Winter Project: #3 Bunker

Wow....over 2 months since the last update. No excuse for that. I have plenty of catching up to do. Instead of asking for forgiveness, let me just get right into the good stuff:

Winter is definitely upon us. Twelve straight days of frost delays were broke today by the first rain we've seen in 3 weeks. But we'd love to see more (I know you golfers don't!). We're over 12" behind last year's rainfall, and while that is no real indicator of how the rest of the winter will be, a light rainy season most always means headaches for the following summer in terms of grass health, water availability, etc. So let's hope we see some more....soon. The good news is dry, cold weather has allowed us to step back from maintaining grass so aggressively and finally tackle some projects we've had on our to-do lists for quite some time. We've been so busy I have a half dozen projects to update you on, but we'll start one by one:

The lower greenside bunker on #3 was brought to my attention because it seemed to have little to no sand in the front right lobe and players would hit the soil with their clubs. We already know this bunker is a problem when it rains, or even when we irrigate heavily, as the sand constantly washes down off this flashed up face and ends up in the bottom of the bunker, often contaminated with silt and soil. So it's no surprising that not enough of it got put back up on the face of the bunker. But as we began moving sand around, we noticed that the subsoil in the bunker was soft and squishy. It appears some natural drainage is occurring in this bunker. So we resolved to address all of the issues with the bunker at once.

First came the removal of the contaminated sand that caused compaction and poor drainage in the bunker. You can see the subsoil drainage issue in the foreground of the picture:

After the removal of the sand (which we will recycle and use to lightly topdress the soggy left portion of hole #14), we added an "upside-down smiley" drain to catch the problem water:

Next, we chose to install a bunker liner fabric. Many other courses use a similar liner, and they've been known to work very well for two purposes: to prevent sand and soil contamination which keeps the sand clean and pure, and to help hold the sand on the flashed up faces of the bunker to prevent against major washouts during rainstorms:

With over 60" of rain last year, you can imagine how much time our crew spends rebuilding washed out bunkers after a big storm. So this bunker will be a test...if the liner works well, it would make great sense to use it in other problem bunkers moving forward to save labor by lessening the impact of washouts and keep the bunkers in a more pure and better performing state.