Course Maintenance (5)

I note with some despair the condition of bunkers and pathways at Peninsula Country Golf Club. Generally speaking, fairway bunkers have lots of soft sand in them and greenside bunkers are hard, sometimes rock-hard. Also, many of the paths around the courses have an excess of very loose fine sand on them, making them very difficult to push through. Surely, this is all the wrong way around. Paths and fairway bunkers should be hard/firm, and greenside bunkers soft.

Perhaps groundstaff could spend a day moving sand from the paths into greenside bunkers? Of course, I’m being facetious, but it’s yet another example of poor course maintenance at the club. In some places the paths have become almost impassable. Here’s another suggestion. Many players have their umbrellas erected on their buggies, to protect from either rain or sun as the case may be. However, the foliage overhang on some paths make them very difficult to negotiate with umbrella extended. It would only take a couple of hours per month for groundstaff to cut back these overhangs.

President Doug Provis, are you there? Still looking to make Peninsula Country Golf Club one of the “leading private golf Clubs in Australia” and trying to attract new members? Making the courses a bit more pleasant to play would be a good place to start!

The reason for the hard surface in greenside bunkers, but not fairway bunkers is obvious. Unbelievably, we water greenside bunkers! Anyone at the club towards the end of the day will notice that the sprinklers watering both 18^th greens also water the greenside bunkers. Also, you can’t fail to notice puddles in other greenside bunkers even after days on end without rain.

Surely in this day and age, technology exists to enable greenside sprinklers to only water a controllable portion of their 360° arc, thereby avoiding water getting into the bunkers. Either such equipment doesn’t exist (a business opportunity for one of our more entrepreneurial members?), or more likely, a general level of incompetence or indifference exists in the grounds management.