Let me level with you...

As we all know, #15 tee has been one of the worst playing surfaces on the entire golf course.  Over the years, the right side has settled fairly dramatically, and a nice 'crown' has developed in the center of the tee making the middle 5 feet the only acceptable teeing ground on the entire tee.  I have wanted to do something about it for years, but only now have we had the full time to commit to this project.

If we had all the money in the world, my first option would have been to have a professional shaper laser-grade the top  to perfection and re-build the entire tee as outlined in the master plan.  Unfortunately, when you only have time and money to do a tee or two at a time, hiring professionals is seldom economically prudent what with fuel cost and mobilization.  So, for now, your maintenance staff is doing what it can to level the tee surface, widen the tee a bit, and hopefully make the entire tee surface usable for our players.  This repair will serve us well until the timing is right to do some more serious renovations.  We are not professional shapers nor do we have professional equipment, but we do have enough experience and 'good eyes' on the crew to "do it up old school" and eventually get a good result.  Given the condition of the tee, there's no way we could make it worse.  We have done the best we can with what we have to work with.

The tee had deteriorated to the point where the right edge was almost 10 inches lower than the middle of the tee!  I was shocked at the difference when we brought out the transit and shot the grade.  To bring that up high enough, we were forced to widen the tee also to provide enough support material to make a change in grade of that magnitude.  Ultimately, it will allow us to have a tee wide enough to use the entire thing.

In just a couple of days, we have managed to strip the tee sod, push out the crown, and add about 60 yards of fresh dirt to the tee.  We layed the salvaged sod today, and will finish with sod from our nursery tomorrow.  With good weather and rooting, we should be able to play on it before the year is over.

Check out the pics below.

With a rainy start to the week, we thought the project might get scrapped.  We were able to start building up new edge and moving material to support the new width of the tee.

We shot and set some rough stakes and just started piling and packing.

Machines and a lot of elbow grease from the crew shaped in the new edge.

The rain let up, so we decided to start stripping sod.  Heavy divot areas just fell apart, but we did manage to save about 60% of the existing tee sod.

You can really see how focused the divot wear is in the middle of the tee as a result of the uneven surface.

Sod was stripped and palletized and moved with our skid loader.

The crown in the middle of the tee was the result of years and years of filling divots.  There was about 2-3 inches of green sand even once we got to the proper level!

Once the grades were shot, we placed some stakes and started adding dirt to the left side.  Between 6 and 9 inches of material was added to this edge to level the tee.

Looking at the black tape on the stake, it's easy to see how low the middle and edge of the tee was, and this was after we had already rough-graded it.

Once we got it all smoothed out, we broadcast a thick layer of sand/compost mix and drug it with a steel mat to get all the little bumps and birdbaths out.

In just two days we have managed to start laying sod again.  We will hopefully button things up tomorrow.