The Colorado club will be redoing all 34 bunkers under the “Better Billy Bunker” system. Early-season play will be limited to a 10-hole loop, while the full 18 should be available in early June. In addition to the bunker project, the club is expanding tee boxes on two holes and creating a water feature on another.
Deep winter snow has finally melted off the municipal golf course in Aspen, Colo., allowing a $700,000 sand-bunker project to swing into high gear, the Aspen Daily News reported.
Steve Aitken, Director of Golf at Aspen Golf Club, said the course still had knee- and waist-level snow as April began, the Daily News reported. Some of that snow was removed manually by the city to accommodate Marengo, Ill.-based Golf Creations, the company that has a contract to relocate or rebuild the course’s 34 sand traps, as well as expand tee boxes on holes 8 and 14.
“We lost a lot of snow in a hurry, which is great,” Aitken said on April 22. “The project is right on schedule. We haven’t missed a beat.”
Aitken and his staff are hoping to have at least nine holes open for play by May 10, the Daily News reported. For that to happen, the bunker project will need to be finished on holes 1 through 6, and 15 through 18. That would make 10 holes available for early-season golfers, which primarily consist of local passholders. Opening the first half of the front nine and the last half of the back nine will allow players to loop back to the clubhouse.
The driving range will be open for business on April 26, Aitken told the Daily News. While May 10 is the goal to open the golf course for nine-hole play—or 10, depending on whether a bonus hole is part of the early configuration—the target period for making all 18 holes available is early June, in time for the summer high season.
For now, discounts for non-passholders are not being planned for the first month, even though only half of the course will be playable, the Daily News reported. That could change, Aitken said, but for now the current schedule for greens and cart fees will remain in place.
“Are we going to reduce the rates? I don’t know. We’ll have to see how they do,” Aitken said, referring to the construction pace. “We’ve never had a bunker renovation before.”
In light of the early-season project, the course’s regular players were given a break with the decision not to increase passholder fees from last year’s rates, as long as the passes were purchased in March, Aitkin told the Daily News.
The project involves all 34 sand traps, including the practice bunker adjacent to the driving range, the Daily News reported. Fairway bunkers are being relocated farther along the fairways to reflect the fact that most players are hitting their drives longer than they were when the traps were originally built, thanks to technological advances in club design.
Greenside bunkers will remain in place, but are being rehabilitated under the “Better Billy Bunker” system, a new trend in golf course design and construction, the Daily News reported. The new fairway bunkers also will be built using the same method.
The system involves laying down two inches of gravel across the entire bunker floor, according to Golf Creations’ website, which includes this description: “A spray polymer is applied; it seeps down amidst the gravel profile and hardens into a strong but flexible bond, holding the gravel together.”
The layer “effectively holds sand on the steepest of bunker faces and manages to move water through it at a rate up to 350 inches an hour,” according to Golf Creations.
The new traps will drain better and last longer and will also be more aesthetically pleasing, Aitken told the Daily News. They should also make a golfer’s round a little easier, as the design will bring shots that hit the bunker face back toward the middle, flatter portion of the trap.
“Balls will always roll back from the top face to the flat of the bunker,” Aitken said. “This will allow more consistency of play.”
Aspen Golf Club’s season generally runs from May to October, the Daily News reported. The course averages about 28,000 rounds over six months, a figure that has remained consistent in recent years, Aitken said.
“Our golf course is a community gem,” said Aitken, who turned 55 earlier in April and has served as director of the recreational facility for 26 years.
“People really enjoy our course,” he said. “We just like to keep improving it. I think this is really going to make our golf course current with today’s standards and technology in the game.”
Another springtime project at the course is being handled by the city’s parks and recreation department, the Daily News reported. The work concerns the creation of a new water feature on hole 7, a par 5. The new feature was planned for reasons involving safety, playability and aesthetics, Aitken said.
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