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| SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | MAY 2025 | 13 Have you ever thought about what goes into maintaining a golf course? Simply put, it takes a lot of work. Working early in the morning helps minimize disruption for both golfers and the maintenance crew. Greens need to be cut in the morning. This is especially important for removal of dew to maintain healthy greens and decrease potential disease. Early morning course work includes setting pin locations on the green, filling divot mix and water buckets, emptying trash cans, and raking sand traps. Days with shotgun starts are especially hectic. The mowing priorities for maintaining a golf course are greens, tee boxes, fairways, and then rough. Besides the obvious cutting of grass, other specialized work is required for irrigation, pest control, and maintenance of equipment. Detail work such as trimming perimeter walls, edging carts paths, and weed abatement occurs when time allows. Yearly reoccurring items include greens aeration and application of pre-emergent, fertilizer, and pesticides. Many golf courses have a maintenance day, in which the course is closed one day each week to allow for more involved maintenance. Sun Lakes is open for golf seven days a week and there are no plans to change this, but be mindful that more involved maintenance may require disruptions on the golf courses from time to time. Delayed tee times on Tuesday for the Championship Course and Wednesday for the Executive Course are primarily used to spray greens allowing maintenance extra time to stay ahead of golfers. Sun Lakes is fortunate to have Mark Burchfield as our Course Superintendent. He is well respected within the golf community for his experience and knowledge of golf course maintenance. Even with some turnover in golf maintenance, our crew is well experienced with many having numerous years of service at Sun Lakes. The next time you play a round think about the work that went into producing the playing conditions you enjoy and thank the crew for their effort. ~ Mike Callahan, callahm56@yahoo.com Golf Advisory