SHORT GAME Chambers Bay 15th green undergoes amazing repair and rebuild following wintertime pipe burst

At some point during the night of December 23rd last year, a lateral irrigation line short and to the left of the 15th green at Chambers Bay burst, sending thousands of gallons of water rushing down the hill and onto the putting surface. Water takes the path of least resistance, obviously, so this sudden deluge began to erode the sand core beneath the poa annua turf.

This, says Casey Kalbrenner of Ridgetop Golf which was hired to mitigate the impact and restore the characteristics and dimensions of the green, created large washouts under the existing turf and carried rocks, debris, etc. into the green cavity. “When breaks like this happen,” Kalbrenner adds, “the damage can be extreme, especially on sandy sites like those at Chambers Bay.”

It meant visitors to the 2015 U.S. Open venue had to play a 17-hole course as the 15th is one of the course’s few holes with no viable alternate location. “We had a lot of conversations as a team about other modifications to provide 18 holes,” says General Manager Zac Keen- er. “But all of these would either modify another hole — thereby impacting two holes or would have dramatic flow/pace-of-play impacts.”

It took a couple of weeks for Director of Agronomy, Eric Johnson, and Senior Assistant Superintendent, Heather Schapals, to prepare the ground for the arrival of Ridgetop on Jan. 20, the highly respected golf course construction and renovation company that has worked on dozens of courses throughout the Northwest.

Kalbrenner didn’t really know what to expect but went in fearing the worst and “hopefully then being able to adapt to a much smaller scale of work.” Fortunately, Kalbrenner adds, there was no damage to the existing drainage or pea gravel layer which, according to the USGA, “allows the rapid movement of excess water out of the rootzone and into drainage pipes”.

“The impact was only contamination to the greens mix,” says Kalbrenner. “So, our next job was to excavate out all of the contaminated materials. This was rough- ly 30 percent of the green. Then we imported the new greens mix.”

The challenge here was to match the compactions and get a consistent soil profile throughout the green. So Kalbrenner, and Ridgetop’s other employee on-site Josh Jahns, tilled the complete green and tied it all in together when the complete regrade of the surface needed to happen.

Using the most up to date Straka data (shows the existing percentage slopes), Kalbrenner matched the new contours to the old as closely as possible. He and Jahns were on-site for about five days and left once architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr., had approved the work (and added a little more pin-able space). Sod was then brought in from Chambers’s own nursery, and Johnson, together with his maintenance team, took over to ensure a smooth grow-in.

Keener says that at some point in March, when consistent growing temperatures arrive, he will be able to provide a timeline for reopening.