For more, check out
Bob Lohmann's blog
We were inspired here in the office, during January, by a story we encountered in GOLF Magazine. It was called “Back to the Drawing Board,” and it detailed just how few new golf courses are being developed in North America. No real news there. Those of us in the golf business know exactly how slow things are. However, in reading the comments of several of my fellow architects, I was struck by something one of them said: He thought the next great golf courses would take shape on top of old ones.
This hit home with my colleagues and me because part of it is exactly right, and part of it misses the point completely. We’ve been talking for several years now, internally at Lohmann Golf Designs and Golf Creations, our sister construction division, about creating a new model for course renovation.
But our goal was not the building of brand new, really expensive golf course to replace perfectly good, affordable ones.
Our goal has been rethinking the path we’ve taken in the renovation market.
I’ve been renovating golf courses, public and private, for 35 years now. Here in the 21st Century, I keep asking myself: How did we do things so cheaply back then? The cost of renovation, per hole, has greatly outpaced the rate of inflation. Why?
This column is about communication. Last month we talked about how superintendents can communicate more effectively with golfers, be they members or daily-fee visitors.
This month I want to talk about communicating better amongst ourselves on issues like cost. I’m issuing an open call to readers who have ideas about how to reduce the cost of renovating golf courses. All of you have participated in this process in some way, shape or form. You have opinions. Go to the blog linked to this column and weigh in with your ideas — do it anonymously if you feel more comfortable.
I’ll start, and then I’ll move on to a larger point. Here’s one reason course renovation has become so expensive over the last two decades: Bunker construction. All these great liner products — and most of them are great products, because they do exactly what they claim to do — have significantly driven up the cost of rebuilding bunkers. So have the choices in sand type – some costing upwards of $100 per ton delivered. In the old days, supers largely rebuilt bunkers on their own, using local materials. When an architect was brought in, it was usually to make a strategic design change, but it was fairly straightforward and cost-efficient.
Yes, these state-of-the-art liners keep sand on the bunker face and free from migrating dirt, like gangbusters… That white sand is eye-catching, especially when it reflects the sun’s glare! But is that worth the money? Does that flashed, white sand face affect course strategy? Is that eye candy worth a 90% increase in bunker costs? Does a pristine sand surface really meet the requirements of something that’s supposed to be a hazard?
Okay, here’s another one: I hope you realize those push-up greens everyone wants to replace with USGA-specified models have, in many cases, lasted 60, 70 or 80 years. That’s pretty good value. Now, I would never recommend building old-fashioned push-up greens because native soils, especially here in the Midwest, are too high in clay content. But we are proponents of the modified sand-profile greens we just rebuilt at Buttes des Morts Country Club in Appleton, Wis. We salvaged the layer of top-dressing that had accumulated on the existing greens and replaced it after the greens were reshaped. It was supplemented with a slit-drainage system, along with a 7:2:1 mix, so we ended up with about 8 inches of sandy material on top. The sub-soil was native, so “push-up” in nature. If we can re-use the existing top-dressing layer and eliminate the gravel layer in the green, we can reduce costs — perhaps by as much as 25 percent over the course of 18 green renovations.
Is there a reason you wouldn’t want to build something similar, with the same efficiency, if you thought your course or club might get 50-75 years out of it?
You tell me… I mean it. Come to the blog and bend my ear.
The other way I’d like to rethink the renovation model is more macro in nature. It’s my feeling that golf course properties, especially municipal courses, are under-utilized as community assets. Golf courses are recreational amenities, no doubt. They bring value to a community in this respect. But course owners, architects, builders and superintendents should start thinking about a property’s potential to do more — and how renovation or “repurposing” can achieve that potential.
Consider stormwater retention and flooding. We did a renovation several years back at Deer Path Golf Course in Lake Forest, Ill. The course had been there since the 1930s but a hospital — basically a giant sea of concrete and hardtop — had since been built, and recently expanded, across the street. The runoff from these expansions was supposed to be contained, but in reality it caused flooding in the surrounding neighborhood and the golf course.
In the end, it was the golf course that solved the problem. We built an elaborate, interlinked water storage system at Deer Path that gathered all that displaced water, created an extraordinary new wetland habitat, and just happened to bring some nifty new risk/reward strategies to several holes. Pretty neat solution — better than costly storm-sewer expansion/upgrades.
We’re exploring the same sort of solutions right now at Reid Municipal Golf Course in Appleton, Wis., but the best example may be our work at Poplar Creek Golf Club in Hoffman Estates, another Chicagoland community. We did a bunker renovation there about six years ago (very affordable; no matting!) but the course has always been prone to flooding. It’s another older course where various forms of development (read: concrete jungle) have proliferated all around it. Again, the water has to go somewhere.
Here’s a dirty little secret, which is really a larger truth: When you have a golf course surrounded by development, and the golf course is always flooding, you can be sure there are stormwater retention and flooding issues in the neighborhoods all around that golf course, too.
The problem got so bad at Poplar Creek that it affected course business; when it rained, area golfers knew to stay away for days, sometimes weeks afterward. They lost outing business on account of this reputation.
We’re changing that reputation now, and addressing the area’s flooding issues via the golf course. We’re expanding the creek into more of a pond system — which is really a super-aesthetic stormwater retention system. When you deepen ponds or excavate new ones, the result is piles of fill — we’re using that fill to lift up problem fairways and build a new raised entry road. The property will still flood, of course; we can’t change that. But now the waters will be directed to out-of-play areas, leaving the course playable immediately following a major rain.
Is Poplar Creek going to be one of those “next great golf courses” built on top of an old one? I doubt it. But I like the idea of making a golf course more playable and efficient to operate, more profitable even, while also solving larger neighborhood land-use issues.
No one has all the answers. An entirely new model for golf course renovation will take many forms, but this should be one of them. Let’s start working on the others.