The guys work long hours, and have the constant hum of heavy equipment in their ears. I’m sure it doesn’t faze them a lick, but poor Miatek. He spent the better part of 10 hours listening to his bulldozer’s computer screech an alarm “BEEP…BEEP…BEEP”. That screech is something you cannot ignore; in fact a deaf man can hear it. The serviceman from the company said there isn’t anything to worry about, and that he’d come by tomorrow and put a stop to it. I don’t know if that was fast enough for Miatek. With a couple hours left to go in his day switched machines and got his buddy Janek to enjoy the sweet sounds of torment.
Afterward: The service man showed up 8 operating hours later and fixed the computer glitch in 15 minutes. It must have been like banging your head against a wall…it’s so nice when you stop.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Dr. Dirt
Every project needs their Dr. Dirt. Ours is Anton Morbach from Walsrode, Germany… a gentleman I’ve used on several occasions. He comes in, does a soil analysis of the site, checks the physical and chemical properties of the soil, and tells us how we should treat the different areas.
Rarely is a site homogenous, so some areas will require different care. He will also tell us about the soils we can use for building the foundations of greens and tees. What material we have suitable for the rootzone mix, if any, the chemical characteristics of the soils and dozens of other questions. He also took samples from quarries in the region for testing.
After he runs a battery of test and creates the recipe for blending the materials, we blend a small mountain according to the formula he prescribes. Every so often we send samples to him for testing to ensure we have matched the recipe (test twice build once). Most critical is the 30cm or so (1 foot) of rootzone that serves as the growing medium for the putting greens. Once we get the OK…that we have indeed matched the recipe, only then will we transport the rootzone to the green for installation.
Consistency is a key concern today. In the old days a golf course would have the greens play differently due to the use of differing materials and construction methods. It was up to the golfer to take these differences from green to green into account. This made maintenance more challenging, as each green required very specific, not generic care. Today’s science based golf course construction makes courses more consistent, predictable to play and easier to care for.
I loved Anton Morbach’s joke (all good jokes have some basis in truth) about consistency... “The course should be built either equally good or equally bad, that way nobody will notice the differences.”
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Acts of God; Riders on the Storm
This is our worst nightmare. It would really be a huge if the course were “growing-in”. "Grow-in" is when construction is completed, the ground has just been seeded and/or the plants are young and have not stabilized the soil. It is a time when the project is highly vulnerable and tremendous damage can be done with God’s irrigation system. Luckily, we are not at this stage, and the worst a storm can do now is shut us down for a day or two. This storm yesterday evening came with phenomenal acoustics and light show, but fortunately didn’t deposit the mess we anticipated; big bark, small bite.
May we continue to be so lucky.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Monday, May 28, 2007
Diesel Anyone?
What it takes to keep a group of machines going is either a tanker truck coming to fill the machines daily or your own station. When the day gets to be 16 hours long, the tanker truck coming once isn’t enough. To solve this problem we have a 5,000 liter (1321 US Gallons) tank to service the guys whenever their machines are thirsty. Cost for the tank was about 4,000 Euros ($5,400 USD), and to fill it is another 5,000 Euros ($6,725 USD). Diesel costs about a Euro a liter, or $5.40 (USD) per gallon.
We’ll see how long it takes until we have to refill the beast.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Marek Trophy
The Marek Trophy
Most golf clubs and tournaments, even on the PGA Tour have generic trophies. There is little personal about them. At Sand Valley they’ve latched onto a trophy for the Club Championship or a huge national event hosted by the club that is literally a work of art. Donated by Marek Majewski, a local businessman who owns the beautiful Guesthouse Megi www.pensjonatmegi.com , and a factory in Indonesia that manufactures hand carved furniture www.meblestylowe.com, he had one of his staff craft this 1.70 meter (5 foot 9 inch) teak golfer.
In decades to come, people may wonder about the Asian eyed trophy with the Polish name. All they’ll have to do is look in the club records to learn more about its roots… Marek the furniture mogul.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Problems = Opportunities
Hole 6: The Old Dyke Wall
The previous construction company left a mass of inferior material at the greensite and in the fairway on the 6th hole, and we didn’t want to go through the hassle and cost of trucking it away. What to do? What did farmers and others do to protect their properties from flooding? They created a dyke wall. Ours won’t be a typical dyke wall, but one that looks as if the river blew through it long, long ago. It will provide an abrupt elevation change within the hole, run from the greensite along the river, splitting the large fairway and work its way towards the tee. This eroded wall will also allow us to connect to the earth buffer (disguised as a hill) on the previous holes. Problems do equal opportunity. That’s the plan, at least for now.
The previous construction company placed inferior material directly over the unprepared greensite (topsoil should have been removed before the fill was placed). It is planned to be moved 40 meters and used as fill for the "Dyke Wall" flanking the left side of the green.
The bottom conceptual illustration reveals the general "Dyke Wall" Concept.
What is funny is at a previous project in a flood control basin, I had the Dyke walls hauled away, and used in a buffer wall. There the walls cut through the holes perpendicularly and the walls were contaminated with all manner of debris, from iron to concrete slabs to tires. As we ripped the dyke walls down, we separated the garbage and non-mineral debris from the soils and drove it to the local landfill. Here we are taking lemons and making lemonade.
How the wall could look. As if farmers from long ago tossed in all manner of soil, rock and debris. The sketch above loosely resembles the "Dyke Walls" at the previous river project where we removed them. A footpath would be woven through the wall.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
The previous construction company left a mass of inferior material at the greensite and in the fairway on the 6th hole, and we didn’t want to go through the hassle and cost of trucking it away. What to do? What did farmers and others do to protect their properties from flooding? They created a dyke wall. Ours won’t be a typical dyke wall, but one that looks as if the river blew through it long, long ago. It will provide an abrupt elevation change within the hole, run from the greensite along the river, splitting the large fairway and work its way towards the tee. This eroded wall will also allow us to connect to the earth buffer (disguised as a hill) on the previous holes. Problems do equal opportunity. That’s the plan, at least for now.
The previous construction company placed inferior material directly over the unprepared greensite (topsoil should have been removed before the fill was placed). It is planned to be moved 40 meters and used as fill for the "Dyke Wall" flanking the left side of the green.
The bottom conceptual illustration reveals the general "Dyke Wall" Concept.
What is funny is at a previous project in a flood control basin, I had the Dyke walls hauled away, and used in a buffer wall. There the walls cut through the holes perpendicularly and the walls were contaminated with all manner of debris, from iron to concrete slabs to tires. As we ripped the dyke walls down, we separated the garbage and non-mineral debris from the soils and drove it to the local landfill. Here we are taking lemons and making lemonade.
How the wall could look. As if farmers from long ago tossed in all manner of soil, rock and debris. The sketch above loosely resembles the "Dyke Walls" at the previous river project where we removed them. A footpath would be woven through the wall.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
Friday, May 25, 2007
The Spine for Things to Come
We have to cap a couple fairways with about 1 meter (1.093 yards) of sand. To get the sand in to cover these low wet areas we need a 9 meter wide road. That’s big enough for 2 Volvo Dumpers side-by-side. The road will be 360 meters long, and built from a layer of sand 50cm thick (20 inches). 9m by 360m by .5m is 1620 cubic meters (about 1750 cubic yards). This material will require digging a hole 40 meters (44 yards) by 40 meters by one meter deep…about a third of an America football field, or a bit less than half of a soccer field. In our case we’ll actually be cutting a one meter deep strip 25 meters wide by 65 meters long.
The procedure: The bulldozer will free the future road of organic material, the trucks will bring in the sand, and the bulldozer will spread the sand to the required thickness. The trucks will only drive on the sand they import. Once this road is built, we’ll then have the fairways on both sides of the road stripped of organic material; about 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches). The trucks will haul this organic material to a point not far away and then race to our excavation area to bring in the sand to cap the fairways. For a short while they’ll be loaded with material coming and going, but only for a while. Once the trucks reach the point of only bringing sand to cap the fairways, filling these fairway go fast, as our source for sand is only a few hundred meters away.
The roadway between the 6th and 7th holes will see a constant stream of dumpers loaded with 30 cubic meters of sand. The road is vital for keeping things moving when it rains, and keeping damage to a minimum. The trucks will not leave this road. They will deliver the sand and bulldozers will push it across the fairways.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
The procedure: The bulldozer will free the future road of organic material, the trucks will bring in the sand, and the bulldozer will spread the sand to the required thickness. The trucks will only drive on the sand they import. Once this road is built, we’ll then have the fairways on both sides of the road stripped of organic material; about 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches). The trucks will haul this organic material to a point not far away and then race to our excavation area to bring in the sand to cap the fairways. For a short while they’ll be loaded with material coming and going, but only for a while. Once the trucks reach the point of only bringing sand to cap the fairways, filling these fairway go fast, as our source for sand is only a few hundred meters away.
The roadway between the 6th and 7th holes will see a constant stream of dumpers loaded with 30 cubic meters of sand. The road is vital for keeping things moving when it rains, and keeping damage to a minimum. The trucks will not leave this road. They will deliver the sand and bulldozers will push it across the fairways.
Tony Ristola
agolfarchitect.com
+1 (909) 581 0080
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