Royal Melbourne Sand ???

[Mike_Clayton]

Ahh Mike, I miss Australia a lot
The courses and the people that were so good to me


I should have moved there and tried to teach the game. Would have been a great thing!

Ha - it would have  - but California isn't the worst substitute!
Make sure you get back some time soon.

[Kyle Cruickshank]

Looking for some feedback on Royal Melbourne sand and bunker design. Getting ready to start some bunker renovation at a seaside course here in Chile. The green chairman played Royal Melbourne shortly before the President Cup and was fascinated with how the bunkers played and how firm they were maintained. He said they we so firm that it didnīt matter where you hit in the bunker, the ball wouldnīt plug but instead would funnel its way down to one or two flat areas. The flat areas were less compacted and played similar to a traditional good compacted sand bunker. Does anyone know if the bunkers are composed of native sand? Are they really that firm? If the sand is not natural, was there some kind of chemical binder used? What percentage of the bunkers has this funnel down process?  Doesnīt this process result in a lack of a variety of recovery shots due to a consistent flat lie.

Hi Randy

Tried to write this post 4 times now and it hasnt worked so 5th time lucky.

I had the pleasure of working at RMGC as a summer worker in 2014/15.  It was an eyeopener to how Golf should be, both in design and maintenance.  The Sandbelt is a truly amazing stretch of land in an amazing City.

As has been said the sand is very fine and binds tightly to form the hard compacted faces.  But also the bunker are not raked (or they weren't when i was there).  Instead they used what was essentially a piece of skirting board with a curved bottom to smooth out any imprints.  They were only touched up once a week and on weekends and fully boarded on Fridays.  Its also common on the sandbelt to brush the face uses long handled brooms.  By doing it this way, the face isnt constantly being broken up by the teeth on the rakes.

On my first day , one of the jobs we had to do was to take remove loose and windblown sand on the face of the big bunker left of the 4th Green on the East Course.  The foreman then drove the tractor up and down the face to compact it. 

Hopefully this link to my photo works and you can see the darker coloured sand up the face, this is where the sand is like "concrete".  As Mike says, not all the faces are that firm but it is the aim for the ball to hit the face and roll to the bottom

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq0AQ4G_8EDvnXcrWmMlEUeDAhwe

Kyle