Finish off your sand trap in style

Specially colour your bunker face

Ecobunker Ltd, the experts in synthetic golf bunker face and edge construction, is offering golf courses the chance to have their Ecobunker faces coloured to suit their exact requirements.

The unusual innovation came as a result of research carried out following a request by its most prestigious client, Secession GC, in South Carolina.

Impressed by the resilience, texture and low maintenance characteristics of Ecobunker, Secession wanted to create a ‘browned off’ appearance, like that seen in many links courses in the UK, where grass is killed off on steep bunker faces to create the brown look.

Ecobunker is currently working with a number of traditional links courses, with installations progressing at Musselburgh Old, Winterfield, Murcar, Southerndown, Pennard, Tenby, Conwy, Leasowe, Sheringham, Sutton and Seaton Carew.

You don’t have to be a links course to install Ecobunker, though, after the design was successfully modified to work on parkland and heathland sites.

Nowhere has this worked better than at Potters Bar Golf Club, which struggled as its high sand faces regularly washed out during rainfall, resulting in numerous hours of sand replacement and major problems with stone contamination.

Ecobunker managing director Richard Allen, and construction manager Llewellyn Matthews proposed to lower the sand face, create a low-revetted edge and install a liner to two trial bunkers on the 17th hole.

In August, 38mm of rain fell in 24 hours and all 50 traditional bunkers were out of play with significant washout damage and sand contamination. By contrast, the two Ecobunkers on the 17th hole were undamaged and in perfect condition for play. The club is now converting all of its bunkers using Ecobunker.

For more information on the services offered by Ecobunker, log-on to ecobunker.co.uk

How will you cope if you face opposition from traditionalist male members who are unfamiliar with a lady in charge?
I would simply do as I would always do, which is seek to understand what the issues are, sit round a table and come up with workable solutions that make commercial sense to our local clubs, which after all are local businesses in their own right.

Scottish Golf’s new Board of nine Non-Executive Directors has now been finalised, with the appointment of a new leadership team boasting wide-ranging business and golf experience. How excited are you for the future?

I’m very excited at the make-up of the new Board and we have a great opportunity to propel the sport forward. We have individuals with experience and, at the same time, we are bringing in people with a fresh perspective, having not been involved at all in the administration of golf. Collectively, they will offer new ideas and a real hunger to make a difference to ensure we build on the momentum in terms of the work already being achieved with clubs throughout Scotland.

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