Facing Unique Challenges To Shape the Future

“One big reason why I came to Commonwealth in 2022 was they were about to start the rebuild process and it was a great chance to shape the future,” says Sandbelt golf veteran Adam Lamb.

Lamb brought along a quarter century of experience working at top clubs in Melbourne’s sandy golf heaven. He was excited to work with Renaissance Golf’s Tom Doak and Brian Slawnik to reimagine and reinvigorate a great course Lamb knew well from his time at the nearby Metropolitan Golf Club.

Doak went on his own just before the project started, so his longtime associate Slawnik took the lead. “Tom’s fingerprints are on it, but Brian did the work,” says Lamb. “And there’s a benefit of having the architect on the machine doing the shaping. Brian’s an artist and he was great with our staff.”

The club’s challenges included a much-needed tree removal program, relocating the maintenance facility to open up the design, and staying open for play. But the result would be a much better golf course, and a new irrigation system was critical for the rebuild.

“The aim was to have a reliable and highly capable system,” says GM Peter Paccagnan. “Rain Bird’s reputation for quality products, coupled with strong sales support, gave us confidence that we would have a system that would enable us to consistently deliver high-quality turf in an efficient way.”

Lamb was happy to hear Rain Bird had been chosen by the club. “I’d had it at Barwon Heads and had been trialing the Rain Bird IC system. I was delighted.”

The new Rain Bird® IC System™ allows Lamb and his team to water precisely. The CirrusPRO™ golf software that manages the system is state of the art in terms of diagnostic capabilities, expandability, programming options, and real-time communication from the maintenance facility to the field.

Part of the challenge was splitting the project across two seasons and running two systems simultaneously. “For one season we had the new Rain Bird IC system in operation on the northern end and had to interconnect the mainline and use the old system on the south end,” recalls Lamb. “We had one pump station and two systems. It was complicated, for sure.”

The team from Ways with Water—Paul Jones and Alistair Mackie—did the layout and design. Think Water’s Chris Logan and Ben White did the install. “They were terrific to work with,” Lamb says. “There were times when things changed with the design and we had to adjust spacing and location of mainlines. We had to move a few things around to minimize issues in the short grass. Like any construction project, we had a few challenges come up and we worked through them.”

Implementing a Flexible Golf Course Irrigation Design

Lamb says that both the Rain Bird system and their partnership mattered to Commonwealth. “It was probably their willingness to help us look at new options as well as how much their system has improved in the last 15 years or so. That relationship you get, and that trust you develop working with them over time, was so important. And the equipment is first-class. The Rain Bird sprinkler heads have been great. We’ve had minimal issues. And the IC system is trustworthy—if there’s ever a problem, it lets you identify and rectify.”

He also cites the importance of the quality and design of the Rain Bird sprinkler heads for the newly redesigned course. “We use a combination of heads—900s and 952s—in areas where spacing can be bigger. Otherwise, we’re using 702s and 752s in smaller areas. We use the 8000 series on banks and tighter areas. We have about 1,200 heads total for the new system. We used a hard edge irrigation design with half heads on fairway edges.”

Decreasing Overall Water Usage with a Rain Bird Irrigation System

That seemingly small irrigation head choice made a huge difference to the club’s efforts to create a sustainable golf course. “The old system was inefficient, and we knew we could reduce watering by a third with a new Rain Bird system,” says Lamb. “We learned that most clubs in the area are going with the hard-edge design to focus on the edges and up the middle and have less waste on the rough.”

Water is particularly precious in the Sandbelt, so Commonwealth’s sustainability efforts immediately paid dividends. “It’s been quite warm in Melbourne and we haven’t had a lot of rain,” says Lamb. “Our water supply would have been gone in previous years. But thanks to the savings from the new system, we’re effectively using a third less water. That’s massive. It’s really been important to us.”

Lamb also points out that the new system allows the team to distribute water more accurately, particularly along fairway lines where water had previously oversprayed into the rough. “The primary value comes from not wasting water in the rough. Our roughs are going to change a lot. That’s not a bad thing in the Sandbelt, where an exposed sand rough is desirable. It’s unique.”

The members have already seen better conditions, particularly in the fairways. Lamb laughs that, “The rough is now quite rough … but the bottom line is we’re able to direct more water to the fairways and create better conditions but still use less total water.”

Learning Throughout the Golf Course Renovation Process

Asked what lessons he learned from the process, Lamb says: “Be patient until the fairway lines and heights are finalized by your architect. Patience is always important.”

Second, he said the Rain Bird support system included a nice surprise: easy-to-use training materials. “We like the video tutorials for training new staff. Those videos are very useful.”