ORLANDO, Florida — Natural stacked sod bunkers are distinctive and offer a great challenge, but fell out of fashion as a design tool over the years because of the high maintenance expense and a lack of stability in harsh weather.
That revetted bunker look is now making a dramatic comeback, especially in the Southeast, thanks to EcoBunker and the work of owner Richard Allen, a former civil engineer from Wales who invented the form of synthetic golf bunker technology in 2010.
The EcoBunker product is made of fully recycled, worn out AstroTurf sports fields. It is delivered in "tiles" for relatively seamless installation and is billed as sturdy, aesthetically natural and low maintenance.
Allen tells a funny story about his thought process leading to the invention of the product, which has been used at such locations as Secession Golf Club in South Carolina, The Medalist in Florida and TPC Sugerloaf in Georgia.
"Back in 2009 I became aware that golf bunker edges were very difficult to maintain," Allen recalls. "I'm not a greens keeper, but I'm a civil engineer and I know a bit about golf, and I've always been interested in golf course construction.
"From the moment I found that out, it was probably six or seven months later that I actually saw some old rolls of AstroTurf in a parking lot at night. I shined my headlights on the end of the roll, and it looked like layers, very similar to a bunker edge. So I wondered if I could make something out of it."
A few years later in 2013, architect Jack Nicklaus used the product for the first time in the United States at Trump National in Jupiter, Florida.
"If you built an equivalent wall with natural sod your average bunker is only going to last four or five years. And then you have to completely build it again," Allen says. "By contrast, the EcoBunker product has a 20-year warranty."
Superintendents can choose how to service the bunkers depending on a desired look.
"If anyone says something is maintenance free then they really don’t get golf," Allen says. "Some fine fescues or some native grasses depending on your climate can grow between the cracks. That will produce a more rugged look and actually some people prefer that. But some of our clients want a clean look. If so, they can power brush the sod face every six months."
Allen says the company has installed the EcoBunker product in more than 50 courses now in the United States.
"It has become popular in states like Florida, South Carolina and Georgia because they're big golfing states to start with, but the climate there is very aggressive," Allen says. "When you get rain, you get severe rain. When you get storms, you get hurricanes. Revetted edges are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather and the soil isn’t as cohesive as say the soils in Scotland or Ireland, so it was virtually unviable to build those edges using natural turf in those states."
A few years ago golf course architect Brandon Johnson installed one of the EcoBunkers on the practice facility at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, and is looking to possibility install it on a few new projects.
"It’s a bunker that's different from everything else," Johnson says. "If you have affluent club members that are going to travel to Scotland or Ireland it’s nice to give them a practice facility where they can hit every shot in their bag. It has certainly been a good product at Bay Hill."
Allen says he has tinkered with the product, which is priced to clients per square foot, over the last decade to make it more sturdy and cost effective.
"You always dream about things that might happen. Yeah, I thought the product had potential, but it was a difficult market to crack because golf is very conservative," Allen says. "If you asked me 15 years ago if the product would be in 37 countries around the world and would I have been to places like Pakistan and Hong Kong and Malaysia and South Africa and Canada and Saudi Arabia, I would have said no. And I’m out there building jobs for Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. It has gone beyond my wildest dreams.”
EcoBunker is successful because it looks and feels like the real deal, and the growing firm has new offices in Florida and Ontario, so clients in the USA and Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean can now benefit from direct sales.
"I think the stacked bunker has always been something that golfers desired," Allen says. "They like the look and it actually gets you to commit to a shot in the bunker, which is what you have to do if you’re going to play any decent shot."
