Bunker maintenance

The turf team at Glendale CC spends a lot of time each day preparing the bunkers for daily play. You might think they should all play the same since they have the same sand, but each one is slightly different from the rest. Some face south and are always dry like the left bunker at #1 green while north facing bunkers like those at #10 green are wet most of the time. We have bunkers that are deep, shallow, small, large, high slopes, flat bottoms, wet, dry, good and bad drainage, new sand, old sand, some full of tree roots, and the list continues. Despite these differences we do our best to make them playable. There are times when a high use area in a bunker becomes thin and needs more sand. Last year at this time the sand was too "fluffy" and we were getting a lot of complaints about balls plugging and fried egg lies. We changed our raking technique and the rakes used by our crew and over the next several months the sand firmed up. No more fried egg lies. Since that time we continued to change the rakes each week from short to long teeth to try and keep the sand "just right." Lately we have received complaints that the sand is too hard. Over the past week we have been working on adding sand as needed moving sand around from deep to thin areas. Most of the time we know what bunkers need work but when the course is packed all the time our opportunities to get out and work on them is very limited. I appreciate the membership feedback and we will continue to work on making the bunkers "just right."

The photo above shows our raking method. We "smear" the edges with the back side of the rake to not disturb the sand and keep it firm. This is so incoming shots will hit the sides and roll to the bottom of the bunker. When you enter and exit a bunker please use the low side and stay off any steep slopes. If we can keep those slopes firm you'll never have to hit a shot from those difficult areas.

Steve Kealy
Golf Course Superintendent