I'll be the first to admit to this problem: our bunkers are bad.  The sand is contaminated with silt and other fines creating a hard pan in most of the hazards.  Others have small rocks or pea gravel and many are not graded properly to keep balls away from the edges.  Finally, and most importantly, most bunkers do not have drainage and you'll never have a good bunker without it.  We want good bunkers, but bad bunkers make sense to me (they are hazards after all) and we have bigger fish to fry with limited funds, staff, and time. However, there is a plan in place.


The Green Committee recently created a priority list of bunkers which need work. We will attempt to renovate some of the worst bunkers, in-house, one at a time. It is not the best way to renovate bunkers, leading to inconsistency, but it is a viable option at this time.

To start with, we are renovating the green side bunker on #1 for the following reasons:

• The bunker has existing drainage that works-- so less time and money
•  This is the only bunker for this green complex, one and done.
•  The bunker is void of sand, pretty much hard pan.
•  Pea gravel from original drain lines has contaminated what little sand there is
•  Not good for your clubs
•  Not good for the green mowers

The next targets are both bunkers on #9, right side of #13, and the front left bunker on #7. It was pretty easy to agree on these few, but there are many more that need work.

Here are a couple of pics of the project:



Charlie is digging away the odd lobe which is too severe and out of place

We spent about 4 hours hand grading and removing the old material from the bunker



New shape and clean drain lines.



A local red fox was kind enough to check the depth the night after installing the sand.  We cleaned up the pea gravel and dirty sand and repacked this hole.  Luckily, the fox left it alone after the first excursion.