The refurbished bunkers at Dubsdread in Orlando

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Opened in 1924, Dubsdread in Orlando is the oldest public course in Central Florida. Formerly the site of the Orlando Golf Open, it played host to great names such as Hogan and Snead. The course was rebuilt by architect Mike Dasher in 2007/8, and its bunkers were reconstructed at the same time, with new sub-surface drainage lines, but no liners.

Superintendent Alan Lichter says it became clear to him fairly quickly that those bunkers would not stand up to the amount of play the busy course receives, especially in Florida summers, where significant rains are an everyday occurrence.

“The bunkers just kept washing out all the time,” he says. “So we started talking about bunker liners in about 2012, and did a demonstration project on our chipping green bunker using a liner from a company that later went bust. So we started looking at the alternatives, and that’s when I came across Capillary.”

Installing liners across the golf course was a significant investment for a municipal course, so Lichter began tracking the amount of time it took to fix the bunkers after rain events. “It wasn’t pretty, and that convinced the powers that be at the city that it was a good investment,” he explains. “The payback to the city was pretty obvious, and the improvements in playability that would follow were also a big issue. So we started the project in 2017, working with Benson Construction, a Georgia-based contractor. It took three months to install the liner in all the bunkers.

Six years on from the installation and Lichter is still extremely happy with the performance of his bunkers. “I love them,” he says. “They are still draining as they were the first day. We had seven tenths of an inch of rain last night, there’s no water in the bunkers.”

Given the extremes of the Florida climate, Lichter’s bunkers have had to face up to some pretty severe weather – and he says they have come through with colours still flying. Even after Hurricane Ian dumped eleven inches of rain on Dubsdread last year, the Capillary Bunkers still performed. “It took one person – me! – about 12 hours to fix the bunkers after Ian,” he says. “Before we installed the Capillary liner, it would have needed three guys working solidly for a week.”