golf in my pyjamas!
I wanted to put up a few pics over the next few days to discuss the process and results of designing, project managing, and maintaining a 9 tee golf hole in your backyard. Our property is called Sunnyside Downs, in Victoria, Australia.
In the beginning, I had a few posts on here back in 2003, seeking advice on where to start. Beginning with buying many books, of particular use were TD's "Anatomy of a Golf Course" and George Thomas "Golf course Architecture of America" - particularly his recommendations for green size and landing area required for ranges of handicaps and club choice.
This was my first attempt at designing any kind of landscape.
In my particular amateur style, I had my wife & I's 5 acre property surveyed, (approx 5-7m/16-23ft of fall from East side to West side, and perimeter is 200m x 100m/650x330ft ), I began to draw in the layouts and strategies I was seeking, of priority was to develop something that will allow almost full range of clubs in the bag to practice.
Clearly, my crude drawing is my own, and use of color helped me differentiate different areas - I like color!!. It was also a key criteria that it would be 'family' friendly...
The two largest issues that I needed to resolve were: Water usage/storage AND the Green.
Water: one of the first things we did was install a bore, it has a slight salt content and iron contamination, which in turn helped with the decision of turf choices – this also lead to storage – and building a dam in the low point, Nth West corner and also the need to ‘freshen’ the water, this was resolved by building a burn or small creek and reticulating it from the high side of the property (near bore site) around the house, and back to the dam, a distance of about 120m/395ft.
Green: I arranged quotes from some construction guys, and they were talking in the realms of $50k, way over budget, but of bigger issue than the cost was the machinery required to maintain it, and the time required (cut every 2nd day) –these were all out of the question. A little more research yielded an impact synthetic turf green from Atlanta. In the end – this made the most sense.
Here are a couple of images (106m/116yards photo/Original design/and post construction survey with final layouts and some of the shots)- more to follow inthe next couple of days.
Yardage add 10%
Cheers
Brett M
