DTE does a fine job maintaining all the ones they are responsible for.

In the winter time, appears that only the greens are cut and not every day.

That is my point. There is no room to build more courses. So we are just short 10 executive courses which helps explain a lot of the "denials" in the golf reservation system.

No, there is plenty of room. It's just that the room is available on the SW side of the turnpike, not along the narrow strip of development along Morse & Meggison...

And that is why they are currently building another championship, executive and pitch & putt just over the Bexley Bridge, with plans the build many more...

From the time Lowlands opened in 2019 through year 2023 there will have been approximately 17,000 new homes added to The Villages. Since a new Executive course has not been built in 3+ years, those of us in the South have no choice but to put extreme pressure on all the courses North of us.

The other side of that coin is, those south of 44 head more than a few years of excess executive courses, since it took 4 years for those 17K new homes to be built...

How is that fair? ;)