Restoring #14 Greenside Bunker

One of the things on our project list this winter was to give the right green side bunker on #14 a little bit of a face lift through some restorative re-grading, sodding and irrigation work. 

Over the years, the grass bank in the line of play leading up to the green had accumulated a large deposit of bunker sand on top of the original grade ultimately compromising the original design.  This happens over time through thousands upon thousands of shots being played out of the bunker with each shot splashing a little bit of bunker sand onto the grass.

This sand buildup creates a tall, inverted lip that interferes with the ability to blast a shot out of the bunker, not to mention it is ugly.  The lip also becomes weak and subject to breaking away when a golfer or animal tries to climb up the face due to the loosely held structure of sand.  This has caused the edge of the lip to creep higher and higher up the face with each passing year since the only fix is to trim the edges even again with a sod shovel. 
 


Removing the turf and buildup to find the original grade.  Notice the tall lip.

 

Jose, Baudellio and Jorge beginning the demolition aka restoration work.

 Once we got all of the excess sand and sod stripped off, we took a break from the demolition and turned our attention to improving the irrigation of the turf.  This bunker bank faces South where a lot of our summer-time heat comes from and when compounded with the near-vertical nature, the rootzone struggles to hold water. 
To solve this problem, we decided to experiment with something called sub-surface drip irrigation.  The material comes from Toro and is made of flexible black plastic hose with tiny holes at regular intervals.  The inside of this hose is lined with a chemical that repels any sort of root growth from occurring inside.  In theory, this concept should work well on this bunker bank because we will be able to water directly into the rootzone at low precipitation rates, giving the soil time to absorb the moisture.  This is as opposed to relying on overhead irrigation with much higher precipitation rates leading to higher runoff and less water absorbed on the vertical grade.  Sounds solid right?  I hope so!  The true test will occur this summer when the heat hits. 


A few weeks before beginning the project, we added a 1" water line from one of our 2" laterals to supply the water for our sub-surface irrigation installation.  Notice the original turf grade of this bunker in the background.





We mapped out the spacing for our drip-hose at 12" spacing between each line.




Next, we added a manifold to the 1" line and added the flexible pipe to follow the 12" spacing intervals across the entire bank.




Each painted line that you see was carefully excavated to about 2"-3" deep, laid with pipe then re-sodded.



Irrigation Tech, Matt Pierce cutting pipe to size.



Once all the irrigation was installed, the next step was to put it all back together with sod and staples.



This face is so steep that the staff got creative and used a ladder to maintain their footing during sodding.



The finished product.  Notice that the lip has been moved back down about 1.5 feet from where it was prior to the restorative work being performed.


We are excited to see how this bunker performs in the upcoming season with the restorative sodding, grading and irrigation work that was done in this project.  I expect that the sod lines will continue to heal and close up as the weather warms up and becomes conductive to growing grass. 

Before I close this post, I would like to give my personal thanks to Carl Taylor from Toro for his contribution to this project.  He came out and worked alongside with Matt on the irrigation installation and provided much of the design consultation.  The reconstructive sodding work was also a big undertaking performed largely by our staff members, Derek, Jose, Danny and Matt.  Great job guys and thank you!