Palmer Legends Championship Course
 

From time-to-time I'm going to Remove/Delete older message regarding course playing conditions. Hopefully this housekeeping will ensure users of this forum are reading about the most Current Course Playing Conditions.

Complaining About Palmer Legends
 

As I've posted on this forum many times, it does NO good to complain among members of TTV. The Villages Golf Course Management is never going to see any of these posts. You want to affect change? Fill out the Contact Us online form at the bottom of the Golf The Villages website.

Golf The Villages

My wife and I played Laurel and Cherry soon after it opened and what surprised us most was the incursions of weeds and common Bermuda grass into the fairways and rough and that is happening all over the villages. You surely would not expect that at Palmer and really none of the courses. Many of the green.s ...have crows feet weeds as well. In my opinion this is due to heavy over seeding of the greens and fairways and tees. At other premier courses like Ponte Vedra Country Club and Inn the greens are only lightly over seeded so the spring spurt growing in of the Bermuda is not so terribly impeded. This is also how you get weeds growing in especially the when using the cheapper variety of rye they use on executive courses. Same with the sand used when bunkers are rebuilt - it's never the better grade used originally that has a courser grain which is easier to play out of. It's a cheap sand variety that is usually just dumped in. That's not the way any of the championship bunkers were built originally and not how it's done by real course landscape companies that follow USGA standards - it's the way inexperienced landscapers do it - it should be laid in lifts and tamped in as they are filled and wet as they go. The bunkers that are "rebuilt" in the Villages are never put back to the same original standard using proper grain size sand - it's all about saving money and just having a "look". Proper bunkers are found at courses like Belleglade that haven't been rebuilt. The overseeding heavily is the biggest problem for our greens in the Villages. It's not about golf it's about selling real estate. It should be much lighter and then we, those of us that live here year round would have good Bermuda greens for most of the year instead of rye most of the year while the Bermuda struggles to grow in every year. In Atlanta all the public course went thru this until they finally stopped overseeding. They also changed all the grass over to champions Bermuda and they paint it 2 months out of the year and for 10 months they have perfect Bermuda greens that are very fast. Even Augusta National has changed from bent grass to Champions Bermuda. If they can do this at the public courses in Atlanta we surely could here. We deserve better here in the Villages!

Dear Golf Administration will you please hire this poster as a consultant. His pay could easily be absorbed in the savings you realize

maintaining the courses, STOP SEEDING
 

Well said my friend, well said. I agree hire this guy save money .

Wasn't it just announced that the fairways would not be overseeded this fall? If you share the OPs view, isn't this a step in the right direction? The man in charge of CC maintenance now wasn't here last fall to offer an opinion on anything. I'm willing to wait and see how conditions are next spring when the Bermuda kicks in.

Thanks for the support folks only wish our comments here made a difference - who knows maybe they do, maybe someone important with the Villages management will read and think about it.

I hope for the best with the new director but his plan to not overseed the fairways is based on the lack of water because of our deficit and does not address the greens or tees. They don't have to completely stop overseeding just back off on how heavy they make it. It should be only enough to give the greens a green tinge and just enough to give the dormant grass a little life so the ball rolls true and does not wander off line and it doesn't take much. I understand that the Villages gives the staff the grass seed to plant and want it super thick and green, again not for the golfer or the well being of our grass but to sell real estate. I'm surprised they bought off on not doing the fairways - actually amazed. Also doesn't address the quality of seed used. The more pure the seed the higher the cost. Where do you think all the crab grass comes from? It's much worse on the executive courses.