It has been a busy winter for the maintenance team as we have been making the fairway bunkers better by filling them with new sand. The only thing that slows us down is when the bunkers get washed out by heavy rainstorms and then we have to spend three to four days repairing them. So far this year we have had to do this four times. That amount of times is even a lot for a full winter. We have had 23″ of rain so far which only brings us 8″ away from our annual average. Since we have a good two months more of rain ahead of us we should have no problem exceeding our annual average.
We have removed and replaced the sand in the fairway bunkers on holes 2,3,8,9,11,13,and 18. We will continue this process into the Spring first by completing the fairway bunkers and then working on the worst greenside bunkers. In April all of the bunkers will be checked for the proper depth and sand will be added as necessary.
All bunkers that received new sand have been compacted to a depth of 3 to 4 inches. New sand does tend to remain fluffy so taking the compactor over it a few times a season will hopefully help firm them up.
The first fairway bunker on Hole 8 has been filled in with old bunker sand and will be graded with the existing contours and then seeded to become rough. We have had a lot of issues with that bunker mainly due to the tree roots growing in it so the management team here at Sonoma decided to eliminate that bunker.
Sonoma Agronomy 