Bunker Renovation at Royal Antwerp Golf Club

STMC is happy to announce a successful bunker renovation in conjunction with Dimitri Van Hauwaert and Rhydian Lewis of Durabunker.

 

On my first visit to Royal Antwerp in May I was surprised to see how tired looking the bunkers were, in today’s standard they were pretty small and not well maintained.

So the object of the project was to bring these bunkers back to life and make them easier for Marcel (head greenkeeper) and his team to maintain in the long term.

 

It is always difficult to please everyone when doing bunkers as the architect wants to show off his flair and the Head greenkeeper just wants something easy to look after and then there is the members who want great looking well maintained bunkers that give them a perfect lie every time so that they get their sand save.

 

As I have a playing background and am also a qualified head greenkeeper I can see from lots of angles but ultimately they have to please the members as its them that support the club by paying their fees.

 

64 bunkers was the task and I set about putting a great team together with my onsite supervisor Ilija and machine operator Damir driving them forward.

Along with the other staff we had objective of 3 full renovations per day, firstly taking out the old sand and totally reshaping the bunkers along the guidelines set out by Dimitri.

Then when reshaping done we used old sand as a base layer of 5cm all around and compacted with the whacker plate, then new sand at around 2 cm on the faces and compacted and 4 cm in the middle.

After 4 weeks of hard work along with helping Durabunker complete their project we finally completed all 64 bunkers.

The club are very happy with the end result and I am hoping that for the next few seasons that the members are happy also.

Below are some photos of the project and if we can help any course bring their bunkers back to life then please contact alan@stmcgmbg.com or call 0031615042902