April was a tough month for the course despite the beautiful weather. Not 1 mm of rain fell on the Hermitage and, coupled with high sun and at least 10 frosty mornings, all growth on the golf course has stopped. Apart from the fact that we have reached our spring renovation routines on the greens, surroundings, tees and par 3 course, April has developed from being a classic “wait-for-the-warmth” month to being a crisis month with lots of watering at night and hand watering during the day, especially of the bunker edges.
The consequence of this has been that we are very behind, especially in fairways and bunkers.
For the fairways, we have not yet closed the holes from last year's drought. It is a top priority, but we must wait for the rain before there is active growth. We are ready with fertilizer and grass seed as soon as the conditions are favorable. Currently, the fairways are cared for with 1 weekly cut with a semi-rough mower. The fairway mowers are kept quiet until we are sure of more normal conditions. We will still play with layups for a while yet.
Bunkers are a special chapter this year. Deer are always a factor, but they have been very hard on our newly renovated bunkers this spring. We have a fixed renovation plan, but this winter season we had extra bunkers due to last year's drought. The vast majority of our renovated fairway bunkers have come through the winter season well, but for green bunkers we have used purchased turf as the club did not have enough square meters of repair turf for this round. The purchased turf apparently smells fantastic, so the deer have enjoyed destroying our work repeatedly, especially in March and April. We have tried to repair many times, but in the end decided that it would be in vain if not for some heat and general humidity. Our regular preparation work of bunkers with cutting edges and moving sand has also been postponed due to drought and deer activity.
The bunkers will therefore be in focus for the next several weeks, but it is a big job to renovate them again (some for the 3rd time). You should see good progress on the course's bunkers week by week.
Despite the fact that meteorologists are promising lots of water this weekend and slightly more unstable weather, we are still very behind on precipitation. We have started the year as we ended it – with drought.
Attached to this status are a few photos of a destroyed bunker, a bunker prepared for the 3rd time at the 15th green, and an example of a regular spring preparation of a bunker from the 9th green. 
