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It’s hard to imagine the Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course without the famous floating green. Everything about the floating green is cool. As soon as you set foot on property, you can’t help but think about what club you’re going to hit on that hole – or in my case, whether I will hit the green at all. When you finally arrive on the tee, you try to take it all in, grab a photo for your social media accounts, then nervously stare down anywhere from 100-200 yards of open water between you and the floating oasis. The chauffeured boat ride out to the green is too short to fully appreciate the grandeur of Coeur d’Alene Lake. There is no other experience like it in the golf world.

In 2018, as this engineering marvel was rapidly approaching 30 years of age, course superintendent Tom Walker noticed that the green was sitting lower and lower in the water. While the green was still in immaculate condition, course officials decided it was time for a facelift – literally. As the course closed for the season, the green was towed to a marina about 3 miles away. Walker and his team had to figure out how to remove tens of thousands of pounds of weight without changing how the green looked or played before the course reopened the following year. After all, it’s not easy to put a temporary green in a lake.

With the help of some marine engineers and skilled contractors, Walker and his team were able to pull it off. Except for the greens mix, everything else on the 15,000-square-foot raft was removed down to the steel and concrete frame. The features around the green are actually shaped in foam. The old foam was replaced and additional foam was added to reduce weight. A pond liner was then installed over the foam to catch all the internal drainage and funnel it into two holding tanks. Leachate is then pumped back to land automatically through a flexible 4-inch hose. Over the pond liner sits a geotextile bunker liner product that helps keep soil in place on some of the steeper landforms. Irrigation was then installed and soil imported to bring everything back to the original grade. Sod was laid down and the roughly 4.7-million-pound selfie magnet was ready to be towed back to its home before the golf season started the following April.

As is the case with most work that superintendents do, there wasn’t much fanfare once the renovated green was reopened. Walker and his team had accomplished their goal to make the green look the same as before. Only the discerning eye would be able to tell that it sits about 6 inches higher in the water now. In my 25+ years in the golf business, I have not seen anything quite like the floating green at Coeur d’Alene Resort. Kudos to Tom Walker and his staff for keeping this unique gem afloat.

West Region Agronomists:

Brian  Whitlark, senior consulting agronomist – bwhitlark@usga.org

Cory Isom, agronomist – cisom@usga.org

Information on the USGA’s Course Consulting Service

Contact the Green Section Staff