Hunting Hawk Golf Club in South Ana, Va., is discussed in glowing terms in the latest “Golf Digest.” Specifically, Ron Whitten writes about the efforts of Bill Love, ASGCA, in designing a course which uses nothing but rainwater to irrigate the entire public course.
Whitten writes that at the recent United State Golf Association two-day conference, “Golf’s Use of Water: Solutions for a More Sustainable Game,” Love’s discussion of Hunting Hawk was the highlight presentation.
“Hunting Hawk could have been–maybe should have been–the centerpiece of the water summit, because its solution went to the heart of the issue.
“Faced with trying to build the Hunting Hawk course with no source of water–no groundwater pumped from a well, no surface water pumped from a nearby river, no water piped in from a city treatment plant–Love and the developers looked to the skies and decided they’d have to collect every drop of rainwater they could. Luckily, the site is bowl-shaped, so Love designed four interconnected lakes at the low end to serve as storage ponds. Man-made streams along golf holes carry runoff directly to the lakes. Mounds and swales do so indirectly, transferring rain into drains, and underground pipes then deliver it to the ponds.
“Only tees, fairways, greens and a narrow band of primary rough are irrigated. Secondary rough and “conservation areas” are indigenous grasses, never watered except by nature, rarely mowed.”
The complete “Golf Digest” article can be found here.