Buggy paths and routes on a golf course

Routes are drawn by golfers, not by committees

A course has two route networks. There is the one on the plan, made of paths the club has built and signs it has put up, and there is the one in the grass, made by every golfer taking the shortest reasonable line from where they are to where their ball is. Where the two coincide, the paths get used and the turf survives. Where they diverge, the grass loses.

That is the first thing to accept before spending anything. A path that adds a noticeable detour will be cut across, not out of bloody mindedness but because a golfer with a tee time to keep takes the direct line. Fighting that with signage rarely works for long. Reading it, and putting the hard surface where the traffic already goes, works almost immediately.

So the survey comes before the design. Walk the course after a wet week and photograph every worn line, then do it again in a different season. The desire lines show up as thin grass, bare soil at turns, and marks fanning out from a single exit. That map is worth more than any amount of committee discussion about where a path ought to be.

Where the wear actually concentrates

Damage on a golf course is not evenly spread and never has been. It gathers at a small number of points where every vehicle does the same thing in the same place: leaving a path, joining a path, queueing, turning, stopping on a slope, or squeezing through a gap. Those points are where the money should go, and they are usually obvious once you look for them rather than at the general condition of a fairway.

The single worst offender is the exit from a made path, because it combines a change of surface, a turn and often a slight acceleration in one spot. Green surrounds come next: golfers slow, turn and park in a small area that is under the heaviest foot traffic on the course anyway. Then crossings, where a stream, a ditch or a road funnels everything through a width of a few paces. Once you have marked them on a plan, you have a work programme rather than a wish list. Most courses find the list is shorter than expected and that half a dozen locations account for the large majority of the visible damage.

• The first few paces off a made path, especially where the exit is fixed.
• Green surrounds and the walk-off route to the next tee.
• Tee approaches, where vehicles queue and turn while a group plays.
• Bridges, crossings and any gateway or gap in a hedge line.
• The inside of turns, where the loaded wheel scuffs rather than rolls.
• Slopes where vehicles start from a standstill, and shaded hollows that never dry.

The cheap interventions worth trying first

Before a club spends on construction it is worth exhausting the interventions that cost a morning of a greenkeeper's time. Most of them work on the same principle: stop the traffic doing the same thing in the same place. A rope and a few posts that move the entry point along a path every fortnight will convert one bare scar into a broad area of light wear that recovers on its own.

The rest are about making the good route the easy one. Widening the mouth of an exit so vehicles fan out rather than following a single line, moving a stake or a tee marker so the natural line changes, mowing a slightly different route to suggest where to drive, and putting a direction arrow where people habitually take the wrong side of a green. Small changes to what looks natural are more effective than instructions.

Then deal with the reasons a spot fails in the first place. A patch that stays wet all winter is usually a drainage problem rather than a traffic problem, and aerating, draining or diverting the water often fixes what a rope only manages. Do that first and the traffic measure may not be needed at all. It is also the cheaper order of works.

• Rope and posts moved regularly to rotate the entry and exit points.
• Widening an exit mouth so traffic fans out instead of following one line.
• Aeration, sand dressing or a drain where a specific spot holds water.
• Moving a tee marker or a stake so the natural line falls somewhere else.
• Reinforcement mesh or matting over a short problem section.
• Resting and reseeding one problem area at a time on a rotation.

Making a path work at its ends

A path fails at its edges long before it fails in its middle. Where a hard surface meets turf, the grass right at the join takes a wheel that is half on and half off, on ground that is often slightly lower because the surface has settled or the turf has worn away. That small step then catches wheels, which widens the gap, which makes the step bigger. Left alone it becomes a trench alongside a perfectly good path.

The fix is to keep the join flush and to keep it that way, which means a proper edge detail on construction and someone checking it as a maintenance item. Topping up an unbound surface at the edges, reinstating turf against a bound edge, and keeping the surface level with the ground rather than proud of it all matter more than anything happening in the centre. The same thinking applies to where a path starts and stops. A path that ends abruptly puts every vehicle onto turf at the same point. Ending with a widened apron, or with a short reinforced section that spreads the traffic before it reaches grass, costs little at the time of construction and saves a repair every year afterwards.

What building or extending a path involves

The order of a path project is not the order most committees imagine. Drainage comes first, because a path built over ground that holds water will fail regardless of what it is surfaced with. Then formation and sub-base, which is where most of the cost and nearly all of the longevity sits. The visible surface is the last decision, and it is far less important to how long the path lasts than the layers under it.

Practical constraints shape the design as much as the specification. The path needs to be wide enough for two vehicles to pass where they will actually meet, and to carry the maintenance machinery that will inevitably use it. It needs falls that shed water sideways rather than running it down the length. It needs an access route for the plant that builds it, which on a golf course is a real constraint and often decides the sequence of works.

Timing is usually a winter programme, when play is lightest and the ground can be reinstated before the season. Use a contractor with golf course experience if you can, because working around play, protecting turf and reinstating properly are the parts a general groundworks contractor tends to underestimate. And consult the members before the machines arrive rather than after. A path that appears without warning is argued about for years.

Surfaces and the trade-offs between them

Unbound surfaces such as compacted aggregate are cheaper to lay and easy to repair with a load of material and an hour of labour. Their weakness is migration: loose material moves under turning wheels, scatters into the turf where it can damage mowers, and needs topping up as a routine rather than as an exception. They suit clubs with the labour to maintain them and a preference for spreading cost over time.

Bound surfaces hold their shape and their edge, tolerate heavier use, and need far less routine attention. They cost more to install, need specialist repair, and can look intrusive on a natural course unless the colour and the line are handled carefully. On a course where the path will carry every buggy on every round, they usually pay for themselves in maintenance time saved.

Reinforcement systems, where a mesh or cellular product is laid into the turf, keep a green appearance and are useful across short sections and crossings. They need proper establishment before heavy use and they are not a substitute for drainage. As with everything here, the right answer depends on the soil, the traffic and the club's appetite for maintenance, and the contractor who will guarantee the work is the person to settle it with.

Keep-off areas and making them obvious

Restricted areas fail for one of two reasons: golfers cannot tell where the boundary is, or they can tell and do not know why. Both are solvable. Mark boundaries with something continuous rather than with occasional signs, because a rope reads as a line while two posts read as a suggestion, and put a short reason on the sign. Ground recovering from wear, or protecting new drainage, is a sentence that buys far more compliance than a bare instruction.

Be consistent about what gets protected. Green surrounds, bunker faces and freshly worked ground are the obvious candidates, along with young trees and the line of any recent drainage work. If the same area is roped in November and open in December with no explanation, golfers stop reading the ropes anywhere on the course. And take the ropes down when the reason has gone. Permanent temporary marking is one of the quickest ways to lose the members' cooperation, and a course covered in stakes that nobody remembers the purpose of has effectively no restrictions at all.

Reviewing the routes each season

Routes are not a job that finishes. Traffic patterns shift when a tee is moved, when a tree comes down, when a new drainage scheme changes where the water sits, and when a hole is played differently after a change to the card. A path that was in exactly the right place five years ago can be in slightly the wrong place now, and the grass will tell you before anybody complains.

Build a simple review into the year. Walk the course after the first properly wet spell and photograph every worn area from the same positions each time, marking them on a copy of the course plan. Comparing this year's plan with last year's shows which interventions worked and which merely moved the problem somewhere less visible. Watch a busy Saturday as well as an empty Tuesday, because the behaviour that damages a course happens under time pressure with a group waiting behind. And change one thing at a time. A club that moves an exit, ropes a hollow and reroutes a hole in the same month learns nothing about which of the three did the work.

Common questions

Do buggy paths need planning permission?

Sometimes, and it depends on the scale of the works and how the land is designated. Conservation areas, protected trees, listed structures, floodplain and protected habitat all change the answer, as can the amount of engineering involved. Ask your local planning authority before ordering materials, since a retrospective application is a far worse position than a pre-application enquiry.

Which surface should we use for a buggy path?

There is no single answer, and any supplier giving you one without asking about your soil is selling rather than advising. Unbound surfaces cost less and need regular topping up, bound surfaces cost more and hold their edge, and reinforcement systems keep a grass appearance across short sections. Settle drainage first, then choose.

How wide should a buggy path be?

Wide enough for two vehicles to pass at the points where they will genuinely meet, and wide enough for the maintenance machinery that will use it. Uniform width along the whole run is often the wrong answer, since the passing places and the pinch points matter more than the average. Your contractor should design this around your own machinery.

Will building a path stop buggies damaging the course?

It reduces the damage considerably and relocates the rest. Every path concentrates wear at the points where vehicles leave and rejoin it, so a path scheme works properly only when it is paired with rotated exit points, roped lines and attention to the edges. Clubs that build the path and change nothing else are often disappointed.

Should a path run the whole hole or only part of it?

Most clubs build in sections, starting where the ground fails first: tee approaches, crossings and the wet holes. A continuous path is a much larger project and is not always better, since it can push traffic into a single exit at each end. Let your wear map decide the sections rather than a wish for consistency.

Can we use a temporary surface over the winter only?

Yes, and it is a common approach for crossings and short problem sections. Matting or cellular reinforcement laid in autumn and lifted in spring gets a course through the worst months, though the turf underneath needs recovery time afterwards. Check how the product is fixed down, because anything that lifts under a wheel becomes a hazard.