Caves Valley prepares for BMW with CapillaryFlow

Maryland golf club Caves Valley is coming to the end of a year-long process of renovating its 86 bunkers using the CapillaryFlow liner system. And the project could not have come at a better time for the club, which has been named as the host of this year’s BMW Championship, the penultimate event in the PGA Tour’s Fedex Cup playoff series, which will take place from August 26-29.

“I’d say that our bunker renovation was necessary regardless of us hosting an event–but the championship was a catalyst,”said Kyle Steidel, Caves Valley’s golf course superintendent and property manager. “Time and repeated washouts had caused heavy contamination of sand, and bunker performance on our clay soil was really suffering. From time to time, we get major rain events, and inevitably they caused serious washouts. For a maintenance crew, repairing them again and again is a daunting task. And, in the context of the BMW Championship, the potential for disruption was significant. In the past, I have been a part of events where we had heavy rain, and essentially the whole staff and team of volunteers are occupied getting the bunkers back in play, at a time when they have more than enough other things to be doing!”

Steidel and the club chose to install CapillaryFlow because of its outstanding performance, and the superintendent says the nature of the system was a major factor. “I have been exposed to many different liners throughout my career–oddly, CapillaryFlow was one which I didn’t really know. It is a homogenous blend–the polymer runs right through the concrete,” he said. “That means that if a bunker is damaged, it is a simple repair. With other systems which are layered, this isn’t always the case–damage can mean you have to rebuild the whole bunker. Many of our bunkers have extremely steep faces, and keeping the sand on them was always tricky. With CapillaryFlow, the angle of repose is much higher, and the sand stays in place. We have even been able to push the envelope a little, making some of the faces even steeper.”

Medalist Golf did the construction work at Caves Valley, and Steidel says the project has run very effectively throughout its duration, and reports excellent early results. “Even after our heaviest rain events, the only washouts we have seen is if water gets into the bunker because a catch basin was overwhelmed,” he said. “I'm confident that our new bunkers will perform really well during the BMW, and will work equally well for our members thereafter.”