Ain't she purty?

Yesterday Ken G, Andy D, and I installed the first FlyPad on teepad 1 and damn, does it look good! It instantly gives the course a boost in awesomeness.

This used to be somebody's roof.

Instead of stone dust as the base, we are trying out ground up recycled asphalt shingles from our neighbors, Routhier Brothers. You know those huge black piles to the right of hole 1? Well, those are finely ground shingles and tires. The guys over there were real helpful and drove over a 1/3 of a bucketload in their payloader and parked it near the picnic table.

Andy and I then shovelled it into a wheelbarrel and wheeled it over to Ken who had prepped the teebox and worked on spreading the black stuff evenly. After maybe 7-8 loads, Ken fired up the gas-powered tamper that Routhier lent us and poof, the base was set.

Thank you Routhier Brothers!

Next, we rolled out a 12-ft section of recyled rubber mat, layed it on top, and secured it with 6 threaded spikes. We quickly learned that trying to pound a metal spike through rubber wasn't the easiest thing to do since it kept bouncing back up. Then I had the brilliant idea of trying to twist the bolt in and it went in like butter.

Andy and Ken then trimmed the front and back edges and we were done. The whole process took about 30-40 minutes, not counting the brief jaunt over to the gas station to refill the tamper.

The tamper vibrated so much I couldn't focus!

If we get everything organized ahead of time and get plenty of people to come out and help, we should be able to bang out the remaining 8 tee pads Sat. Nov 13. The most time-consuming and difficult part of this will be getting the base material to the holes.

So, check out the new pad and let us know what you think. If you like it, donate some money to the course and help pay for these. They sure ain't cheap! Hit that PayPal button now!!

Oh, we each aced our first drive off the new pad. Scores are going to drop.

Ken and Andy trim the front.