The week of Veterans Day seems an appropriate time to share with you the work Golf Creations recently completed at Silver Sage Golf Course, the 18-hole facility located at Mountain Home Air Force Base, 10 miles outside the town of Mountain Home, in the very southwestern corner of Idaho.

This summer Golf Creations put the finishing touches on a dual-phase, green- and bunker-renovation here. Reached on Nov. 13, in the middle of blowing out his irrigation system for the winter, course manager/superintendent Stephen Vedder reported that he, service golfers, local players and the Idaho Golf Association (IGA) couldn’t be happier.

"We had the IGA ratings team out here this summer and they told us we had some of the best greens in the state, in terms of speed and undulation," Vedder said. "And I can report that they are so much easier to maintain."

Bob Baldock originally designed Silver Sage GC back in 1953. Vedder explained that the old Penncross greens were small, lacked contour and couldn’t be coaxed to roll faster than 8.5 on the Stimp. They were prone to dry spots and burnouts in the summer heat. They were built push-up style using native high-desert soil, a dusty loam that locals refer to as "moon dust" — not the sort of nutrient-rich soil you want for a root-zone mix. Vedder had to aerify them four times a year just to keep them alive.

In the late 1990s, an assessment was made of all Air Force-owned courses to prioritize those in need of renovation. Silver Sage was no. 18 on the list — the old greens just barely made it.

Golf Creation tackled Phase I in 2011, working from a design provided by Texas-based architect Tripp Davis. Construction crews arrived at Mountain Home AFB in late April, seeded nine greens with Dominant Extreme bentgrass on June 11, and golfers were playing them Aug. 22.

The greens were all rebuilt to USGA specifications (meaning they imported the root-zone mix — no moon dust). The bunkers were all rebuilt with modern drainage capabilities and liners, enabling a uniform sand cover of 4 inches.

Phase II went just as smoothly. Golf Creations showed up in March, tackled the remaining bunkers, seeded the second nine greens by late April, and they were playable on June 11. The entire price tag for both phases: $1.2 million.

"I’m amazed by how fast they came in but also the uniformity and speed of the new surfaces," Vedder said. "But the roots are what everyone is amazed by. When we opened the Phase II greens, the roots extended down below cup depth. We had roots in excess of 12 inches when they’re being maintained at 1/10^th of an inch.

"The Golf Creations crews did an outstanding job, everyone from the shapers, to Bob Lohmann himself, to the laborers who staked out the gravel bases and did all the contouring. They never hesitated to make slight design changes on site, noticing where drainage might no work so well and moving a bunker basin over 5 feet. They fit in and worked very well with my crews, too.

"Bob was out here several times. At the end of Phase I, he went over the best ways to grow-in these new greens, in terms of water usage and fertilizer plans. He went over everything with a fine-tooth comb and told me to call him if we ever needed anything, and a couple times I did. He’s been a great resource."





7 Inches of Rain from Sandy and Almost No Cleanup?

 

After 7 inches of rain from Hurricane Sandy, the renovated bunkers at Laurel Hill still looked great!
 

 

Before installing Better Billy Bunker, Laurel Hill's
bunkers looked like this after just a few inches of rain.

It’s clear from watching the national news that the effects of Hurricane Sandy, especially in the Mid-Atlantic region, continue to be felt by millions whose homes have been damaged and/or, even at this writing, remain without power. Our hearts go out to them.

In the same spirit, we send the best possible karma to all the

course owners and superintendents, many of whom experienced their first uptick this year in terms of rounds and revenues after several in the doldrums. Dealing with Sandy’s aftermath will surely not result in the sort of November they were anticipating, in terms of rounds, revenues, or especially expenses.

With all that said, we do want to provide a Sandy-related update from Rick Owens, the head superintendent at Laurel Hill Golf Club in Lorton, Va. We blogged in mid-September about Golf Creations' Better Billy Bunker reconstruction project completed there this summer, in anticipation of next summer’s U.S. Amateur Publinx at Laurel Hill. Read all about that here.

As follow-up, we feel obliged to report, via Rick, that while Sandy dumped 7 inches of rain on the course earlier this week, the crews at Laurel Hill completed their normal raking maintenance, and then spent a total of 1 extra man-hour cleaning up washed sand in the bunkers. There were just a few rivulets to be smoothed out, with a leaf rake.

A single hour of clean up on 120 bunkers, after 7 inches of rain? That’s pretty incredible. It frankly says a lot for the Better Billy Bunker reconstruction method, which Golf Creations, LGD’s course-construction division, is fully certified to administer. FYI, The bunkers at Laurel Hill aren’t just numerous, they're high-flashed — exactly the kind that suffers most during major rain events.

The Better Billy Bunker method has gained a lot of traction lately, and one of its major claims is a reduction in man-hours related to post-storm maintenance. Sandy and Laurel Hills are proof that claim is well founded.

The new issue of Golf Course Industry magazine features an insightful cover story on the current state of the renovation market, made all the more insightful by the inclusion of comments from our own Bob Lohmann, founder and principal of Lohmann Golf Designs and its sister construction firm, Golf Creations. Check it out, and note that Bob, a regular contributor to the magazine and www.golfcourseindustry.com, will soon be weighing in with his own renovation-specific column, to be posted in the coming weeks at GCI. The gist? How scheduling/planning (or a lack thereof) has impacted the renovation market. Don't miss it!

Timing is Everything

When it comes to growing grass, timing really is everything.  Putting that seed down at just the right time of year when the temperatures and humidity have peaked and are on their way down is crucial to achieving good fall growth.  It looks like they got this timing exactly right at Indian Creek Golf Club near Omaha, NE, where Lohmann Golf Designs just completed the third and final phase of a complete bunker renovation and green/fwy re-grassing program on this 27-hole layout. 

In the photo above, you'll see that coverage on the greens (T-1 bent), which were seeded by August 28th, and the fairways (Noble Eagle rye blend), seeded by September 7th, is well over 90%.  That's an incredible amount of grass in just over 40 days.  Most of that progress is do to well-timed planting and good water management by the super, Jim Nedrow, who has experienced severe drought in the area since early Summer.  It also helped that the owner of Indian Creek was willing to shut these nine holes down in mid-July so that Duininck Golf, the construction firm that handled the renovation, could get all the earthmoving and shaping done in time to fumigate and plant.

With large scale projects like Indian Creek, it is crucial that planning work be completed in ample time on the front end (ie. during winter months) to get the project out for bid, contractor chosen, and project dates set, so that there's also ample time on the back end to grow the grass before winter sets in.  Gaining extra grow-in weeks in the Fall means much earlier opening dates the following Spring.

Keep your eye out for our next Golf Course Industry E-news article which talks even more about the importance of timing.

Wetlands created throughout the Bridges at Poplar Creek Country Club serve to store stormwater and release it in a much cleaner condition while also providing visual interest and wildlife habitat.  This same concept is being employed at Reid Golf Course in Appleton ,WI.

Another golf course serving the greater good

Stormwater and water-quality issues far larger than any golf course issue have again enabled a course renovation project, driving home yet again golf’s communitarian benefits to the public at large. Bob Lohmann recently wrote about this dynamic for Golf Course Industry magazine, in reference to our work at The Bridges at Poplar Creek, in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Several hundred miles north, in Appleton, Wisconsin, we see the same formula at play: New state mandates have obliged cities and towns to meet certain water quality standards in lakes and streams. The Wisconsin River runs through Appleton, and the city sought a place to find water, store it, clean it up and release it to the river.

Hello, Reid Golf Course, a municipal facility that proved to be a logical location for this water-quality and stormwater-management effort. The project has been green-lit, bid documents are out and it looks as though construction could begin as soon as November 2012.

Lohmann Golf Designs has been a design consultant on this project for several years now, not just because we have executed so many similar golf course-enabled, stormwater-management projects elsewhere, but because there really are huge golf-related repercussions to reckon.  Obviously, better storage and treatment of water involves the creation or major expansion of on-course ponds. This is sure to affect the routing of existing holes — but it also results in thousands and thousands of cubic yards of fill, coming from these big, new holes in the ground.

Again, it’s only logical to use that soil, on site, to improve the golf course where possible, in terms of design, agronomy and safety. In Appleton, LGD has come up with yet another inventive and practical plan, if we do say so ourselves. Several rerouted holes at Reid will have to carry or skirt these new bodies of water. Our design plans achieve those changes without making this municipal track too difficult — forced carries can be heroic and strategic, but they’re not for everyone. For example, we’ve moved the forward tees on the short par-3 11^th up and around a new pond perimeter to preserve an alley of fairway.

We’re also using this abundance of new fill (estimated to be approximately 100,000 cubic yards) to rebuild three greens impacted by pond creation. And this is where it gets pretty neat: We will deploy an “alternative green construction method” using native topsoil, a 6-3-1 mix of sand, peat and soil in the root-zone. Yes, this isn’t a USGA-specified approach but our mix will most closely mimic the root-zone on the remaining 15 greens. When we’re done, maintenance of all 18 greens will be more or less identical.

 

Further, we’re using a bentgrass variety that is not one of the elite, new varieties because we want the new greens to match the old ones in color and performance, as well.

One more thing about the Reid project: Inevitably, there has been some minor opposition to the proposed changes on the golf course. There is always a population of golfers, at a private club or a muni, who liked the course just the way it was. It has taken some serious outreach from the city and LGD to make plain the state mandates, the resulting changes, and why all this must happen. See here the webpage Appleton has created to serve as a clearinghouse of information re. the project. It’s well done, and while some people will never be won over, this is a good model of what other course operators might consider when undertaking any major renovation project.



This wetland at Deerpath Golf Course in Lake Forest, IL gathers water entering the site from a nearby hospital campus and cleans it before depositing it back into the Skokie River. 

Golf Creations' debut as certified Better Billy Bunker installer

LORTON, Va. — Here’s a good argument for the scions of golf course architects getting out there on their own, making their own way, before eventually working for the family firm.


Matt Lohmann is a project manager here at Golf Creations, the sister construction division of Lohmann Golf Designs. He’s also the son of LGD founder Bob Lohmann. When Matt got his start in the golf business, he did so on his own — going to work as a construction superintendent for Wadsworth Golf Construction Co. Hard to beat that sort of experience.

During his tenure at Wadsworth, he oversaw construction here at Laurel Hill Golf Club. That was 2004-05, and Matt would go on to complete a couple other projects before leaving Wadsworth in 2007. But he’s back in Lorton, Va., this summer, overseeing a Golf Creations-led bunker reconstruction project in anticipation of next year’s U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, scheduled for Laurel Hill GC July 15-20, 2013.

“I went back to Laurel Hill a number of times after it was built while doing some other work in northern Virginia, just to see how things were going and to play the course, but it’s been a few years now,” Matt explains. “It’s nice to see the course was designed and built well enough to attract a USGA championship.”

Designed by Bill Love, Laurel Hill Golf Club is indeed a beauty — situated on rolling terrain that previously housed a District of Columbia Department of Corrections facility at Lorton, whose prisoners operated a dairy farm on site. Matt Lohmann has returned with his Golf Creations colleagues to reinstall the sand in all 120 bunkers using the Better Billy Bunker method, a process Golf Creations was certified to carry out this summer.

“When we originally built these bunkers, we used a woven fabric liner,” Matt explained. “Over time, there was contamination however, and some of the fabric we used had been ripped by the sand pro. Once that fabric is ripped, it just gets worse and worse. Because Golf Creations has been certified as a Better Billy Bunker installer, we’ve been brought in to redo all 120 bunkers.”

The Better Billy Bunker method involves laying down 2 inches of gravel across the entire bunker “floor”. A spray polymer is applied; it seeps down amidst the gravel profile and hardens into a strong-but-flexible bond, holding the gravel together. This layer effectively holds sand on the steepest of bunker faces and manages to move water through it at a rate up to 350 inches an hour.

“This is a 4-5 week process that will be done in September,” Matt explained. “We’re dodging a few golf balls because the course isn’t closing — just some temporary greens on affected holes as we work hole-by-hole through the course. It’s been a great experience all around, because we’re putting to work our Better Billy Bunker certification, which is a credit to Golf Creations — not every contractor is entrusted with this sort of work — and it’s great to come back to Laurel Hill.

“I guess it’s always our goal to leave a course better than we found it. But considering my history here, it feels even better on this project.”


Erosion and contamination problems on existing bunkers



Sand removal and new edge cutting



Clean-up and testing of existing draintile




Gravel installation



  



Polymer application



Sand installation

 

Finished product


 

LET IT GROW, LET IT GROW, LET IT GROW... 

It's been a hot and heavy month of construction at Chenequa Country Club in Hartland, WI, where Lohmann Golf Designs and Golf Creations have rebuilt the green on #2 and the entire hole #3.  The renovation process actually started way back in 2002 when LGD prepared a master plan for all 18 holes and the driving range, and since then we've been implementing small projects on an every-other-year basis. 

This year' s project on #2 and #3 is probably the most dramatic makeover so far, though.  The greens for each hole sit along a newly constructed pond complete with boulder wall.  The new settings are dramatic, visually stunning, and add considerable strategic options for players to ponder.  Hole #3, a 175-yard par 3, was re-equipped with a new teeing complex situated north of the old tees atop an existing hill.  The new look is spectacular, if not a bit intimidating.  But there is definitely room to maneuver around the hazard and bump your way to the green for those who can't handle the carry.

It's grow-in time now, and with the mild temperatures and low humidity, you can almost see the new turf filling in!