The Red will not use half as much water, but I believe it will use less because-
-We did not build a lake so we have no evaporation or seepage loss. Building a lake in the sand hills is not an inexpensive undertaking, and with one of the worlds largest lakes 100 ft underground, didn't make a lot of sense to create more storage and move water twice. The system is charged directly from the wells which have variable frequency controlled motors for energy efficiency and a consistent pressure. The system is tied to the Nicklaus pump station and that station acts as a pressure maintenance pump and handles low flows until the water demand requires the well to kick in. In a windy and dry environment, evaporation loss is real and the 90% of the water used on the Red is in a closed system until it leaves the sprinkler head.
- Tom was a proponent of a "dynamic" turf/native interface. What we didn't want was that green ring of native you often find when you have a turf area surrounded by native prairie grasses. When you are in a windy environment, and you trim out the turf areas with part circle heads, that edge can be come difficult to manage. Its no fun when you miss the turf by a yard and can't find your ball, but if you miss by 20 yards the ball is easily found. We wanted to give the superintendent the freedom to find the proper edge based on the conditions, instead of lining the entire course with heads and telling him where the turf edge had to be. Not lining the course with perimeter heads is an architectural decision that I endorse and it drastically reduces irrigation costs and saves water if properly managed.
Call it the Pinehurst model if you want as they took it to the extreme at #2. Some in the industry will tell you they set back irrigation 30 years. But when I see a course in a natural setting that is lined with small perimeter heads, all in the ideal of the architect dictating the perfect location for the turf edge, I don't view that as some sort of great advancement. If you look around, you'll see that approach is very popular, and very expensive, but you'll never convince me it saves water to try and maintain perfect turf right up to a "perfect" turf/native interface. Letting the super find the edge as the turf slowly bleeds out looks a lot better to me and is much more practical, IMO.