The cost of bunkers

[Tom_Doak]

I have recently been surveying the superintendents of the golf courses we have built about whatever problems we've caused for them as a result of our designs ... not enough tee space, not enough drainage, high maintenance items, etc.

The one question that most of them have not been able to answer is the cost of maintaining the bunkers of various styles which we have built.  They don't break down their labor and materials in this way normally, so they haven't really thought about it much.  I've asked them to go back and try to think it through.

But I would love to know from other superintendents out there how much you spend maintaining the bunkers ... raking them, adding sand, shoveling sand back up the faces, flymowing or weed whacking around them, all inclusive.  If you can't sign on this forum now, or don't want to share the knowledge with the general public, feel free to e-mail me privately.  My e-mail is renaissancegolf@aol.com

I'll try to post back here after I get some answers on the range of costs.  I suspect it will be a very wide range!

[David_Elvins]

Tom,

Looking at early photos of courses such as Cypress Point, Pasatiempo, Pebble Beach (especially), to name a few, it is apparent that their bunkers have become more formalised over the years.  It is more than likely that with a bit of a recession sometime in the future and a dramatic reduction in maintenance budgets, this will quite possibly happen to some of your more artistic bunkers.  Am I right in suggesting this is a possibility?  How do you feel about this?

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom;

Isn't part of any problem here (assuming there is a significant maintenance cost) the fact that bunkers are gorgeously maintained largely as "separate but equal" playing areas, simply requiring a slightly different shot type, but based on the expectation that the player should receive a "good" lie, on a firm, compact, even playing surface from which to hit his "recovery" shot?

[Tom_Doak]

Mike,

You are of course correct, bunker maintenance is largely an optional cost ... but there are modern standards, and it would be nice to know what costs we are imposing according to those standards.

David,

Black Forest and High Pointe have both neglected to maintain their bunkers properly over the years.  [High Pointe's were never high-maintenance, but they still have deteriorated a lot.]  Do I like that?  No way.  But reality sometimes hurts.

On the other hand, I don't think somewhere like Pacific Dunes is likely to change the character of their hazards much ... the wind is out there every day making sure they don't clean them up too much!

[Tom_Doak]

P.S.  This is a pretty interesting survey we've sent out.  I've only gotten three responses back so far, but the overall maintenance budgets of the three are $350,000, $767,000, and "$1,000,000 +."

[TEPaul]

David Elvins:

I have no real way of knowing this but looking at the bunkering around the time of opening of CPC---bunkering that was just incredibly beautiful---it was so beautiful and delicate looking and so low profile to the juxtaposed grass areas of fairway and greens it appeared to be almost pasted on---it did occur to me that kind of look could not possibly remain for long without the wind and weather playing havoc with it. And also if any maintenance crew tried to maintain that original look it would be a super massive headache and expense. I could see sand blowing all over grass in a New York second with the way it was originally!

I suppose that was so as it didn't seem to take long for that bunkering to change and become far more formalized and solid looking!

[ForkaB]

I was once on the Committee of a golf course where the Vice Captain thought he could save money (and more than a few egos of the Mr. and Mrs. Havershams in the club) by eliminating about 10% of our bunkers.  He did all his sums and announced that this program would cost about $7,000 (we're talking Scotland, remember....) and save the club about $10,000/year in maintenance.   At that time, we were spending about $100,000/year on maintenance (total), so I asked him if we should not eliminate all of the bunkers, which would mean that we would be getting free maintenance of the entire course for life!

He was not promoted to Captain......

[Jeff_Mingay]

Rod Whitman's Wolf Creek course (1983) in Ponoka, Alta. is frequented by rural golfers, as opposed to typical big city, country club type golfers who tend to more often demanded immaculate conditioning. The club has a very small maintenance budget, something like $300,000-$400,000 Canadian for 27 holes, if my memory serves me correctly.

Wolf Creek superintendent Rick David maintains the tees, fairways, and greens perfectly. The turf is generally in very good condition. But the peripheries and the hazards are basically left alone, which gives the course an incomparable natural appearance.

Partly on instruction from Whitman, superintendent Rick David has let the bunkers truly evolve naturally over 20 years. These days many of bunkers at Wolf Creek feature broken down lips and grass encroaching into the sand. In my opinion, they look fantastic, and very original as a result.

Bunker maintenance is very site specific. In other words, the ranchers who play at Wolf Creek are much less demanding than members of Edmonton's Mayfair G&CC, for example, where the bunkers are edged, filled with non-indigenous, imported sand, and rake regularly. As a result, the Mayfair's bunkers are very sterile and comparatively unnatural in appearance.

That's what the club's membership demands though, and because of that I imagine Mayfair's bunker maintenance budget (if they broke it down) would be 10x Wolf Creek's bunker maintenance budget.  

[TEPaul]

Rich Goodale said;

"I was once on the Committee of a golf course....."

Rich:

Are you serious? That's a thought that even someone with an expansive mind like mine can't possibly get his mind around!

That sounds like the very definition of "mutually exclusive" or "contradiction in terms". I guess once was a charm, Huh Rihc? I've never been that big a condemner of the things that green committees almost automatically do wrong but I might have to rethink that after hearing that somebody put you on one somewhere!

[ForkaB]

Tom

I used you as a reference (gave the wrong address, of course).  Hope you didn't mind.......

[TEPaul]

You used me as a reference? Wow, well, no wonder. Green committees aren't that good at making intelligent distinctions anyway but seeing you coming with me as a reference must've basically covered the entire spectrum and completely confused them!

[Art_Schaupeter]

Tom,

As you suspected, it looks like you are getting quite a wide range of costs to your survey.  How do each of the costs you list breakdown on a per bunker basis or a bunker square footage basis?  I am interested in what the true difference in cost is once you can equate the numbers on a per unit basis.  

This is a very interesting question that you are asking.  I have not been able to get much of an understanding on my projects of the direct cost of maintaining bunkers either.  I will be curious to see your results.  Actually, I am curious about my projects now as well.

Art

[TEPaul]

TomD:

This probably wouldn't have a lot of relevance to your general quesiton here but my super did say something interesting about our new bunkers at GMGC and their maintenance cost.

Before Gil redid them all last year they were very old, terrible drainage and basically sand flashed all the way up to fairly clipped tops.

Now they're grassed almost all the way down to fairly level floors with just a bit of bunker-wol into the upsweeps.

Given all that alteration in look and maintenance practices our super said cost-wise it would be just about break-even with the way they used to be.

[Donnie Beck]

4 guys to hand rake 42 bunkers twice week at $10/hr = $15,000 per 32 week season
Bunker Banks (mowing/trimming) same 4 guys 1 time per week $ 41,500 per season

Total $56,500/42 = $1345 per bunker for season

[Pat Sisk]

Tom,

76 well-sized bunkers hand raked six days per week for approximately 28 weeks.  Average $8.50 per man-hour + 11% payroll and associated taxes = $9.45 per man-hour.

Raking:                          $46,967        (4,970 man hours)
Weeding:                          4,205         (445 man hours)
Trimming:                         9,545        (1,010 man hours)
Ordinary Sand Addition:  3,000 (+/-)
Rake replacement/repair:  2,000 (+/-)

Total Cost:                      $65,717

Average per Bunker:           $865

These numbers are for operating only.  Capital projects such as renovation and drainage are a separate issue.  

Pat Sisk
Milwaukee Country Club

[John_McMillan]

Tom,

Part of my consulting has involved interviewing businesses about different topics.  One thing we find in many interviews is that certain respondants are so out of range that we come to the conclusiont they did not seriously consider their response.  Do you believe the $1,000,000+ bunker maintenance response?  That doesn't seem to me at first glance to be possibly accurate.

[Tom_Doak]

Pat:

Every response I've gotten so far has made that same exclusion for the capital costs.  I'm betting that it is a signficant number at many clubs; but if you've built them right and you're already accounting for annual sand inputs, then maybe not.

None of these responses yet are from clubs with really high-maintenance bunkers that people on this site drool over.  I would love to hear how much they spend annually putting sand back into the bunkers at Sand Hills, or mowing those new bunker faces at Merion.

I do remember the superintendent at Pine Valley telling me back in 1980 that he spent more of his budget in the "unmaintained" area of the course than he did on the tees, fairways and greens ... I doubt the percentage is quite as high today but it's probably still a massive number.

[Tom_Doak]

John:

The numbers in that post were the TOTAL maintenance budgets for those courses, not the bunker part.  Only one of the three superintendents had broken down a number for the bunker maintenance, and that was $10,000, for the least expensive course of the three.

[Mark_Fine]

I remember Mike Strantz commenting to someone asking him about Tobacco Road.  The conversation went something like this - Mike it must be great having a course like this where everything is natural and you have all these unmaintained areas.  Mike replied along that lines - Are you kidding, it costs a forture to keep the place looking like "it is not maintained".  

[Tom_Doak]

Similarly, when Pete Dye built the TPC at Sawgrass in 1982 he put in all those waste bunkers with the idea of reducing maintenance costs.  Their original maintenance budget was $300,000.

Once the Tour headquarters was built overlooking the first green, however, the corporate image trumped any concerns about maintenance costs, and they started maintaining it entirely differently.

[Nigel_Walton]

Mr Doak,

What do you believe was Mr Dye's original intent with respect to maintenance? As an example, were the mounds to the right of the 18th green intended to have long or short grasses on them?

[Pat Sisk]

Tom:

The leading reason I’ve had to add sand to properly constructed and maintained bunkers is due to odd winter conditions.  Little or no snow cover, exceptionally dry and high winds.  I suspect the Sand Hills experiences these conditions annually.  As you know, the occurrence of drifting sand is greatly diminished once irrigation systems are being used.

If I recall correctly when Mr. Johns was the superintendent at Fishers Island he used to spray some type of film on susceptible bunkers to reduce drifting.  I don’t know if this practice is still being used nor do I know how successful it was.

A close second reason would be due to contamination of the sand by clay sub-soil.  Adding sand is simply a stopgap fix until the bunker can be rebuilt, preferably with some type of liner beneath the sand.

I’ve found that due to maintenance and play issues sand becomes incorrectly distributed throughout a bunker, often times too much at the toe of the slope.  Periodically (twice a month) we’ll check the sand depth throughout the bunkers and correct any deficiencies in depth.

The question begs, does Sand Hills purchase their sand or is it on site naturally?  The cost of purchasing plus handling would be obviously higher than simply handling the sand on site.

As for mowing grass faces versus raking I’d suspect it’s a wash in dollars spent.  Add in the cost of fertilizers and pesticides and the cost may be negligibly higher to maintain grass faces.  Only speculation.


Pat Sisk
Milwaukee Country Club

[Donnie Beck]

Pat,
 
They no longer make the product Bob used. Bob looked for a replacement, but none worked as well as the orginal.

[TEPaul]

TomD;

I'd have to bet that PVGC's bunker and general sand area maintenance budget has to be higher and a greater percentage of total maintenance budget than it ever was before--and probably by a lot.

Most never realized how much time and budget PV put into those "off play" areas in the past (as you just mentioned), but if they'd bothered to think why it's pretty hard to lose a ball at PV despite what it looks like and appears to be they probably could've figured it out!

However, and unfortunately, in my opinion, about five years ago PV decided to really maintain all their sand and bunker area for general consistency of playability---sand pro and hand rake all their playable sand areas and probably daily. In the past I doubt they did that more than once or twice a month as footprints and other irregularities were basically everywhere but they definitely aren't anymore!

Just that change alone must've added hugely to the man-hours of bunker and sand maintenance and driven up the bunker maintenance budget bigtime.

[JDoyle]

Pat,

Before playing Sand Hills last year I, like every GCA poster, studied all the photos of the course I could find.  I was especially interested in the par 3 17th and the bunkering.  When I finally played the hole I was surprised to see how much deeper the front bunker was.  In the pro shop there is a framed photo of the 17th that must have been taken shortly after the course opened in 1995.  The photo shows the front bunker as fairly shallow - perhaps two or three feet below the green.  When we played a second round in the afternoon I ended up in that bunker and could not see the flag.  

Clearly this is a bunker that is evolving dramatically over time due to the wind and severe winters in Mullen.  I would be interested to hear if the Sand Hills maintenance team and super. plan on allowing the course to evolve naturally rather that try and control things.  Perhaps they will pick and choose where they fell they need to step in and rework areas.  In any case, due to the ground and weather conditions at SH it may be one of the most rapidly changing courses in the country.

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