Bunker team keeps renovated Pelican Hill in shape

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - When superintendent Steve Thomas started a bunker renovation at Pelican Hill Golf Club here, he knew exactly what his owners were expecting.

“The Irvine Co. wants it done well, under budget and ahead of schedule,” said Thomas. “We hit all three. Everyone says it looks like a new course.”

With the help of two golf course builders and good weather, Thomas brought the 125 bunkers on the two Tom Fazio-designed courses back to their original design in a little more than two months. The work began in late January (see GCN, March 2003) when they shut down the South Course and shifted play to the North Course. When work wrapped up on the South Course in early March, the North Course went under the knife. All 36 holes were back open for full play April 3.

“We finished right on schedule,” said Thomas. “I was worried about the wet season so it was a gamble, but we only had a couple rain days where we couldn’t do anything.”

With two builders, McDonald & Sons and Peerless Golf Inc., the work went quickly and ran smoothly.

“It was a luxury to be able to close down a course at a time and have two contractors,” he said. “It was the only way to do this in such a small window of time.”

With the builders working on the bunkers, Thomas took advantage of the closed course to do more invasive maintenance work that usually interrupts play.

“I topdressed all the fairways and tees with a quarter-inch of old sand from the bunkers, did all my aerification, drill and fill, slit seeding and fertilizing,” he said. “When we reopened the South Course it was immaculate and in good shape to handle the extra play.”

BETTER LOOKING AND MORE PLAYABLE

According to Thomas, the before the renovation the bunkers were “sleepy.”

“Now they are not only more aesthetically pleasing, they are more playable,” he said. “We are using better sand and the playability is great. Already golfers are saying they’d rather be in the bunker than in the thick rough around it.”

Now that the work is done, Thomas is working on a management plan to keep the bunkers in good shape.

“We lined the steeper faces with SandTrapper once they put the drainage in,” said Thomas. “It works wonders too because we had a couple of heavy downpours and the bunkers that usually washed out really badly held up.”

In order to keep the bunkers looking good, Thomas now has an eight-person bunker crew that does nothing but maintain bunkers.

“I have a bunker foreman with eight guys,” he said. “We have created a weekly checklist to groom sand, trim edges and check depths to make sure we have four inches on the bottom on the bottom and two on the sides. That’s all they do. Their job is to make sure we don’t lose that rolled down Fazio lip. The contractors put a line on the liner so we can dig back and make sure we are still on the monitoring line.”

If he needs to make any adjustments to the new bunkers, Thomas said he has a 25-ton pile of sand for touch-up work and plenty of extra bunker liner material.