Bunker Renovation – A Necessary Evil
By Todd Schmitz, Superintendent at Phillips Park Golf Course, Wisconsin
Reprinted with premission from the Midwest Assoxiation of Golf Course Superintendents
If one is a Superintendent long enough at one course, the issue of bunker renovation will surely arise. I often wonder how something that is considered a hazard, gets so much attention and money thrown at it. We all know why they end up failing over time as Mother Nature wreaks havoc on them year after year. We try to minimize sand contamination, but the day will come when, one by one, they fail to drain as well as they used to and hold water longer.
back, this is where I found myself …… time to renovate bunkers!
Becauses the market has a variety of new bunker lining products out and more popping up each year, I was faced with the decision of which one was right for me. I had a 540 sq. ft. Better Billy Bunker installed back in 2013 to experiment with that product, which has worked out great. I learned through the process, though, that this was not something I was going to be able to install myself, on my schedule, and This results in increased labor on my municipal budget. I needed a product that my staff and I could incosts in performing the necessary duties of; pumping water, shoveling stall ourselves easily and with little margin for error, as I wasn’t going and pushing sand back into place, to be hovering over the project at all raking the bunkers, and generally getting them back in shape. We ac- times. This is what led me to Capillary Concrete. Basically, it is a hard complish this just in time for it to happen all over again with the next permeable surface that allows water rain event. As the golf course reno- to filter into and through the matevation at Phillips Park had hit its 15 rial to the drain tiles, while leaving the sand in place. It arrived in a year anniversary a couple of years Page 30