Many course built before the golf cart often struggle to fit in the associated cart paths. Necessary to take wear and stress off the grass there is a balance that when tipped can make a course or area feel overbuilt. The area of focus on this project involved 3-holes that each lacked a dedicates cart path. The path behind the ninth green and running parallel with the thirteenth hole was long seen as a eyesore in one of the more beautiful areas of the golf course. It also had no impact on the golfer used mostly by the halfway house attendant when coming and going to work.
When planning the removal of the halfway house path we also looked into the flow of carts and the 10th tee. Golfers play the 9th due east and then turn directly back west for 10. The current loop turnaround encircling the “white” tee box worked practically, but was not visually appealing.
The project kicked off around the time of aeration. We started by removing the old cart path material (coarse sand, rocks, recycled concrete) with a box blade and tractor. The removed material was used to fix paths elese where on the course. Once down to the native sandy soil in these area we had roughly a 4-6” cavity from the grade on the sides. For aeration on the west course this would be our dump site. We collected the plugs from every tee, approach and green. This would give the finished path a nice stand of poa annua/creeping bentgrass the goal being to match the existing turfgrass. Once we reached a finished grade and packed the cores in with the skid steer to reduce settling. We concluded by spreading bentgrass seed to better our grass germination, and applied a organic starter fertilizer.
We had good germination before winter’s cold stopped growth. In the spring we started to mow and quickly reached the approach height of cut. With spring aeration this area got a heavy sand topdressing and we overseeded the remaining thin spots.
The project was well received it handled traffic and wear well with only a few bumps and bruises. As the grass becomes more established it will become more wear tolerant. Around 10 tee the fescue continues to fill in better year-after-year. The turn around took some time to become apart of routine, but in the end it created a better flow. The first two photos below give a great before and after look at the changes made.
