6-27-21

Good Morning,

Today winds down an extremely busy week at The Muni.  Our golf leagues were busy every evening of the weekdays and we hosted the 40th annual Chamber outing Friday followed by the 1st annual Jasen Petersen Memorial event on Saturday.  Add in all the open golf and it equals a lot of golfers having fun at The Muni.  Today we have open golf all day long and we look forward to another busy day!

We have hired a couple new clubhouse employees and they are fitting in quite nicely with our experienced staff.  It’s been a great week for them to jump into the mix.  The staff in the clubhouse has been doing a fabulous job accommodating all our guests.  We’ve seen a lot of new faces this week and hope they come back to see us again soon.  I want to thank the clubhouse staff for the wonderful job they do day in and day out!

The maintenance staff has also been busy with our daily activities keeping the golf course in great shape each day.  It’s been a very challenging year with the high temperatures and lack of precipitation.  The staff has worked extremely hard to make sure it is a great golf experience for our guests and passholders.  The maintenance staff have many years of experience and their ability to adapt on the fly is very impressive.  I’m thankful for each of them and very much appreciate their hard work and passion they bring to the job.

The rainfall on Saturday was much needed for everyone in our community.  It’s also nice to give the irrigation system a break for a couple of days.  Our irrigation and well totals have been the highest totals in June that I can remember.  It’s going to be a huge concern if these weather patterns continue into the month of July.  

Our irrigation system has been running very smoothly this season (knock on wood).  The repairs to the pumphouse and pond dredging last fall have made a big difference.  It’s a far cry from spending so many nights working in the pumphouse trying to keep water flowing.   Most nights the irrigation starts at 8:45 and continues to 8:00 AM before all the stations have completed.  We have a few leaky valves on the course but overall it’s operating great.

I have continued to limit the hours of irrigation for the fairways and concentrated on the approaches, tees, and greens.  The conditions of the golf course definitely show a lack of moisture in the roughs where the grass has gone dormant.  The fairways are slightly discolored because of the limited irrigation applied.  The approaches, greens, and tees are really maintaining a high quality of turf at this time.  Some cooler weather and more precipitation would make a world of difference.  

On Friday we returned our water coolers to the golf course.  COVID restrictions have not allowed them to be out on the course since the 2019 golf season.  The availability of drinking water will be a blessing to the golfers on the hot days.  

I would like to welcome Larry Rupert to the Spencer Municipal Golf Board.  I would also like to thank Eric Stucky for his many years of serving on our Board.  Thanks for all the time and work you put into the golf course Eric.  Larry will be taking over Eric’s position and I look forward to working together.  Thanks for joining our Board Larry.

Our 2020-21 budget will come to a close later in the week.  It’s been a very successful budget and I’m anxious to share those numbers with you in next week’s report.  I will also provide the year end season pass totals.

Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or would like more information on a topic.  Also, thank our clubhouse and grounds employees for the great job they do.  They do an amazing job!!  See ya on the links!

—
Brian C Mohr

Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer

101 W 5th Street

Spencer Municipal Golf Course

Spencer, Iowa 51301

712-260-5370

www.spencermunigolf.com

6-20-21

Good Morning,

What a beautiful morning to finally see some rain falling from the sky.  I can actually see the rain water soaking into the ground.  What a strange feeling to be so excited to see it rain.  It has been a difficult month in regards to irrigation and turfcare.  

The irrigation system has been pumping as much water as possible on a nightly basis.  I’m limiting the amount of irrigation on fairways and trying to concentrate on the greens, tees, and approaches.  The irrigation system pumps more water during the night than the well pumps into the pond in 24 hours.  It is not possible to keep the pond level up and water the entire course with enough water. 

  
As I’ve stated previously, there is an Iowa DNR limit to the amount of irrigation water for the course and water pumped from the well from April 1 through the month of October.  Our June totals are the highest I have recorded in 27 years.  If the weather conditions persist I foresee a water restriction coming at the state level.  It’s a very nervous feeling to be irrigating this much so early in the golf season.  

We have several golf events this upcoming week.  The Stateline Seniors will be playing tomorrow morning, the Chamber golf outing will be on Friday, and the Jasen Petersen memorial will be on Saturday.  Add in the golf leagues and open golf players and our week is full.  It’s great seeing all the golfers on the course each and every day!

Our new rough mower arrived on Tuesday morning.  Staff was very happy to start putting this piece of equipment to work on the course.  The old rough unit went back to Omaha for servicing and repairs.  This will provide us with a very dependable second rough unit during busy mowing schedules.  Our new rental carts continue to be on backorder.

This concludes another week at The Muni.  Please get in touch with me if you have questions or need additional information on a topic.  Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!  I am thankful for my dad for sure!

—
Brian C Mohr

Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer

101 W 5th Street

Spencer Municipal Golf Course

Spencer, Iowa 51301

712-260-5370

www.spencermunigolf.com

6-13-21

Good Morning, 

Staff and I have been very busy with the daily grounds maintenance practices as well as accommodating golfers in the clubhouse.  Even with the warmer temperatures the golf course sees a lot of players on a daily basis.

The brief thunderstorm on Friday was definitely welcomed with open arms.  We received a little over .1″ at the golf course.  I was surprised to see standing water in some areas for an extended period of time.  The extremely high temperatures have been very difficult to manage and it doesn’t look like there is a lot of change moving forward.  

Our irrigation system has been operating for about 11 hours quite a few nights in a row.  The irrigation well that pumps into the pond adds less water into the pond in 24 hours than the irrigation system distributes during the night.  Our pond level is slowly decreasing and cannot be maintained at this level for a long period of time.  We need a couple of rainy nights!  Eventually I will need to cut down on the fairway irrigation if we don’t get a break soon.

Midwest Turf and Irrigation contacted me at the end of this week and let me know our new rough unit has arrived in Omaha.  They anticipate delivery to the golf course on Monday or Tuesday.  This is some news we have all been waiting to hear.  The old 2012 Toro rough unit has 5000 hours on it and is getting close to the end.  It will be great to have a new dependable mower in our fleet.

The rental carts are not so much good news.  I was told not to expect the rental carts until August.  This is very disappointing news but I guess it’s like anything else in the USA right now, you wait a long time to receive what you ordered.  I am currently working with a couple of our golf outings to adjust for the lack of these ten carts on the date of the outings.

TPAR software will be installed at the clubhouse in the near future.  There is no set date but the membership cards have been uploaded and are ready to hand out to our golfers.  Once the new software is installed the cards will be scanned by the golfer at registration and we can monitor their memberships more easily.  The software falls into the same category as the rental carts….hurry up and wait.  We can only control what we can control.

This concludes another week at The Muni.  Please contact me if you have questions or would like further information on a topic.  Enjoy the last day of Flagfest 2021!
—
Brian C Mohr

Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer

101 W 5th Street

Spencer Municipal Golf Course

Spencer, Iowa 51301

712-260-5370

www.spencermunigolf.com

6-6-2021

Good Morning,

The past week was another busy week of golf and plenty of sunshine!  All golf leagues are in full operation with lots of players enjoying the course each day.  We have a couple more part time staff members back on the schedule which helped tremendously with our grounds maintenance.  The overall golf course condition is great as we move through the weekend.

There are still broad leaf weeds to treat but I am gaining ground.  All landscaping areas have been treated for weed control and will be monitored each week to keep them weed free.  We will be adding potted flowers to some of the landscaping in the next couple of weeks.  These flowers will add a little color to help improve the appearance of these areas.   

Irrigation has been a necessity as we work through the current heat wave.  It takes about 11 hours to get through all the stations each night.  The irrigation will start at 9:00 PM and continue into the early morning golf hours each day.  To date, our irrigation totals for the pond and the well are both above normal at this point of the season.  

Through Saturday we have receipted season passes for 25 families, 56 couples, 170 singles, 24 young adults, 39 juniors, and 41 punch cards.  These numbers are the highest totals since 2015.  Green fees and cart rental revenues are also the highest totals in many years.  Our total revenues are on pace to be the highest ever at The Muni. 

TPAR software is getting closer to introduction at the golf course.  City staff is currently programming all the membership cards for our 2021 players.  It has been very time consuming to enter all the golfers information manually then turn around and program each card with the appropriate information.  We should have all the cards available for golfers in another week.  These cards will be used by the golfer to check in at registration.  All their paid fees will show up on the registration screen and staff will be able to monitor each golfer in the moment.  

We have quite a few events planned for the month of June.  We have seen high numbers of golfers for our events already concluded and the sign up sheets are very full for upcoming events.  It’s been busy pretty much every day at the golf course.  We look forward to a great golf season continuing forward!

I will see the golf board and city council members Monday evening at the respective meetings.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions or further information.  Enjoy the beautiful sunshine today!
—
Brian C Mohr

Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer

101 W 5th Street

Spencer Municipal Golf Course

Spencer, Iowa 51301

712-260-5370

www.spencermunigolf.com