Famous Pandy bunker to be restored at Ganton Golf Club

The enormous Pandy bunker on the eighteenth hole at Ganton Golf Club near Scarborough, UK, is to be reintroduced.

The Pandy was originally used as a working sand pit when the course first opened, but its use as a hazard on the course lessened and eventually the bunker no longer formed a discernable part of the course.

“I understand that a member found some old pictures of the Pandy and brought them into the club,” Gordon Irvine MG, a consulting greenkeeper to Ganton Golf Club, told GCA. “There was always a desire within the club to reinstate the Pandy and bring it back into play, but there was no real justification for doing.”

Irvine required a new turf nursery at Ganton, from which the current project evolved.

“We discussed the options we had and where we might get the material for the nursery,” he said. “We discovered that the base of the old Pandy had built up quite a good reserve of organic material which was ideal to use for the turf nursery.”

This saw the reintroduction of the Pandy move up the ‘priority list’ at Ganton, as if the waste material from the Pandy was stripped and reused, a turf nursery could get up and running.

Work commenced this week, with Conor Walsh hired to do the shaping for the bunker, with Irvine assisting these efforts.

“It’s become a double project – we’re building the turf nursery at the same time as we reintroduce the Pandy,” said Irvine. “We’re planning to have the work completed by the beginning of next week.”

The ‘new’ Pandy will act as a sandy waste area rather than a bunker specifically. This means it will only be raked occasionally using a mechanical bunker rake. 

Sean DudleySean Dudley

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