Most golf courses have dozens of bunkers and over time many of them will need replacing or new bunkers will need to be built to cope with the modern day game.
Lots of clubs are developing or re-designing their golf courses with the original designs slightly outdated in terms of strategy and how far modern day golfers hit the ball.
As a consquence, new bunkers will need to be built - but how much do they cost? Here, Wallasey Golf Club Course Manager John Mcloughlin talks us through the typical cost of a bunker on both links and parkland courses, starting with a traditional links revetted bunker...
"Obviously you've got all the little slabs of turf that goes into a revetted bunker and on average a revetted bunker will now cost £1,000 each to simply revet," John told Golf Monthly.
"When it comes to a normal bunker on a parkland course, there’s generally a lot more sand there because in parkland courses the bunkers are generally a lot bigger than on links courses. So they don't have to pay for the revet but there's often a lot more work involved in rebuilding the bunkers so again it would be around £1,000.
"And then if you wanted to line that bunker, so a lot of clubs now are lining their bunkers with rubber crumb or with astro turf or with a carpet-type liner and you’d probably be looking at another £1,000 to line the bunker as well."
Whilst £1,000 for a bunker and then another £1,000 to line it is a general estimation, the prices will likely rise for larger bunkers, and the price of sand as well as other materials continues to creep up with the cost of living crisis, which is one of the biggest challenges facing greenkeepers.
"Sand for bunkers has gone up 25% within the last year," John said. "So sand costs because of transport have gone through the roof and obviously the process of mining the sand with the cost of transport and fuel to run the machines and the plant to excavate the sand to transport it. So, sand has gone up considerably and obviously plants as well have gone up considerably as have fertilizer costs as well."
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