First, I am very tickled by my team's effort yesterday to pull together and not only get the daily maintenance done, but to 90% clean the golf course for the Guys & Gals Tournament. They did an outstanding job. Yesterday was the first day we were able to rake the bunkers in a single direction although be it double raked.
This year, more than in past years, there seems to be such a stink about the bunkers here at Avondale considering just how fantastic every other aspect of the golf course is this season. The bunkers, "a hazard that should be avoided" have seemed to bring down the great feats that my team has overcome this season -- from October's loss of nine greens and 60%+ of the fairways to pythium, to budget constraints due to rising costs and overall lower manpower, to weather in the Valley seeming to shift. All of these we have not overcome but have prevailed ... but the hazards ... no such luck.
So are the bunkers important to the GCM team ... of course they are. Currently we put 16 - 18% of our labor assets in trying to make them better -- I should note that only the greens (of course) and the roughs which constitute 67% of the golf course have slightly more usage of the labor. So why does it seem that we mess them up by tilling them?
Along with all of the other testing we have done and continue to try on the bunkers, tilling of these bunkers was a agreement that we made with the committees and Board on a monthly basis to improve their playability for the remainder of the month. Sadly, given our current sand conditions it takes us 7 - 8 days after tilling to firm them back up to the point where the "waves and bumps" are smoothed out. Why is this? Is it because the GCM team doesn't have a clue of what they are doing how to do this "simple" task correctly? No, it all leans back to the quality of our sand.
We have spent numerous hours in training, hundreds of dollars in equipment testing, more hours than I can easily figure in testing (both the sand quality and potential rakes, an equipment to do the raking job better) and I have even attended classes in bunker maintenance on both the local and national level. So far these efforts have not quickened or improved the process.
I have not yet found the machine that after tilling converts our blow sand (contains 10% organic matter and greater than 25% fines, highly calcareous sand) into Augusta White. The chances are great that we never will either. But everyone is trying to figure a way to improve the bunkers given our current sand from the Green and Golf Committees, the Board, the GCM team and JC Resorts. We will continue to do are very best to improve them.
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