How We Do It: Keeping white bunker sand white

"All of the bunkers at Hasentree are hand-raked. We went through some budget cuts last winter going into this season, so we weren’t raking the bunkers as frequently has we had in the past

"After awhile the bunkers, especially the fairway bunkers, would start to look really dirty, and we’d get algae starting to form. A lot of this was due to the fact that we weren’t in there working them everyday and we began to see the effects of that in playability and aesthetics in the appearance of the sand.

"A guy had told me about Pool Shock a number of years ago and it had popped back into my mind. I thought why not give it a try.

"We found some at Home Depot and experimented with it on a couple of bunkers and it did a really good job and we were able to bring the white back. Now we’ve created a program for it where we’ll do it a handful of times throughout the year, even if we are raking the bunkers on a consistent basis.

"We’ll walk out there and apply it by hand – a few cups per bunker – at the base of the bunker. Another crew follows and rakes the bunker like normal. We’ve found that if you don’t rake it enough, you’ll get these patches that are stark white. So we rake the bunker two or three times in different directions to make sure the product is evenly distributed. This is something we try to do every month.

"We’ve refined how we do this, and we’ve learned it works best when you apply it on a rainy day. So when we would typically send the guys home on a rainy day, instead they go out and apply the Pool Shock. If it continues to rain, then good. If it stops, we’ll irrigate the bunker because we’ve found that the more water applied to it, and the more you rake it after that, then the better it works.

"This has worked out well for us. There’s no odor to it and the product handling is pretty safe and economical. We can treat all 88 of our bunkers for about $175, with is two five-gallon buckets of Pool Shock. And it doesn’t take any longer to do than it does for us to rake out bunkers, so there’s no added labor.

"And there’s no residual damage to any surrounding areas because our bunkers are well-drained and drain away from everything. The only thing we’ve thought about is what this might do to our bunker liner after years and years of use and whether it may eventually eat the fabric. We asked a couple of architects and they had no idea and we really haven’t done any testing."