Olympic View's Unique Bunker Maintenance Program

 

In an effort to elevate our bunker maintenance program at Olympic View for the 2022 season, we have employed some non traditional tactics. Typically, bunkers are not an enjoyed part of golf course maintenance. They are labour intensive, always in need of attention and generally just not as fun as growing and maintaining turfgrass. As year round Team Members move to more skilled and experience required tasks during the season, often bunkers can be left to new Team Members that may not have the attention to detail or skills to consistently turn out exceptional bunker quality.

While raking some sand around may seem like a simple task, there is actually a fair bit to it:

• maintain sand shape as related to bunker floor shape
• moving sand to fill washouts or high play areas
• keeping weeds at bay
• different raking techniques for different sand moistures
• repairing damaged bunker liner
• topping up sand as required
• trimming turf areas and edges around bunkers where large mowers can not reach

Rake Technique

Over the past two seasons we have been using the "Aussie method" of raking bunkers. This features smooth side walls and tooth raked floor. This technique not only provides a nice aesthetic appeal, it also helps to reduce golf ball plugging in the more compact faces and helps to roll the ball down into the more playable floor of the bunker. This also affords us some efficiency as we do not need to rake the sides of the bunker every day. We generally rake the the sides completely only twice per week and can simply touch up used bunker face sections throughout the week.

Getting it Done

As mentioned above, despite the skills and experience required to provide nice bunkers, the task often gets left to inexperienced Team Members during the playing season. Enter the "2022 OV Bunker Draft"! We made a list off all of our bunkers and "drafted" them for ownership between 5 of our core Team Members including myself. 

OV Grounds Team members on Bunker Draft day in February

The goal of this program is to put our best Team Members on the task, hopefully producing the best possible results. Each of us also "owns" our bunkers, learns the specific maintenance each bunker needs and keeps up on small maintenance items like weeding and shaping that can become much bigger tasks if left unchecked. We also get a little healthy competition within the Team regarding who has the best looking bunkers on the course. 

Draft Board in Progress

For general raking days, Team Members will take a rake with them on whatever task they may be doing on the course and simply pick up their 5-6 bunkers as they complete their morning task. This is a great added efficiency for us as opposed to sending a separate Team Member around the course just to rake bunkers. Currently each Team Member rakes their bunker every day they are at work. This means we rake all bunkers a minimum of 5x/week. In addition, we often add an extra Team Member on weekends that will rake all bunkers, taking our rake frequency to 6-7 days/week.

Of course we only rake these bunkers once per day and with how busy the course is, our bunkers can see a lot of traffic. We have ensured that there are an appropriate amount of bunker rakes on the course and raking a bunker as you leave it will only make the course better for the player behind you. We appreciate the help!