Old is new again

When Hermitage Country Club – in the Richmond, Va., area – set out to renovate the Manakin Golf Course, Mother Nature played a big role. No rain was followed by heavy rain, and an earthquake was thrown in for good measure.

Renovation of the Manakin Golf Course was plagued by bad weather.

John Haley, director of golf course operations at Hermitage, joined the staff in November 2000. At that point, the club had one 18, (The Sabot Course) under construction, and the other 18 (Manakin Course) wasn’t in good shape.

“Almost immediately we went to work on the planning of the Manakin renovation,” Haley says. “Superintendent Eric Spurlock and myself had the task of creating a list of golf course architects for the board of directors to interview. We had about 10 names and quickly got the list down to three architects.”

Keith Foster emerged as the architect of choice.

“The chemistry between Keith and our selection committee was there from the beginning, and he was immediately chosen to create a master plan,” Haley says.

With few alterations, the club agreed to proceed with Phase I in 2003 – which included a $4-million renovation of the Manakin Golf Course and the installation of a state-of-the-art irrigation system. Also included in Phase I was the addition of a sports facility with a four-court indoor tennis center and a fitness center.

The task of building the course was given to McDonald and Sons, while ISI Irrigation was chosen to install the irrigation and tie into the new pump station.

ISI was chosen for several reasons, according to Haley, but primarily because it works a lot with McDonald and Sons and they have a good relationship. The teamwork put the project in a favorable position before the first dirt was moved.

“As it turns out, we would need this because the year from hell was about to begin,” Haley says.

The year began with the construction of the pump station and the draining of a 25-acre pond – and an earthquake.

“This is not a common event in Virginia,” Haley says of the earthquake. “As I stood at the base of the dam and my feet wobbled, we all looked at each other confused. No damage was done, but needless to say timing is everything. We got through the pump station just in time to start the renovation knowing this pump station was a critical piece because the sod and seed would need water.”

Due to excessive delays, the renovation team decided to swith grasses at the last minute.

Once the main line irrigation was installed – plagued by a few major line breaks – construction was set to begin … almost.

“In 99 out of 100 springs, the ponds would be full at the start of the year, but as soon as we drained the lakes, it stopped raining,” Haley says. “This is the pattern we had for two years. When we needed water, it was dry; when we needed to shape or fine grade, it rained.”

With no water in the pond, work began to pump water back to the lake that had been drained five months earlier. Once that was complete and construction was set to begin, it began to rain and the irrigation ponds filled.

As if weather wasn’t enough of a problem, a change in personnel – at the Department of Environmental Quality and at Heritage’s consulting company – delayed permits. A new person came in and forced the process to begin again.

“This caused a chain reaction of events, including the delays for all the contractors and forced us to go out of sequence or we had no chance of hitting our seeding window,” Haley says.

More rains and high winds added to the delays and forced the team to change the grass type to L-93 bentgrass fairways.

“Three years earlier it would have been a more difficult decision, but our neighbor Pete Wendt at Kinloch Golf Club had already tried it in Richmond, and we felt confident it would work much better than our often unpredictable Vamont Bermudagrass fairways did,” Haley says.

As work was being completed on the Manakin Course, the Sabot Course was up and running – generating 40,000 rounds and dealing with the same weather. It was a strain, but by June 2004, the nine holes opened on the Manakin Course.

“Almost the entire 2004 golf season we ran three nines, which is nothing short of organized chaos,” Haley says. “That meant that we had to prepare 27 holes for golf and also keep pushing the new nine to be ready in the fall.”

The back nine opened in October 2004 and has exceeded expectations, Haley says. With a full year in the books, all the hard work seems to have paid off.

“The golf course now rests for the first time after the difficult summer of 2005,” Haley says. “The project was completed slightly overbudget but mainly because of the adjustments we made with the bentgrass fairways in drainage and erosion control. The money was well spent, and our membership knew it was everything we could do to finish this project and get them back their golf course.

“All-in-all, the entire project is a huge success, and now I kind of miss all of the commotion,” he adds. “Imagine that.” GCN