2015 Drainage Project Kickoff

We are pleased to announce that the club has contracted with Golf Plus Construction to install 8,000 linear feet of drainage on the golf course this spring.  This project is another piece to the puzzle of the club's push to provide improved shoulder-season playing conditions.  

Golf Plus Construction is owned by Daniel Soushek.

Last year's installation of 4,000 feet of drainage on the 18th hole, also installed by Golf Plus Construction proved to be wildly successful based off the observed conditions this past winter as this hole went from one of the wettest to one of the driest in a single season.  The agronomy team is very excited to continue this initiative once again this spring and hope that you share our excitement as we get started.  

Our plan is to work Monday-Friday through the month of April and early May, averaging 1,000 feet a week with a three-man team working on the project barring any wild weather events.  We are beginning on the 15th hole and will clean up the remaining wet spots on the top of the fairway in the first landing zone as well as a few cart access areas between the path and fairway.  After that, we will be moving to the 16th hole and knocking out every single wet spot in the fairway and cart access areas.  The next stop will be the 17th hole where we will address a few chronically wet areas, namely to the right of the green, just above the approach area.  At that point, we will evaluate how many feet of the 8,000 feet we have remaining and allocate appropriately to other holes.

Getting started on #15 on March 25th.

It goes without saying that our ultimate goal throughout this project is to minimize the impact on our members' experience when playing the course.  With that said, we have also formulated a strategy to keep our installation team working as safely and efficiently as possible.  Our experience has shown us that the approach that we used last year as well as in 2012 worked quite well.  We will be moving the tees up onto the fairway to eliminate any tee shots over the heads of our crew, depending on where they are working at that given time.  The tee markers will be placed in a spot as flat as possible while also maximizing the yardage on that particular hole.  This course setup will be in effect Tuesday-Friday with the tees returning to the normal tees every weekend.

We will be diligently communicating project updates and locations to the golf shop on a daily basis so I highly encourage you to check in with them before your round if you are interested to know our plans for that particular day.  I would also like to thank you all in advance for your enthusiasm and patience as we work to get this project completed.  A little short term pain for long term gain in the end will be worth it as we'll be enjoying much drier fairways this next winter.  If you have any questions or feedback in regards to this project, please contact me anytime at rgordon@tpcsr.com.   

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Sod Bunker Liners

We have a lot of bunkers here at TPC Snoqualmie Ridge.  One-hundred-fourteen bunkers.  All of these bunkers were constructed right on top of the property's native soil which is known as glacial till; a very dense mixture of boulders, gravel and coarse sand.

This stuff is what is merely inches underneath the white silica sand that is in our bunkers.  Throw high annual rainfall amounts on top of the sand (75 inches in 2014) and BAM, you have frequent bunker washouts in which the sand is pulled off the sides of the bunkers, exposing the rocks and gravel underneath the sand.  This is a perfect recipe for creating bunkers littered with unwanted debris such as silt, gravel and rocks.

Glacial till exposed in a bunker following heavy rainfall.

This is obviously a headache for the maintenance staff to maintain and frustrating for golfers to play out of.  The solution to this problem actually has many options.  There are a myriad of different types of  liners on the market that can be laid down on top of the subsoil on the floor of a bunker prior to filling with sand in order to keep the two elements separate and minimize contamination of the bunker sand.  It seems like each region of the country has a preference for the type of liner used in their bunkers.  The Puget-Sound region is no different.   

A very popular option in our area of the country has been to line the bunker floors with sod.  Several local courses have recently completed or are in the process of completing bunker renovations in which this method is employed.  I recently had the privilege of attending a chapter meeting for our local superintendent's association at Fircrest Golf Club in which I was able to see this process firsthand.  The club is currently renovating it's bunkers and as the picture below shows, they are using the sod liner method.  

Bunker at Fircrest Golf Club lined with sod.

As you can see, the process is relatively simple.  The floor of a bunker is lined with sod with the exception of the drain lines to maximize the flow of water through the bunker sand.  The sod is laid down and given time to take root which at this time of the year can vary between six to eight weeks.  Once the sod is firmly rooted, the grass is scalped down to stress the turf and/or sprayed with round-up, followed by smothering with new bunker sand.  The thatch layer from the sod is essentially what serves as the liner that keeps unwanted rocks, gravel and silt from contaminating the clean bunker sand. 

Through my years working in the industry, I have learned that what works somewhere else many not necessarily work here. We deal with many extremes here, especially as it pertains to weather.  I am not so sure that this method has the ability to hold up to our high rainfall amounts and the constant exposure that the sod would receive due to bunker wash-outs.  So, the only thing to do is do a test-run and try it and learn from it!  For this experiment, we have chosen the greenside bunker on the right hand side of the 12th green.  This bunker is actually one of the most contaminated bunkers we have and no matter what we do, we can't seem to keep the sand clean of rocks and gravel.  

We plan to begin work on this bunker this week starting with excavation of the old sand.  Once the sand is removed, we will touch up our drain lines with new gravel as needed, order some ryegrass sod and get it rolled-out on the bottom of this bunker.  After that, we must wait the prescribed six to eight weeks for the sod to take root before we can come back and cover it up with sand.  This way, the liner will be anchored properly where we need it.  

In the meantime, if you happen to hit your ball into this bunker, please play it from the drop zone that we will have painted next to the bunker or if you are playing for fun, you may play it as it lies in the bunker.  All we ask is that you take extreme care when walking on the newly laid sod as not to disrupt any newly formed roots which will be very important for the anchoring process. 

We are excited to see how this project turns out and will be monitoring the results over the upcoming season.  Perhaps, this could be our solution to those burdensome rocks that plague many of our bunkers.  We shall see . . .

New Year, New Projects!

Happy New Year from the TPCSR agronomy staff!  With the holiday season behind us, we are excited to get a few new projects underway in the next few of weeks.

Foggy morning at TPC, highlighting the sun's rays. 

First up, is a few in-house drainage projects.  You may have noticed already that we installed some drainage along the cantilever of #10 cart path where water seepage was a constant issue year-round.  Our charter members may recall that this has been an issue tracing back to the days when the course was newly constructed.  It will be nice to not have to drive by and look at a mud pit any more.  We put in 200 feet of pipe to capture any water coming off the hillside towards the cart path and tied it into a drain at the bottom of the hill.  As with any drainage project, we expect to see the full benefits beginning next season after the area has a chance to dry out this summer and begin next winter with a clean or I should say, dry slate.    

New drainage along #10 cart path.

Next up, beginning Monday the 12th we plan to begin installation of 500 feet of drain pipe on the right side of #11 fairway starting about 165 yards back from the green and going all the way up to around the 85 yard mark.  These two projects will kick off our season of doing as many in-house projects as we can before summer time mowing frequencies and other maintenance start to take over our time.  If you happen to be playing next week, please be mindful of where you land your balls on this fairway as this can be somewhat of a blind shot where you run the risk of hitting into our team working on the project.  

The new OB stake style is pictured on the left and the old on the right.  

Another project that we are excited about is the replacement of our out-of-bounds stakes.  The existing ones made of wood are over ten years old, rotting internally, falling over crooked and covered with faded paint.  We have chosen to upgrade the design with a little more sophisticated detail that will reflect the style and quality of the course a little better.  Our staff has been hard at work with the chop saw, router and a few gallons of white paint.  Once the stakes are complete, we will begin installation on the golf course, slowly completing the project between our other projects and routine maintenance tasks with the goal of complete installation by May 1st.