By Margie Arnold, 21FSS Marketing

In its 37 years, Silver Spruce Golf Course has ripened into a mature golf course of beautifully landscaped fairways, expertly manicured greens, an intimate club house and a friendly staff eager to make your golf experience a good one. With an eye on enhancing your golf experience, Silver Spruce has plans for short- and long-term improvements and amenities. Some of the improvements are already visible, others will be added this fall and spring, while still others will likely be completed in a few short years.

If you have been to Silver Spruce Golf Course recently, it’s likely you’ve noticed that the approach to the club house seems different somehow. And it is. Quite different. On the north side of Glasgow Street, where the previous driving range used to be, newly built homes rest behind a wood privacy fence; outside of the fence, landscapers are planting trees, shrubs and grass On the south side of the street, a sidewalk will be added for easier access to the golf club house, and landscaping will be enhanced.

One of the most exciting amenities is the creation of the Silver Spruce Golf Academy, a large, movable canopied structure on a steel frame that will be used for lessons and workshops held on the driving range any time of year. It will be equipped with two state-of-the-art video cameras and an accompanying laptop on which the golf instructor can manipulate the video image to view it from different angles and – this is the awesome part – correct your swing or stance in the video. That way you can actually see yourself holding and swinging the club the right way. All of the elements that go into hitting a golf ball can be viewed from different directions, analyzed and corrected on the video. Then, best of all, you get to take home a DVD of the video or have it emailed to you so you can watch it at your convenience and learn from it again and again. Currently the Silver Spruce Golf Academy is in the beginning stage of its evolution. When complete, with the technology and convenience it will offer, the Silver Spruce Golf Academy will have the potential to help a so-so golfer develop into a good golfer. Eventually, you will have to get on the course and practice what you learned. The more you play, the better you get. And, let’s face it, someone who plays golf well plays golf often.

When you head to the course to play, you’ll see the first of new directional signs at the intersection of tee boxes for 1, 10 and 13 and at tee boxes for 10, 11, 13 and 14. These new signs are made from a handsome, cream-colored sandstone and engraved with dark green lettering. For golfers unfamiliar with the course layout, they make it easy for a new golfer to find their way.

Signs in a similar design will be placed on the course near the number 9 and number 18 tee boxes to remind golfers to call in their food orders to the 19th Hole Grill. That way, by the time they return to the club house, their meals will be ready for them.

While on the course, golfers could find a chunk of yardage between where they stand and the restrooms. Currently, portable toilets offer immediate relief, but they will be replaced this fall with a permanent structure.

Yardage markers will be added this month on the driving range so that, from several given spots on the practice tees, golfers will know the distance to all the different colored flags on the driving range and thereby calculate how far their ball traveled.

The course continues to be spruced up with appealing flower beds, like the ones near the number 10 tee box, and with trees, shrubs and grass, like those enhancing the north side of Glasgow Street as you drive up to the golf course.

Our beautiful golf course continues to develop. Other future improvements will include additional landscaping on the south side of Glasgow Street, new golf carts, additional parking in the area next to the driving range, improvements to pond 3, a family course offering four holes – all par 3s – in an area next to the driving range, and irrigation projects for the driving range and the golf course. Some of these will be completed next spring and others will be realized in the near future.

To watch the progress at Silver Spruce Golf Course, visit www.petersonafbgolf.com or go to www.21fss.com and click on Golf Course.