Green Restoration Cost

[Ira Fishman]

If a club has detailed original drawings of the greens and there has not been much shrinkage in size, what would be a reasonable range of the cost to restore them? It is a clay based site.


Thanks.


Ira

[SL_Solow]

Ira,

What is the goal of the restoration if the size has not changed?  If it is drainage, look into XGD which has worked very well on our clay based greens (after a period of aggressive drill and fill) for more than 10 years.  If you are trying to recapture lost contours due to a renovation or merely time, how good are the drawings?  The cost will vary depending on the amount of earth to be moved and the difficulty of the work

[Adam Lawrence]

I'd be pretty amazed if there hasn't been much shrinkage. In my experience it happens basically everywhere.

[archie_struthers]

 


It really depends who you hire...prices can vary dramatically

[Ira Fishman]

It really depends who you hire...prices can vary dramatically

Lol. Exactly why I asked the question. The primary purpose would be to return recapture the contours. Drainage is not an issue.

[John Emerson]

If a club has detailed original drawings of the greens and there has not been much shrinkage in size, what would be a reasonable range of the cost to restore them? It is a clay based site.


Thanks.


Ira

So the greens supposedly haven’t shrunk and the contour isn’t altered…what exactly are you wanting to do?  If they’re basically unaltered then what are you restoring them back to?  You want to Dig them out and put in usga greens?

[Mark_Fine]

Ira,
If the greens have not been rebuilt and have simply shrunk, it will cost almost nothing to restore them to their original sizes.  It just takes patience from your members as the process to bring them back out to the edges of the fillpads takes some time till they blend back in with the current green surface.  We usually slowly cut them down and there is often lots of punching and top dressing and maybe adding some seed.  Sometimes we use plugs from an aeration depending on the green and how/where it receded but basically this is all in house superintendent work.  As has been discussed on other threads, original green contours do change from normal maintenance practices and sand splash from bunkers but it would be extreme to have to rebuild an old push up green unless as John said, you for some reason want say USGA greens. 

[Ira Fishman]

Let me try again because clearly I was not communicating well. The original greens had substantial interior contour and rolls. Subsequent work flattened out quite a bit of those contours/rolls. Those renovations generally expanded the green sizes back to their original sizes.


The primary objection to restoring the interior contours is cost so I am curious as to what it might reasonably cost to do so.


Thanks

[Mark_Fine]

So it sounds like the greens were rebuilt (if the internal rolls and contours were changed).  If that is the case, it is almost impossible to "restore" an old set of push up greens.  Once they are altered they are gone for good.  You can surely give it a go using original drawings but just because you have those drawings doesn't guarantee you anything.  Many times what got built was different from what the architect had on paper.  You will not find "as built" drawings for classic courses (at least I can't recall ever seeing any).  What you have are conceptual drawings but as I said that is all they are - conceptual.  As has already been said, the cost to build a green is all over the map.  Figure $75-100K+ at a minimum (approx 5-6000 sq ft) if you want a very rough ballpark.  Keep in mind, you need to new green to tie in properly to all the surrounds and approach so usually there is additional costs besides just the greens.  Hope this helps.  Good luck. 

[archie_struthers]

 


Like I said depending on what you are trying to achieve the price could vary dramatically. Is there a problem with the current conditioning? Are there drainage issues or as Mark alluded to did the greens shrink was my first thought


Your answer surprised me because unless the greens were so fast in spots that you couldn’t pin them it’s unusual for someone to flatten the interior contours. The second and fifth at Pine Valley were altered for this reason but unless you really knew them it would be hard to discern, and the major reason was balls literally running off the green (front)despite the quality of the putt or shot


I’m becoming more and more a fan of the old greens 🥬 as the poa bent mix just seems so good down here and in the mid-Atlantic  region in general. Some of the new greens built in the last twenty years just aren’t as good IMHO
The oldest ones seem to roll best so be careful what you wish for.



I’m a fan of stripping and replacing the grass if possible, we did it at Greate Bay over twenty years ago in  November and it recovered really fast in the spring. This was on a new green and I would bet 
almost no one could tell which one it was because of that.


Still puzzled how the greens got flattened this way ?

[Adrian_Stiff]

In the UK I will do it for £33,000 per green* (subject to terms and conditions)

[Tom_Doak]

So it sounds like the greens were rebuilt (if the internal rolls and contours were changed).  If that is the case, it is almost impossible to "restore" an old set of push up greens.  Once they are altered they are gone for good.  You can surely give it a go using original drawings but just because you have those drawings doesn't guarantee you anything.  Many times what got built was different from what the architect had on paper.  You will not find "as built" drawings for classic courses (at least I can't recall ever seeing any).  What you have are conceptual drawings but as I said that is all they are - conceptual.  As has already been said, the cost to build a green is all over the map.  Figure $75-100K+ at a minimum (approx 5-6000 sq ft) if you want a very rough ballpark.  Keep in mind, you need to new green to tie in properly to all the surrounds and approach so usually there is additional costs besides just the greens.  Hope this helps.  Good luck.

It’s impossible and costs $75k per green?


Don’t tell that to Yeamans Hall or Bel Air or Dornick Hills where I have done it, then.  No, I don’t know if the greens are perfect restorations, but nobody really knows they aren’t. 


As others have reported, the price can vary a lot.  Yeamans Hall’s original construction was push up greens that had been destroyed by shrinkage and topdressing, but it wasn’t too expensive to add sand to recapture the contours.  Bel Air was very expensive; Dornick Hills in between.


The other thing to note is that greens reconstruction requires closing the course (which is why clubs would rather do anything else).  But if they did bite the bullet and close, then it makes sense to do any and all other work you’d consider while the course is closed, and the price tag goes up correspondingly.

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
We discussed "pure restoration" on here before.  You sure can't call restoring an original green that has been changed/rebuilt as "pure restoration".  There are too many subtleties in most greens vs restoring something like a bunker.  Let's be honest, if you "restore" a green that has been rebuilt, you are restoring something maybe close to what was once there but that is about it.  That was the point I was making.  The numbers I threw out were ballpark costs to "rebuild" greens, call it restoration if you'd like.  We just rebuilt two at a project outside Philly and that was the range of costs.  These days materials etc is way up so it is really hard to gauge the expense for budgeting purposes.


Most golf restoration is interpretive, like it or not, as courses evolve on their own.  Just like design intent which we have debated forever here. 
Mark