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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Advertisement Email Story to a Friend June 26, 2005 The reconstructed third hole on the inside nine at Rogue Valley Country Club now features a two-plus-acre pond and a new kidney-shaped green. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven New and improved RVCC takes shape Tee Talk By TIM TROWER Mail Tribune If anyone deserves a celebration, it’s probably the grounds crew at Rogue Valley Country Club. Superintendent Doug Mohler’s group will get it today in a ceremony toasting the near-completion of the golf course’s $3 million refurbishment. Not everything is completed, but it’s close. Golfers have been hitting into the new-look driving range for about a month. That alone was a welcome sign for members who hadn’t been able to work on their games there since January. Advertisement "That’s just one of those pressure valves," says Hugh Graham, the club’s general manager. "It’s a relief when they can start using a part of their facility they were so accustomed to. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel." Or, at least, from the driving range, you can see the final hurdle — reconstruction of the third hole on the inside nine. The hole is morphing into an attractive, challenging test that will be completed in time for the well-attended Southern Oregon Golf Tournament. It now features a two-plus-acre pond that will store eight to 10 million gallons of water for reserve use, a new kidney-shaped green that is 5,600 square feet, up from the 3,200 of the previous green, and a new greenside bunker. The hole is pulled a bit farther from a snack shack that is a popular gathering place during tournaments and has a sunken, cathedral-type feel that makes for good viewing. The green has been seeded and sod was laid around it. Once the final irrigation lines and 100 or so sprinkler heads are installed, the fairway will be seeded with rye grass, probably by the first week of July. After a five- or six-week grow-in phase, the hole will be ready for the Southern Oregon. And it’ll be none too soon for Mohler and Co., who have been at it since October, working 12- to 14-hour days, six days a week, he says. "My crew is set up to maintain a course," says Mohler, "not construct it. It was pretty tough in that sense, doing a project of this size in-house." Other than a couple of professional shapers for the range and the third hole, Mohler’s crew of 23 performed all the work in addition to their day-to-day maintenance duties. "The maintenance alone is pretty good sized here, with 200-plus acres," says Mohler. Original plans for the 81-year-old course were to upgrade an aged and dilapidated irrigation system. They evolved into enough home-improvement tasks to make Tim the Toolman dizzy. The state-of-the-art watering system, the driving range and the remaking of the third hole have been the most obvious enterprises. But along the way, new tee boxes and expanses of native flower fields were added, the 11th green received a makeover, cart paths were redone, an existing pond was deepened and relined and a new pump station was outfitted. The projects came at a time when other courses were being built or planned for Southern Oregon, and RVCC’s improvements coincided with a membership drive that attracted 85 sign-ups, bringing its golfing force to 720. Keeping up with the Joneses is important, admits Mohler, but that wasn’t the impetus. He stopped counting breaks in the irrigation line last year at 78. "This needed to be done, no matter what," says Mohler. "It didn’t matter if there were six golf courses going in right next to us and they were all private. We were in a state where we couldn’t keep on going much longer. Really, it was getting that bad." The new irrigation system — computer operated and linked to satellites — won’t be fully up and running until the third hole is completed and all 3,600 sprinkler heads on the course can be marked and measured, sometime this fall. That information will be fed into the computer, which will calculate and set in motion the necessary watering. The system has 78 satellite boxes that are hand programmed for the time being. What takes hours now will eventually take minutes. There will be other challenges. "Anything new has its issues," says Mohler. "Big, small, little, all different levels. We’ll deal with them all, but it’s growing pains." About 200,000 feet of irrigation pipe and two million feet of wire have been installed. The mainline was outfitted with 750 saddles for lateral pipe, and holes had to be drilled each time. Shavings got into the line and, while most were flushed out, heads occasionally got clogged. "They’re tough on an irrigation system," says Mohler. And, with 3,600 heads, there’s bound to be manufacturer issues. If only one percent of the heads don’t work properly, that’s 36 spread randomly over a lot of acreage. The heads and valve boxes of the old system were removed and the lines capped. As new lines were put down, old ones were discovered. That’s typical of an existing course, says Mohler, who guesses there are three to five old systems beneath the surface. "We’re still finding some of the old redwood pipe with the metal band and wire rapped around it," he says. "That probably goes back 50 years or more. "Then you still have steel pipe in the ground, city waterlines everywhere, storm drains, power and gas lines. Those things, as well as they get marked, it doesn’t mean you miss all of them." One thing the players missed was a practice facility. That’s been nicely rectified with a driving range that boasts raised, measured greens as targets, an expanded hitting area and a teaching tee at the opposite end. It’s 400 yards from one end to the other. What once was a barren plot of dead grass is now a resplendent green with something at which to aim. "It’s one thing to stand on a tee like you do at a lot of places and just hit golf balls and not have something to go at," says Mohler. "It’s a whole lot different if you’re really working on your game and you want to know that target green out there is 172 yards. It makes more sense to practice the game at a distance you know." There are a couple of other benefits, too. Balls are funneled to the center of the range and seldom fly into adjoining fairways, and the view from the much-used patio is far more appealing. "With the age of this golf course and the amount of play we get — being we’re 12 months out of the year and we’re only getting busier — I don’t think the, quote, small improvements will ever stop," says Mohler. "They’re a necessity." The work won’t ever be finished, but it will get easier. Have a golf story idea? Reach sports editor Tim Trower at 776-4479, or e-mail [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Discount Hotel Reservations online casinos news Ashley Furniture HomeStore Send Flowers Southern Oregon Loans California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Online Pharmacy Advertisement s