Bunker on #1

Today Alex and his crew began the reconstruction of the right front bunker on hole #1.  Who among you hasn't wanted to do this at some time?

The design of this bunker with the steeply flashed faces caused on-going maintenance issues for us.  Every time we had a hard rain water would run off the green and down the face of the bunker, washing the sound out and exposing the soil below it.  In time the soil mixed with the sand, contaminating it so that it would not drain and become more "dirt" than "sand".   Our modification is going to involve sloping the bunker sides more, and covering them with sod (grass) rather than attempting to keep sand flashed up on them.  The result will be a bunker that isn't subject to the wash-out problems that it has been up to this point.

Visit YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifXv6SpCL1I&feature=youtube_gdata for a short video of the excavation.

In the picture above you can see that the drain is nearly three feet below the surface.  It should be only a few inches under the sand.  Repeated wash outs actually resulted in restructuring of the bunker.

 

In the above photo you can see the new shape is beginning to take form.  The load of dirt you see being dumped, along with several more loads, will be used to create a slight berm around the upper lip of the bunker.  This will also help divert water from running into the bunker.

The red outline drawn on the picture is the approximate size and location of the sand portion of the bunker.  The areas outside the red line will be sodded with zoysia.

A slightly different view of the mostly finished bunker.  The black pipe you see is the drain tile.  Once final shaping is completed new drains will be excavated in the bottom of the bunker and attached to this drain pipe.