Winter Maintenance at Hershey Country Club

Part of winter means saying goodbye to the Hershey Country Club (HCC) West Course until spring arrives. Even though the winter months seem very long without golf, it gives HCC’s turf team plenty of time to work on projects and fix up the course. This year, one of the bigger on-course projects was leveling and repairing some of our key tee boxes. Director of Golf Maintenance at HCC, Matt Malick, discusses some of the goals for this improvement and what we can expect when spring has sprung on the West Course.

13 Tee Box

The goal of the 13th tee box was to create a level tee surface and better align the tee with the center of the fairway. The white dash on the ground is the original edge of the tee and it was pointed towards the valley to the left of the fairway. We shifted the tee a few feet to the right and aligned the tee with the center of the fairway. The size of the tee is the same as before with more usable area since it is now completely level.

17 Tee Box

The goal of 17 tee complex was to square off the back of the tee, and level the tee surface as well as open up some different tee shots that can be played into the green. The center of this tee was extremely crowned from years of divot mix. We added several feet of tee space in the back of the tee. We also removed some pine trees around the tee that has become overgrown and dramatically reduced the shape of golf shots that could be hit into the green.