Lets Talk about Bunkers

The bunkers here at HVCC have been the number one topic since I started, in fact I believe this is the second time this year I've written about our bunkers. With Member Guest approaching, I want to take a few moments to field the top comments I've received regarding our bunkers.

Before we begin, I want to remind you that a bunker is defined as a hazard. This excerpt from a turfnet blog regarding "Aussie style bunkers" sums it up pretty well-

You can read the full article here - https://www.turfnet.com/news.html/aussie-bunker-maintenance-method-provides-consistent-conditions-saves-on-labor-r929/

The second point I want to make clear is that the "Aussie style bunkers" we seek to achieve, is a maintenance method, not a design style. I feel that there is a lot of confusion on this point around the clubhouse. The Aussie style method is defined by smoothed edges and a raked and fluffed bottom, the goal is that shots to the faces would roll down to the raked bottom. This method was adopted in the early 2000's when golf courses were faced with restrictive budgets and small staff. Bunker crews were able to just rake the bottoms and not rake the edges of the bunkers allowing for more labor hours for other areas of the course. With this adaptation there was also an understanding that the bunkers would not be perfect, the trade off was that high value areas like greens and tees could be maintained to a higher level. In my opinion, this also brought bunkers in line with there original conception as hazards. The original bunkers were created by sheep bedding down in Scotland during storms, the constant tramping and moving of the sheep wore away all the turf revealing the natural sandy soils of the area and creating depressions. Rather than fix these areas, early greenskeepers incorporated them into the design of the course.

The Aussie style by definition implies a less maintained bunker, rather than a more highly maintained bunker. With the popularity of high value courses adopting this method, and going to great lengths to perfect the faces, the Aussie method has somewhat spun out of control, with the help of tv coverage during numerous majors featuring there perfect bunkers. So, what bunkers do we have? By definition, we have Better Billy Bunkers being maintained in the Aussie method.

Better Billy Bunkers have become the industry standard for any golf course bunker renovation. the design consists of coring out the bunker area and design, cutting in 4" drain lines across the bottom and then spreading gravel across the entire bunker surface. The gravel is then sprayed with a porous polymer coating to create a permeable shell that allows water to quickly infiltrate into the gravel and travel to the drain lines. The major advantage is that the entire bunker becomes a catch basin for water which almost eliminates wash outs. Sand is then spread across the gravel to the appropriate depth. The sand depth is determined by a number of factors, primarily its done through testing the gravel selected with the sand selected in a lab to determine the depth needed to insure faces won't wash and water will move quickly through the profile. When our bunkers were constructed the specs for the job were 4" of sand on the faces and 6" of sand across the bottoms. I can attest that during my time here the only wash outs we've had on the faces of bunkers have been from irrigation heads not functioning properly.

When I first came on property GCM were hand raking bunkers and only once a week, if that, they were using a spring leaf rake which barely scratched the surface and didn't fluff the sand at all. The bunkers were heavily compacted and resembled playing out of concrete. They also were not doing any trimming around the bunkers and they were left pretty wild and nit well maintained. I immediately dug the two old mechanical bunker rakes (sand pro's) out of the bone yard and began using that to fluff the sand on the bottoms. Which brought me to my first criticism regarding the bunkers, there was an outcry from the membership telling me I couldn't put a bunker rake in a Billy Bunker and that I would damage and ruin them if I did. The fact is, as long as your sand depth is properly maintained a sand pro is a great tool to rake the bunkers. Aside from fluffing the sand, the sand pro also keeps weeds out of the bunkers because it turns over the sand down to about 2" which doesn't allow weeds to germinated.

Another popular complaint we get is soft faces, balls plug into a fried egg lie that's difficult to get out of. This one is a little harder to mitigate, the firmness or softness of the faces is largely due to the moisture content of the sand. When the sand dries out it becomes softer and there's a higher probability of the ball plugging. During the summer when we are irrigating frequently this is less of an issue, however, as we approach fall and in the spring time when we don't irrigate as much the faces can become soft. We do our best to mitigate this, but my opinion on the subject is "a bunker is a hazard". In fact, when designing a golf course a bunker is considered a 1 stroke penalty, the assumption being that if you hit a bunker you'll almost always make bogey on that hole. This is also taken into consideration when courses are rated for slope and handicap.

The other popular comment I get is "there's too much sand in the bunkers" which is often followed by someone else saying "there's not enough sand in the bunkers". Both statements are used to justify why our bunkers are so hard to get out of. While our spec is 6" on the bottom and 4" on the sides, if the bunker rake only affects the top 1.5"-2" what is the difference between the bunker having 4", 8", or 12" of sand? Any sand that is below the disturbed and cultivated line is going to remain firm and packed. I can tell you from shoveling countless tons of sand from the bottom of our bunkers to faces, any sand below the cultivated level is consistently hard packed regardless of sand depth. Our bunkers a difficult to get out of because there mostly 4'-6' deep, for anyone that has had to take a shot from the left side of 18 you know that's a difficult shot whether your is sand or turf.

And finally, the black, grey, and green algae on the faces. It is in fact algae and is very unsightly, it forms due to the lack of cultivation in those areas, if we were to rake the faces regularly we wouldn't deal with algae. This problem is a little more puzzling and I'm going to research options for next year to prevent and mitigate it. For this year, and Member guest, GCM just completed our bunker reno that we started in the spring. We brought in 2 truckloads of sand and, along with shoveling sand from the bottoms to the faces, we covered the faces with fresh sand, getting as close to the required 4" depth as we could and covering all of the algae. We also covered the exposed soil faces to mitigate any soil contamination into the bunkers.

I hope this sheds some light on our bunker situation, the key take aways are- A bunker is a Hazard, Aussie Style bunkers is a maintenance method not a design, and A bunker is a Hazard.