Golf Course Architecture - Issue 62: October 2020

74 INS IGHT T I FFANY KOSS On the right path Tiffany Koss talks about the partnership between two family-owned golf enterprises from Wisconsin T he Club at Lac La Belle in Wisconsin reopened earlier this summer, having been completely renovated by architect Craig Haltom. The project was a big one, with the first four holes built on new land that wasn’t part of the original layout. This gave the club the ability to reroute the course to take advantage of the most interesting parts of the property while avoiding low-lying problem areas. This project was initiated by The Prestwick Group, which purchased the property a few years ago. They are a Wisconsin-based, family-owned business – something that resonated with us at Kafka Granite, as we are also a family-owned Wisconsin business. Prestwick and Kafka are both led by first and second generations; Matt Morse, working alongside his son Tyler; and myself working alongside my father, Glenn Kafka, founder of our company. Our role in the project came through golf course superintendent Jimmy Cavezza, who said: “I’ve used this product at other places for walk paths and it worked really well. The owner wanted a natural looking and durable product – this is perfect.” Our patented wax polymer pathway mix has been developed to specifically meet two demands that have been pain points for countless superintendents: it is aesthetically very pleasing and requires little maintenance. It’s great when we can solve those kinds of problems. The club was also concerned about erosion, due to the course’s rolling terrain and the freeze-thaw climate. Essentially, the product is a polymeric wax coated aggregate, with each individual granule of stone dust coated in wax. With water unable to penetrate the material, it still maintains a natural look and feel while resisting the erosive effects of the environment at Lac La Belle. The product is designed to be self- installed with minimal maintenance, saving the ground crews valuable hours. Following any sort of rain event, supers are usually out there fixing eroded areas. During the week of the 2017 US Open at Erin Hills, there were multiple inches of rain and all the grounds crew had a huge task