Florida course reports major labor savings and quality improvments from ZLine bunker liner. “Our bunker maintenance has gone way down,” says GM
MELBOURNE, Florida – When a course is busy, maintenance downtime is especially tough. The semi-private Duran Golf Club, located in Melbourne, on Florida’s east coast, south-east of Orlando, is a classic example.
Duran was built in 2004 by architect Chip Powell and is owned by the large, family-controlled A Duda & Sons, an agricultural business. It is part of the Viera community developed by Duda in Brevard County. And it, like a lot of Florida courses, is an extremely busy place.
“Our championship course does about 55,000 rounds a year, while our par three course, which is lit and open till 9pm each night, does 23,000,” says general manager Jeff von Eschen.
Von Eschen was part of the construction and grow-in team at Duran, and managed the golf course as superintendent until 2020, when he became general manager.
“We have 88 bunkers on our championship course, and another fifteen on the par three,” he says. “When they were constructed, they were rather deep with high-flashed faces, and obviously this caused problems whenever there was heavy rain, which happens a lot in Florida. A geotextile liner was installed when the course was built. It worked quite well, but it didn’t last that long.
“In 2016, we had a tropical storm that came through and completely destroyed all the bunkers on the par three course. We were looking at liners to help reconstruct them. We trialled several, including ZLine. Everybody – especially players – really liked the ZLine product best of all. When the sand got down below its recommended depth after a big storm it remained playable.
“So contractor Fusion Golf came in and reconstructed the bunkers on the par three course. We used them for a year to get a good review on the product, and then in 2019 I recommended we did the championship course as well.”
“Ever since we redid the bunkers, our maintenance load has gone way down,” says von Eschen. “The bunkers were basically replicated except that we rolled the lips over a little bit. No architect was needed. There were drainage issues that Fusion fixed when they did the rebuild, and the height of the flash has been reduced, but before, it would take me two days to get the bunkers back in play after a big storm.
“Now it’s three or four hours of pushing sand. We save one guy’s labour every day in bunker maintenance. We have also had to add less sand to the bunkers because we don’t have these huge washouts and contamination.”
