69 fairway, to a depth of 8 to 12 inches on the lowest lying stretches of fairway. A solution for the bunker reconstruction has been to innovate a stabilised edge as well as a protected bunker floor that would adequately drain without suffering washouts. To that end, the design/construction team worked with Better Billy Bunker and Capillary Flow to devise a multipronged approach that combined semipermeable polymer spray-on bunker floors with a reinforced slope and an exterior perimeter edge further locked in place with an artificial matting that is covered by conventional bermudagrass. That is the only way to prevent washouts and erosion and to keep bunkers whole and the sand from running out. The rigorous method also enables the club more clearly to create the contrasting, non-bunker sandy dunes areas that serve as transitional ground. As for the greens, research into the design history revealed a fundamental shift that took place in the late 1950s. That’s when Dick Wilson, the esteemed Florida-based golf architect, shrank the greens during a complete reconstruction process that also saw him soften (a euphemism for ‘compromise’) the surface contours. The originally designed Ross putting surfaces averaged 8,438 square feet. Whether those greens were built to that full extent is anyone’s guess. The club’s evolution shows that design liberties were taken with the ninth green, though the other greens all looked at least close to the original Ross plan when the course opened. Before the club undertook its last restorative work, Seminole’s greens had been reduced by an average of 2,045 square feet (24 per cent) each. Most of that, as the club found out through coring of the old greens base, had been achieved during the Wilson era of work. Wilson did not just shrink from the perimeters while retaining the same relative shapes. In most cases, the perimeters were altered to reorient the axis or centre of the greens. Perimeter hole locations were lost, and the intensity of the surface slopes in terms of both fall and transition were reduced. This is evident in the archaeology-like work that Caron and his staff undertook to unearth the various layers of greens mix over the years. Restoration design was unknown to the golf world in the 1950s. If Ross’s original plans or designs were ever researched, Wilson left no record anywhere of such an effort. Most likely he worked on his own, with his own modern intent to accommodate the originally stern slopes to a more playable character, one more suited for Core samples show the history of green construction at Seminole. From bottom: a muck type soil of Ross’s 1929 greens, the clean sandy mix of Wilson’s late 1950s work, the USGA specification with rock and choker layer introduced by Silva in 1999, and recent regrassing prior to current reconstruction. Left, 15,000 tons of sand was stockpiled on the seventh fairway for distribution on the front nine to a depth of 8 to 12 inches on the lowest lying stretches of fairway. Top left, an innovative bunker reconstruction method involved stabilizing edges and protecting bunker floors Photos: JSeminole GC
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