Southerndown GC
What did we do?
- Envirobunker Install
Southerndown Golf Club, host to the prestigious ‘Duncan Putter’ is unique in offering part sandy links and part acid-heathland. Due to its terrain it is one of the driest courses to be found throughout the land. Top amateurs like Peter McEvoy and Gary Wolstenholme, world cup winners Stephen Dodd and Bradley Dredge, and the legendary Gene Sarazen have all graced it’s fairways.
In January 2011 Envirosports were commissioned to build ‘EnviroBunker’ at Southerndown G.C. following consultation with the course manager and Head Green Keeper.
Southerndown GC approached the project in a similar way to many courses we worked with during our first year. They trialled EnviroBunker first by re-constructing a practice bunker. This enabled the golf club to monitor the performance of EnviroBunker on highly used practice facility.
Having withstood sheep, rabbits, drying out effects of the sun and drought conditions in April / May of 2011, Southerndown commissioned EnviroBunker on the 4th hole of the golf course in the August of the same year. Envirosports sent a small team to work with the local greenstaff to re-construct a particularly problematic bunker which had suffered extreme damage due to burn off and burrowing animals.
Having seen the results on the golf course, Head Greenkeeper Andrew Mannion, urged the club to undertake wider re-construction program in Autumn 2011. Having consulted with the membership via a course forum, Southerndown GC agreed licence terms with Envirosports Ltd to re-build all 84 of their bunkers in November 2011.
This work is currently on-going and has already been met with universal approval amongst the membership. The transformation of the bunkers and the golf course in general is a testament to the performance of EnviroBunker.
I was sceptical about the concept and how it would look initially, but on seeing the results I am more impressed than I ever thought possible. This is a truly innovative idea, representing huge cost and labour savings. The bunker looks fantastic and performs equally well. You would never suspect that it was anything other than a standard revetted bunker.
Some of the rebuilding work we carried out this winter/spring has suffered with the dry weather, natural turfs that were laid to create bunker surrounds have completely dried out, in particular those facing S/SW, and are now under attack from Rabbits and Sheep. Out of all the bunkers that we built the EnviroBunker stands out head and shoulders above the rest. I have been hugely impressed with its performance and now the turf around it has settled it looks completely naturalAndrew Mannion – Course Manager – Southerndown GC
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