High-tech bunker liner and synthetic lake edge solutions both installed at Marco Simone
ROME (Sept. 18, 2019) — The first phase of construction work has been completed on the rebuild of the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club course outside Rome, the venue for the 2022 Ryder Cup. This phase has seen the back nine of the golf course reconstructed, and the holes are now growing in. The front nine is to be rebuilt at a later date.
The construction crew provided by contractor SOL Golf, finished its work at the end of May. For the last three weeks of work, a specialist subcontract team from EcoBunker was on site installing about 500 meters of the company’s AquaEdge lake edging product on two separate ponds, one on the left of the home green, and the other to the front right of the sixteenth, with logistic and labour support from SOL.
EcoBunker CEO Richard Allen, the creator of AquaEdge, says: “Dave Sampson, the course architect from European Golf Design, wanted to make the sixteenth into a feature hole, as he knows that more Ryder Cup matches end at the sixteenth than anywhere else. It’s a pretty drivable par four, downhill, with a huge spectator area around the green.”
The bunkers of the back nine are shaped, but are planned to be finished in September, when they will be lined with the Capillary Concrete system and then filled with sand. Sampson himself specified Capillary Concrete for the course’s bunkers, having seen its performance elsewhere – including at Le Golf National in Paris, host to the recent 2018 Ryder Cup.
“The first phase of bunker works amounts to about 5,000 sq m of Capillary Concrete,” said the company’s European representative Kneale Diamond. “Construction of the second nine is expected to start as soon as the first nine holes are open – and to be finished by next May.”
