TECHNICAL
some golf courses, but most golfers - the paying customers - rightly or wrongly, expect a more manicured and maintained appearance. Greenkeeping professionals also have great pride in their golf courses and don’t want to lose control of bunker edges. Typically, ‘half-moon edging’ has been the preferred technique for tidying up bunker edges. However, this again is time consuming and it usually leads to an incremental loss of the original bunker shape (which can negatively affect aesthetics and strategy). It is also very easy to introduce more sand contamination during the process and, as we shall see, where bunker liners are already in place, it is a practice that should be avoided. Bunker liners are becoming widespread as more golf clubs begin to understand the benefits they bring. However, if a bunker liner is installed without attention to the edge detail, this can lead to big problems down the line. We have seen many issues, although one of the worst effects is when ‘half moon edging’ takes the bunker edge outside the line of the buried bunker liner. This will, in almost every instance, permit sand to penetrate underneath. Soon, liners will reach the surface, and a complete reconstruction will be urgently needed. The photograph above shows the
effect of bunker edging over an expensive rubber crumb liner at one of the golf clubs where we were invited to provide advice and assistance. Where bunker liners are used, edge maintenance should be undertaken with more care. Options are limited. Therefore, it is highly advisable to consider future maintenance when selecting the construction detail for bunker edges. Revetting, using thick cut, custom produced natural turf, is very popular. However, this is not a permanent solution and, on average, will have to be completely rebuilt every four or five years (and sometimes more regularly on exposed south facing edges). As it is natural turf, it is of course also vulnerable to drought and we have seen many natural edged bunkers struggling over the past few weeks.
A good alternative to natural turf revetting is artificial turf revetting. The facts that it needs very little maintenance and that it won’t have to be rebuilt for at least a 20-year period are widely understood by now. It is not significantly more
expensive than natural turf and whole life costings typically show a full return on investment (ROI) within five to seven years and, thereafter, major cost benefits for another fifteen years and more.
In the current conditions, tall bunker edges can be vulnerable
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PC August/September 2018 133
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