Pro's Advice: Sharply downhill, this hole will demand acute attention to your distance judgement and club selection. The two distinct levels of this green have four feet of elevation change from front to back. The pin placement will be crucial to your club decision. Just leaving your tee shot on the wrong level, not to mention one of the huge bunkers, will make par almost impossible. Naturalist's Advice: Nicknamed Puck's Pocket, playing downhill, through a wooded glen, this little pond is known for the noisy "tree peepers" (frogs) that are the first herald of the northland spring. Being by the entrance road, we hear them here first. The "no moving" hill on the left, with its wildflowers, is a true north country meadow vegetation. This was sodded, not seeded, lifted from a long neglected hay field and this is just as we brought it in. We used a lot of this sod on the course as one of several methods of erosion control during construction. Other methods were: (i) black silt fencing, staked carefully, with a catch pocket at the bottom, (ii) sowing oats, as they germinated very fast with a vigorious root structure, that held the younger tenderer, and slower roots of bluegrass (then the oats was killed by mowing), (iii) matting laid over seeded areas (this was mostly in areas destined to be roughs). The sodding was the best method, but also the most consuming of labor and time. we bought no sod, just used our farm field sod (native bluegrass, and then cultivated it later through slit seeding, mowing, etc, etc. It all took time! |
