#6 Green Drainage Work

The back left portion of #6 green is a constant issue for us mainly due to the amount of traffic it gets from players walking on and off this green. All players who ride a cart go through this area and even walkers exit there. Therefore the compaction and wear and tear is greatest at this one location.

Our solution in the past is to re-sod and try and direct traffic away from this site. Another option is to completely re-design and construct the entire green site to produce additional entrance and exit points to the green. This would be expensive and time consuming.

Knowing that wet sand compacts more than dry sand or even soil we dug this area out last week to take a look at the drainage underneath.

We found a drain in this area.

The drain had a couple of issues, there was no gravel around this perforated pipe to facilitate water movement into the pipe nor was the low point on the surface of the green above the pipe's location. There was also a minor grade issue where the percent slope was not where we would like it to be.

We removed the pipe and corrected the grade.

We replaced the pipe and added gravel above and below the pipe. After back filling with the original greens mix a laser level was used to ensure the low point on the green's surface was directly above the pipe.

While improving the drainage IS NOT going to solve our issue in this area 100%, it will help. Staying off of the new sod until the Spring will be of the utmost help. The more the new turf is allowed to root without traffic the better it will be, Finally, we will implement a program of more frequent aerification and soil amending in this area to help mitigate the stress from the foot traffic.