A fresh face for #17

I apologize for not having pics and updates for the last few days, especially given that we have started one of the biggest projects since I came here 7 years ago.  As many of you know, we have begun renovations on the bunkers for #17.  The left trap had become unmaintainable and unplayable, so with the support of the committee, I hired a professional golf construction company and retained the advice of Shawn Smith (from Arthur Hills and Assoc) and we started digging Tuesday.

Normally, when a course renovates bunkers, you would hire a golf construction company to do all of the work, with a little support from the maintenance staff.  This is the best way to get fast results and not let the golf course conditions suffer at the expense of a big project.  To save money, the maintenance staff is doing ALLof the grunt work, while a professional shaper does the heavy lifting.  The shaper is the key to moving the dirt efficiently while our crew handles the finish, drainage, and sod work.  This has been an enormous undertaking, with the crew working sun-up to sun-down, while also performing their normal, early morning maintenance on the rest of the course.

Obviously, if we are serious about future bunker improvements, using our maintenance crew is not a viable option for large-scale renovations.  My hope is that through completing this small portion, the membership can see the value of professional work as well as the value of our current master plan.  I will speak further about this once the project is complete.  For now, see some pics from Tuesday.  The Wednesday pictures are a little more dramatic, but the damn things wont upload!  I will hopefully get them out soon.

Scraping out the old sand.

This is Simon.  He is from Texas and with Eagle Golf Construction.  He is an absolute Wizard with the controls.  I have worked with many golf shapers in the past, and he is world class.

Getting the sand out of the larger trap.

We use plywood to save as much turf as possible.  Little difficult in the rain, however.

With the sand coming out, it's time to start moving dirt.

Taking down the left edge.

And finally, some bedrock.  We hit a lot of this throughout the project.

Starting to take shape.

More bedrock.