around the course. This left us with open bare areas in the rough which we turfed out once we had finished moving all the fairway and first cut surfaces.
In mid August the second phase of the course lengthening began; the contruction of five new tee positions designed to extend the yardage of each hole. We started on number 3 where we built two new tees. We also had to extend the irrigation lines from the existing tees, adding six new sprinkler heads in total. We chose this hole to start with, firstly due to the accessibility from the road for bringing in materials and, also, the land topography which was in our favour due to an elevation change that we wanted to include. This reduced the amount of build-up soil needed, so the construction would be a lot quicker. We set our temporary benchmarks and mapped out our subgrade. We used a Bobcat to level the subgrade which also compacted the soil to how we wanted it. Once we had checked the grade with the laser level we brought in sand from our turf nursery, from beneath the turf, which significantly reduced costs on new material. This was a spiral sand and the
grass species harvested was L-93 creeping bentgrass.
The tee was built with four inches of sand across the subgrade and with a 2% slope from front to back to allow for drainage. Once we had a layer of sand covering the bottom we set out new benchmarks and set out stakes for the surface height. We had the whacker plate running constantly to achieve a good solid sand surface and to eliminate settlement. We watered the sand every few hours to keep it moist and easier to work with. Once we had reached our four inches we fine tuned the tee surface, checking heights with the laser. Every square foot of the tee was checked at least twice ensuring the surface was 100% to grade.
The tee surrounds were pretty easy to tie in due to the existing ground levels and, once this was completed, the whole area was spread with fertiliser and soil amendments and lightly raked in. We then turfed the tee surface to the shape we desired, with constant watering to reduce stress. The surrounding area would be turfed with
transplanted turf from where we would be building our next tee (hole 11). This next tee build wasn’t going to be as easy as the last one. We had to raise the ground level ten feet, so we bought in over 100 tonnes of subgrade soil just to get to the required height! We were very precise about the shaping and appearance of the new tees; we wanted them to look like they had always been there. So, when raising ten feet, we had some major tie in work to ensure we achieved this. We completed three tees in three weeks. We rolled and topdressed weekly bringing the tees into play four weeks later ready for our member tournaments late in the season. We are in the process of constructing another new tee on hole 7 as I write this.
Once the course lengthening is completed we will have added 130 yards,
“We took a look at our resources and decided that we could make some changes out on the course”
David McGregor, Assistant Superintendent, Robert Trent Jones Golf Club
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