JHT front-nine reconstruction *PROGRESS*

JHT 1st green area with drainage pipes installed and backfilled

With the longest period of warm and dry weather for several years, MJAbbott are making good progress. Whilst badger habitats frustrate their efforts on four-greens elsewhere greens, bunkers and greens-surrounds are shaped in the subsoil; piped drains are installed to carry water away to soakaways and the greens are ready for the gravel carpet to be spread.  

mini-excavators finishing-off drainage trenches

At the JHT 3rd the outline shape of the left greenside bunker is clear to see, the limits of the green are cut into the subsoil and the shaping to proposed and surveyed levels is ready for inspection by Martin Ebert, the course architect. 

JHT 3rd looking from the front left of the working area

The greens are built from the sub-base up.  As different layers are installed from the base, the stone-carpet and the rootzone all replicate the topography and elevation-changes shaped in the sub-base and signed-off as designed by the course architect.

JHT 7th with the stone-carpet installed

At the JHT 8th the new teeing ground, the wetlands, the green and green-surrounds are all progressing well.  The tee is level and drained, capturing the final design of the wetlands is still a bit of a moving target and the green-area is signed-off at a similar stage to the 7th green area.    

view from the new, elevated JHT 8th teeing ground

The creation of the wetlands - and the provision of a habitat for aquatic plants around the margins - is proving a little testing.  The irregular shapes through the base of, 'Ray's Ravine,' - or, 'Peter's Fjord,' - or perhaps, 'Ebert's Abyss,'  should encourage water;

• to be held and meander through the depths of the gulch
• seasonally moisten the margins as levels rise and fall with high-tides
• tap into the naturally occurring water-table at about 1.8-metres
• drain and capture the surface run off during autumn and winter from the top part of the course up the hill beyond the JHT 7th and PBarton 5th   

JHTaylor front-nine reconstruction

And so it begins!  Already the 7th green and surrounds are excavated and reduced to a working-area.  

MJAbbott move on-site and the existing front-nine greens, greenside bunkers and greens surrounds quickly start to disappear.

Upon arrival an immediate start is made creating the new wetlands in the carry at the 8th.  This new hazard, allied with new Taylor-mounds up at the greenside, will compensate for the redesign of a bunkerless hole.

Golf Course Architect, Martin Ebert - not to be confused with the RMS Head Greenkeeper Doug Tate in the shorts - watches over MJAbbott shapers as the 8th green and surrounds take shape.  Work continues in the sub-base to the architects plans in advance of installing drainage and gravel-carpet.

MJAbbott shapers make final adjustments to the movement towards the back of the green.  An off-plan adjustment is made to ensure available pin-positions on a defined shelf at the back-right of the green.  

Final grading in the green bases in readiness for authorisation by the architect and installation of drainage.