Bunker Consistency

One of our greatest challenges in maintaining the golf course is to provide consistent bunker conditions throughout 18 holes.  This topic provides a lot of discussion in clubhouses around the world.  Either the sand is too soft or too compacted depending on who you talk to on any given day.   This year and moving forward the maintenance staff has added another process in attempting to achieve the goal of having all greenside bunkers play with the same consistency.

After receiving 25”++ of rain from winter storms the majority of our bunker sand is contaminated and compacted providing poor playing conditions.  This season we have purchased 3 new mini roto-tillers that are enabling us to get in the bunkers and “bust up” the sand and revitalize it.  The process involves us going through each greenside bunker and running the roto-tiller to loosen all of the sand.  At this point if we find that there is not enough sand in the bunker we will add the correct amount of new sand to be consistent with others.  Just a small note that in completing this processes it was only necessary to add sand to 5 of the greenside bunkers.  Once the tilling is complete we will then come in behind with wood rakes and smooth out all of the sand.  This process takes our staff roughly one week to complete and we plan on doing it 4-5 times per season.

              Our long term goal is to have the bunkers rebuilt with a new bunker liner and new sand that will drain properly. This rebuild will prevent any compaction, contamination and inconsistent playing conditions.   For now, we are doing everything possible to provide the most consistent bunker sand possible.

The mini Roto-Tiller we are using

Tiller in Action

Smoothing it out!