Temporary or seasonal water feature

[SB]

Has anyone seen a good example of a temporary water feature based on rainfall or the season?


I have a course in a very hot climate where it looks like they originally wanted a small lake on a par 3.  The problem is that the "lake" is very shallow, and really only holds water after it rains, and even then it's less than a foot of water and it hangs around for only a couple of days.  The rest of the time it's sort of a flat grassy/weedy area that looks pretty rough.  We could theoretically keep it filled up, but it's so shallow it would just evaporate immediately, and water is too scarce here to just throw it away like that.


I've thought about putting decomposed granite on the bottom so it would look like a waste bunker most of the time, or making it even shallower so regular grass could grow, or just eliminating it altogether.  Wondering if any of you have seen something better?

[Charlie Goerges]

I feel like a creek is always better than a pond, and dry creek beds look cool and are less obtrusive when full of water. Not sure if that makes sense...

[Ryan Book]

I feel like a creek is always better than a pond, and dry creek beds look cool and are less obtrusive when full of water. Not sure if that makes sense...

I don't know how often the barrancas at Los Angeles CC, Rustic Canyon et al play as proper water hazards, but to Charlie's point, they sure do the job when dry.

Speaking as someone whose subdivision has a drainage pond...sounds like quite the potential for mismanagement and odor. Your waste area concept sounds more promising, granted drainage works out.

[Stewart Abramson]

Has anyone seen a good example of a temporary water feature based on rainfall or the season?


I have a course in a very hot climate where it looks like they originally wanted a small lake on a par 3.  The problem is that the "lake" is very shallow, and really only holds water after it rains, and even then it's less than a foot of water and it hangs around for only a couple of days.  The rest of the time it's sort of a flat grassy/weedy area that looks pretty rough.  We could theoretically keep it filled up, but it's so shallow it would just evaporate immediately, and water is too scarce here to just throw it away like that.


I've thought about putting decomposed granite on the bottom so it would look like a waste bunker most of the time, or making it even shallower so regular grass could grow, or just eliminating it altogether.  Wondering if any of you have seen something better?

It's not clear to me what you are looking for. Is it that you want it to look like a pond all the time, or just look better during the periods where there's no water in it?


There are several courses in Florida that come to mind that have features /areas that have water only after a rain or during the rainy season, but are completely dry during significant portions of the year.


Southern Dunes in Haines City has water in play on only two holes. One is the 550 yard, dogleg left,  par 5 12th. That hole has a penalty area along the approximately 200 yards of the left side of the fairway on the approach to the green. That area contains water about half of the year and is bone dry the remainder. When dry, it looks like a rocky/sandy barranca that you might find on a California or Arizona course. It's not really attractive when dry, but not offensive either. I don't have a photo of it when dry, but here are a couple when it is full:
 Edit 7.27.24 - I played the course yesterday and took a photo (added below) to show the area when dry


Southern Dunes#12 par 5



Southern Dunes#12 par 5



Southern Dunes #12 penalty area during dry season

Another one that is visually much different is Championsgate Country Club in Orlando. They have several large furrowed sand waste areas (penalty areas)  that are used for water run-off retention. After a rain, they fill up with water that is piped in. Much of the time they are dry and a bit funny looking. I've seen them when completely full when they look like ponds, as well as completely dry, and as shown in these photos when about a third full and two thirds full respectively.



Championsgate CC #14 par 3 181



Championsgate CC #10 par 5 pond left on approach


edited to fix typos

[Ian Mackenzie]

The water hazard to the left on #18 at Secession Golf Club is dependent on the tides.


I hooked my drive left in the afternoon and was able to walk out to my ball and play it towards the green.
Had i done that in the morning at high tide, I'd have been in the drink.

[archie_struthers]

 


Champions Gate looks better dry! Unusual to me

[Ben Hollerbach]

The 18th at the NLE Melrose on Daufuskie Island used the beach along the righthand side of the hole as a variable hazard. During high tide the beach was fully submerged, at low tied the entire beach was exposed, and at the in between state, the water was often only next to the green.

Originally the hole flowed straight into the beach, but eventually the entire right hand side of the hole was bolstered with a sea wall.





Unfortunately the resort struggled to stay open, the course was abandoned, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 wiped out much of the land the 17th and 18th sat on. But, during its time it was a neat closing hole.

[Matt_Cohn]

Sometimes dry and sometimes a lake sounds great, but the in-between times sound pretty bad. I imagine trapsing through ankle deep mud trying to get to my ball. Ew.

[Charlie Goerges]

Sometimes dry and sometimes a lake sounds great, but the in-between times sound pretty bad. I imagine trapsing through ankle deep mud trying to get to my ball. Ew.

Exactly, that's why I like the idea of consolidating it down to the width/depth of a creek. Less mess when it's in the in-between state. Though it might require a bridge of some sort.

[Tom_Doak]

The 8th hole at Royal West Norfolk [Brancaster] is a terrific hole, with tidal hazards to carry on both the tee shot and the second shot.  The current state of the tide will make a big difference as to how much of the hazard one may try to carry.


The 7th hole at Pacific Dunes has a vernal pool between the tee and the start of the fairway.  Back when we built it, it would have a foot of standing water in it through the winter.  That had stopped being a regular thing a few years ago, and I thought maybe the drainage we'd put in around it had dried it up, but the last time I saw it, it was wet again.

[Tony_Muldoon]

The 8th hole at Royal West Norfolk [Brancaster] is a terrific hole, with tidal hazards to carry on both the tee shot and the second shot.  The current state of the tide will make a big difference as to how much of the hazard one may try to carry.

Agreed its a terrific hole but mostly it's a choice of fairway or mud.
A senior member told me that only spring tides actually fill the channels between the fairways. As they happen only a few times a year, half of those occurring at night and with those tides also restricting road access to the club, he said he was the only member he knew who'd played it with two shots across water.


About a dozen years ago the winter was so wet that for a couple of weeks the 16th at Deal had a lake where the "valley of inglorious security"sits. A Par5 with a 180   yard carry over water!

[SB]

Thanks everyone for the help. 


I thought some pictures might be more helpful, assuming I can get these to post correctly.







A couple other notes - there's a nice wall, only a foot or two high, right by the green, so it might make sense to keep that. 


The Championsgate lake is crazy, and very interesting.  The Southern Dunes photo is kind of what I had in mind, only flatter and more lake like, rather than creek-like. 


Charlie, I like your idea of a creek, but it might be quite a bit of work to get it to that point.

[JohnVDB]

One off the interesting things about areas such as this has been how to mark them.


Back when I worked at the Northern CA GA I ran tournaments at the NLE Stevenson Ranch.  There was a par 4 on the back 9 that had a pretty substantial carry over an area like this from the fairway to the green.  In the winter it was a wetlands, but in the summer in the middle of the Central Valley it was bone dry.


The club marked it as a yellow water hazard (pre 2019 terminology). We were there when it was dry.  If I left it as a water hazard, players couldn’t ground their club or removed loose impediments. Given I was running a Junior event, I didn’t want to trap a kid who might not have seen the stakes get penalized.  Therefore, we pulled the stakes.  If it had rained, players would get free relief for casual water.  It was a dilemma.


But, fast forwarding to 2019 and the new Rules, I would leave it as a yellow penalty area.  As of 2019, there is no penalty for grounding your club or removing loose impediments in a penalty area. If it did rain there wouldn’t be relief for temporary water.

[Ben Stephens]

I have played the Melrose course twice and Bloody Point once shame both are NLE. Haig Point still remains on the island. Great memories of going on the boat to the island and arriving at the golf club with bag already in the buggy.

The 18th at the NLE Melrose on Daufuskie Island used the beach along the righthand side of the hole as a variable hazard. During high tide the beach was fully submerged, at low tied the entire beach was exposed, and at the in between state, the water was often only next to the green.

Originally the hole flowed straight into the beach, but eventually the entire right hand side of the hole was bolstered with a sea wall.





Unfortunately the resort struggled to stay open, the course was abandoned, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 wiped out much of the land the 17th and 18th sat on. But, during its time it was a neat closing hole.

[David Kelly]

I feel like a creek is always better than a pond, and dry creek beds look cool and are less obtrusive when full of water. Not sure if that makes sense...

I don't know how often the barrancas at Los Angeles CC, Rustic Canyon et al play as proper water hazards, but to Charlie's point, they sure do the job when dry.

For Rustic Canyon the answer is definitely never, for LACC I believe the answer is also never.  For those features to have standing or flowing water in them, it would be during a tremendous flood event and people would not be playing golf on the course.

[Thomas Dai]

Some occasionally playable but otherwise hazard/penalty areas provide interesting playing lines into greens. Question is if and when are players prepared to deliberately play into such an area in order to gain a better angle for an approach shot and if they do what is the lie and stance be like and the potential for a screw-up. Risk and reward?
Atb

[Thomas Dai]

Some occasionally playable but otherwise hazard/penalty areas provide interesting playing lines into greens. Question is if and when are players prepared to deliberately play into such an area in order to gain a better angle for an approach shot and if they do what is the lie and stance be like and the potential for a screw-up. Risk and reward?
Atb

Considered this further and recalled a field that some mates and I laid out a course on when we were kids.


In the main season the field/course was dry so the playing lines, the field was animal grazed, were very wide. During the off-season certain areas were wet and soft and boggy and there were a couple of semi-ponds on the direct line from our usually teeing spots to our usual greens.


In other words they were areas which these days on a formal course would likely be hazard/penalty areas.


Being kids we just played anyway and although we didn’t know much about hazard/penalty rules we instinctively knew that you didn’t play through the damp, wet, boggy, ponded areas instead you played around them.


Features change with the seasons. Maybe there’s too much regulation and sometimes playing lines and hazard/penalty markings should be allowed to change with the seasons too? More playing line flexibility through the use of penalty drops perhaps?


Atb

[Duncan Cheslett]

My first job as a greenkeeper was at a local muni which featured a hole with a pond short right of the green.


The problem was that it was only a pond during rainy weather. When the weather turned dry it became firstly a smelly swamp and then an unattractive area of weeds.


We took the decision to drain it. It now plays as a grassy swale in the style of the Valley of Sin. It’s a massive improvement.


Ponds and lakes only work if they are fed by a stream. Without a consistent water supply they are a maintenance nightmare.