Soft Sand

When I arrived at Granite Bay the number one task at hand was to renovate bunkers. It was far and away the largest member concern reflected in our annual member surveys. Upon arrival I immediately embarked on developing a plan for renovating our bunkers and during this research found out two things. First there are many different ways to skin a cat when it comes to bunker renovation. Secondly it is not uncommon for consternation to get stirred up when the members have to start negotiating new sand.

Hopefully everyone is in agreement that the bunkers needed renovation. All you would ever have to do is try to play Granite Bay on a sunny day after a rainstorm and find that every trap was a lake. Or even on particular days during the summer months where you experienced casual water in the bottoms. The bunkers that we renovated in 2008 & 2009 are on the soft side now because we are not irrigating yet and they have not received any rain recently and the surface sand is dry.

The bunkers that we renovated this year just in the past six weeks are extremely soft because we had not compacted them until today. The reason for that is that typically after we add the sand to the bunker we flood the bunker with water and compact the sand with equipment. The sand is added to the trap the day after we spray the liner on the base and because of the cooler damp weather we experienced the past six weeks, the liner in the traps that were renovated were not completely cured when we filled them with sand. Applying the essential water for compaction at this point would not have been prudent for it potentially might compromise the liner.

We did compact the freshly renovated bunkers on #4, #8, #9 & the two of the bunkers on #15 today. The front left monster bunker was not compacted today because it’s liner was sprayed on Wednesday and was not cured enough to add water.
All of these traps will continue to firm up as they age. Its is the nature of the beast. Will golf balls play out of this new sand and sit up like they did in the old traps which had a thin layer of sand mixed with decomposed gravel and would not drain for anything? Probably not.

Freshly filled bunkers #9