PROJECTS PROJECTS
Coffs Harbour Golf Club superintendent Justin Sheehan keeps an eye on the recent reconstruction of the 9th green
Coffs
keeps pace It has been a productive 10 years in charge at Coffs Harbour Golf Club for course superintendent Justin Sheehan with a number of improvement projects paving the way for a better golfing experience. The reconstruction of the 9th green is the first of six green rebuilds that Coffs will undertake
A
fter my appointment as course superintendent at Coffs Harbour Golf Club (CHGC) in 2007, I quickly found myself making some long-term plans for a raft of course improvements without even thinking how we were going fund or achieve an outcome. The main projects that were earmarked included installing concrete paths around the entire 27-hole course, a new irrigation system and converting the warm-season mix fairways to a single strain of couchgrass.
CART PATHS After three years of very wet conditions between 2008 and 2010 (the course recorded 2500mm-plus each year), the club started investing in weatherproofing the course by installing concrete paths. Starting in 2009, this was a huge outlay for the club and by 2017 we had completely linked the course from the 1st tee to the 27th green. All paths were installed by CHGC greens staff (over 8km in length), with 1.6m-wide paths laid from
tee to green and 1.8m-wide paths around tees and greens. To say this has been a game-changer in regards to our golfing revenue is an understatement and means we can keep the course open for play when we do have periods of wet weather.
IRRIGATION SYSTEM One of the big infrastructure items that made it difficult to present quality turf surfaces was the club’s ageing irrigation system. The old system was only ever designed to do greens and tees when the club had an 18-hole course, but when it was expanded to a 27-hole layout the club just added on to that system. With an eight-hour watering window just to irrigate greens, it was becoming a huge problem for us to move forward. After many irrigation plans, the massive task was to convince members and management that the outdated system needed replacing. What made it challenging was that the club had just been through the ‘big wet’ of 2009 – why do we need a new irrigation system with all this water?! – and in order to undertake the project the club would need to go $1 million in debt. A plan was adopted to install a single row fairway line with doubles on the dog leg holes, tees and back-to-back sprinklers on the greens. It was then put out to tender with Toro the successful supplier and Hydrotechnics the installer along with three of our own staff to help with the process. In what would be one of the biggest turnouts for a meeting at the club, all but two of the 250 members present voted unanimously to go ahead with the irrigation upgrade. Works started in May 2011 and were completed in October 2011. The club hasn’t looked back since, paying the 15-year $1m debt off in just five years which enabled us to move on to the next phase of course improvement works.
FAIRWAY CONVERSIONS In 2013 Coffs Harbour embarked on a fairway conversion programme to change from the existing 56
AUSTRALIAN TURFGRASS MANAGEMENT 20.1