With five courses across Surrey and Kent, including three of the top four most played courses by England Golf iGolfers, Altonwood Group is known for high quality courses and exceptional customer experience. To maintain those standards, the group has recently undertaken a program of improvements at its original course, Westerham Golf Club in Kent, with significant upgrades in play over the past four years.
“We’ve been through a huge programme of course improvements, including significant tree clearance and improving paths and tees, but the one thing that kept coming up on member and visitor feedback was the bunkers,” commented Simon Hodsdon, managing director at Altonwood Group. “
“The shapes of the old bunkers were very simple and had become un-defined. With the help of course architect Alan Walker, we decided to rationalise the number of bunkers, make each of them larger and more visually interesting and provide the golfing challenge a good hazard should be.”
Andy Royall, Altonwood’s Group Course Manager, added: “From a maintenance perspective it was a constant battle with weeds, stones and contamination of the sand. We spent such a disproportionate amount of time on them, and they didn’t really add to the golfing experience, so it was clear that we needed to find a practical solution that would lock in the improvements we wanted to make.”
Faced with a full reconstruction, and the introduction of larger, more elaborate shapes, Simon and Andy set about researching options that would not only deliver the golfing experience they required, but would offer benefits throughout the course.
“We knew that turf didn’t work for the long term, so we researched options that would look great and required the least possible amount of maintenance,” continued Simon. “After speaking with several courses, EcoBunker was the stand out option. Their synthetic edging was widely recommended, but what surprised us was that we ended up using their EcoTec liner too, as it wasn’t initially on our radar.”
Andy continued, “We really did our homework on liners, but every option had drawbacks. When Richard showed us a sample of the EcoTec liner it took us 10 minutes to see that it would be forgiving if a club ever made contact, it would hold sand well and if a ball impacted it directly, it wouldn’t bounce straight off. From there it was a simple decision to create fully sealed bunkers using EcoBunker liner and edging.”
With 12 bunkers scheduled for phase one of the works, EcoBunker conducted training over two days, before the team at Westerham took on the rest of the project.
“Laying and sealing the liners has been so simple, and the team took to constructing the synthetic edges straight away. For a technical job that will last for many years, the process has been far more simple than we ever imagined,” said Andy. “And now we’ve finished phase one, not only do the new bunkers look really good, from the maintenance side of things the drainage has improved, there’s virtually no contamination and the amount of raking has been dramatically reduced. We’re saving time and budget and freeing up resources enabling us to focus on other parts of the course.”
Phase two at Westerham is set for the autumn, but the improvements for Altonwood properties do not end there. With plans across the group to upgrade facilities and drive improved customer experience, EcoBunker is set to feature more in the future.
“The only feedback I get on the bunkers now is asking how fast can we do the rest!” concluded Simon. “So much so, that once we’re finished here, we will move straight on to Woldingham. As a group, we invest in the most cost-effective, high quality solutions, and in EcoBunker we’ve locked in great looking, low maintenance bunkers for many years to come.”