When I think of summer I think of the warm sun, cool pools, cold drinks, and summer sports. One favorite that I never did enough is mini-golf, or putt-putt (depending on where you are from). It is a fun, enjoyable game filled with interesting courses and friends. That game is played on artificial surfaces with crazy features on and around the holes. It has built up sides to keep the ball in play (we all have that one friend who hits the ball all over the course) and water features for viewing pleasure, not as a hazard. There is another type of golf that is very similar to mini-golf. It is a putting course. 

A putting course is a full 18 holes and is played with only a putter. The course is set-up similar to mini-golf with one connected tee/green. Each hole is complex and a challenge to get a good score. The biggest difference is that there are no crazy windmills or tubes that if you get the correct one will give you a hole in one. Only the green with a hole exists. However there are bunkers, rough, and water that come into play. Remember you only have a putter, so a bunker is hard to get out of. Putting courses are more realistic for practicing putting. 

Aidan O'Hara had visited a course that had a putting course attached and though it was very interesting. As Mount Juliet was in the process of being designed by the famous Jack Nicklaus many ideas were flown around. Where the putting course currently stands there were plans for the first hole of the golf course. This fell through and the course was routed differently. As the apartment buildings were put up more plans were in place to build extra lodging, but you guessed it, it did not happen. So the club was in a predicament, what to do with this large area of nothing? Aidan proposed to management to build a putting course. After agreeing to terms in 1996 the course was built fully in house. Jeff Howes was brought in as the designer. He has worked with Mount Juliet in 2002 and 2004 restoring the greens surfaces and on next weeks Irish Open at Fota Island in 2001 and 2002. The putting course predated these projects, but Jeff Howes is know in Ireland and Europe. 

The turf management team at Mount Juliet built the entire course themselves from the greens to the irrigation and ponds. The current irrigation tech's father was on the turf team and was skilled in masonry so he built the structure of the ponds and streams. Aidan has been very pleased at the result, but said the for the past 5 or 6 years the course has been only given the bare necessities due to less man power. Also he believes the course could market the putting course better to the family members of the golfers who don't golf as a fun activity to do while they wait. Aidan said that over the years removal of the course has contemplated, but each time it fails as people do enjoy it and recently not much inputs have been used to keep the course running.

Nice View of the Mount Juliet Hotel

When looking for a summer project that I could take as my own and utilize my turf skills Aidan thought of this. I am excited to be the putting course manager. I will be allowed to make my own decisions to improve the quality of the course and must make the course look better by cleaning up the area. Aidan said he wants the course to get back to its old form. There are areas of the course that need work and others that just need to be tended to closely. For the next 4 months I will take care of the course and the greens.   

Some areas that have been worked on the last week:

Bunkers

Streams and Ponds

Bridge

Stay tuned for updates on the Putting Course Project and follow the blog for the next week as I report from Fota Island on my time at the Irish Open. Have twitter follow me here for day to day tweets: https://twitter.com/MTJulietIntern Thanks to everyone who is reading my blog and sending the link around. After one month blogging I am having a lot of fun making new posts.