Practice Facilities – a range of sustainable opportunities

Visiting many golf ranges and golf club practice grounds recently has been a pretty depressing experience. An alarming number of outfields have already turned to mud coupled with rutting and smearing from the ball picking machines, which the owners have to continue to keep using as hand picking is operationally and financially impractical.

Add to this some very feeble attempts at grass target greens (no more than lumps),worse still tractor tyres, poor quality muddy balls, degraded netting and a hotchpotch of targets, nets, flags yardage signs and this uninspiring picture is complete. Unfortunately this is an all too familiar scenario on many practice ranges and grounds, particularly in the UK.

I have even come across some old range-ball scarred cars lovingly located in the outfield for general amusement. They were actually VWs so perhaps the owners was recycling in some novel fashion or in some way protesting about their environmental credentials!

This does however neatly bring me onto a pet subject of mine which is not only the dearth of imaginative and good conditioned practice ground outfields but also the many missed opportunities to create sustainable and operationally more profitable facilities by employing some relatively simple environmental design solutions.

Firstly the issue of mud bound outfields chewed up by ball pickers is a big problem and likely to get worse given the general assumption that warmer wetter winters will be more common.

It’s an obvious solution but re-grading the outfield to shed surface water quickly away from the playing surface has immediate benefits. A minimum of 2% to 3% on the outfield and not all draining back towards the bays solves a lot of drainage issues straight away. This re-grading solution however presents two distinct re-construction opportunities to not only create a range outfield that is genuinely interesting and exciting to play to but an opportunity to recycle a significant quantity of rainwater easily for reuse on the golf course irrigation system.

The natural set up of a range usually allows space to include an irrigation lagoon nearby (usually at its far end). Given that a range outfield can cover two to three hectares then this can equate to harvesting anywhere between 10,000m³ to 20,000m³ of rainwater (in the UK) for the irrigation system per year. I have now designed a number of such schemes some of which are all gravity fed whilst others involve pump systems which take the shed rainwater from the outfield back to a purpose built lagoon.

The way the outfield is remodelled is important as too often outfields have poorly shaped “target greens” where balls collect at the bases (along with puddles) and due to the density of balls at the base, the constant passing of the ball picker turns it to mud. Similarly such steep sided “lumps” burn off and lose grass in the summer becoming a visual eyesore rather than an interesting target.

Much the best way to re-grade the outfield is to create long rolling sinuous contours, to not only provide the interest and targets but to make ball collection easy and significantly, allow the shedding and collection of rainwater to be positively directed, fast and efficient.

Many of the new and remodelled range outfields I have done have been via importing the soil, which usually covers the cost of the works (i.e. new subsurface drainage, new lagoon and loss of earnings during construction period) via the financially royalty for permitting soil to be deposited on the outfield site. However other schemes have been completed via cut and fill exercises and an entire re-turfing of the outfield so the remodelling described can be turned around in a little as two months. Some ranges have even created “golf pods” (netting circa 30m from the bays) to allow the continued use of the range whilst works are going on. Disruption to the business can therefore be kept to a minimum.

Water harvesting is therefore an obvious, simple and economically efficient way of utilising the outfield whilst also improving its visual and playing appeal. However there are many other ways of raising the standard of the range facility which also cuts running costs and is environmentally very sustainable.

Ground source heat pump systems are a much overlooked approach to cutting energy costs for clubhouse and ranges. Given the main cost with installing such systems is the trenching it is a relatively straight forward to install the piping whilst remodelling a range outfield. This is particularly cheap if soil is being imported to re-build the outfield, with the haulage lorries straddling the pipes laid on the existing outfield surface and covering the pipes as they go. In this way expensive trenching is avoided and an amazingly efficient heat source is created within the outfield.

In addition to ground source heat pumps, if a lagoon is being built as part of the water harvesting scheme then a heat exchange system in the water could also be considered, again to save energy costs.

Golf range bays are also often north / south orientated (to avoid the setting sun) which obviously means there is a large expanse of roof pointing south for solar panel installation.

Gaining planning permission for practice ranges can be difficult as it conjures up images in the planners / public minds of floodlights, high range bay buildings, high netting etc. However it is a useful “planning gain” to include some or even all of the above measures to mitigate and assist with getting planning approval, quite apart from the long terms water and energy savings that would accompany taking such measures.

As regards getting planning approval anyone seeking such a permission should also consider grass / or sedum on the range bay roofs which is visually more appealing and assists with attenuating rainfall (flood abatement).

The use of “robotic” ball pickers and maybe even robotic mowers is becoming more popular and in the long run is more sustainable and cheaper. Such machines do however require a uniform dry surface to work properly on. The improvement measures I have mentioned will produce such a surface. These machines also produce far less wear than tractor drawn ball pickers further improving the quality of the outfield product and golfers experience.

I have also come across a number of golf clubs with huge practice grounds, but the members want to use their own balls and therefore perhaps only two or three golfers can use it at a time! By employing the design solutions I have described the club can not only create a quality experience where the professional can justify the purchase of practice balls by the members (a further revenue) but also have a practice facility that contributes to the irrigation supply through water harvesting and maybe even the energy supply. If this can be done at no cost through the equally sustainable reuse or recovery of imported soils then it is a win win situation.

So it’s time for many clubs and range operators to take a serious look at their practice facilities. The golf range utopia should be one where golfers shouldn’t have to put up with muddy uninspiring outfields and additionally it should have the dual function of contributing to the water and energy needs of the business with low impact on the landscape and environment. The opportunities are there to create such a product with only a small degree of disruption.

To find out more about Bruce Click here

This article originally appeared in GMé December 2015. Click here for further information.