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Driving up the road to Sky Valley, it's easy to see why there are so many beautiful golf courses tucked away in such a small corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. With a plethora of peaceful resort cabins bordering lush, winding fairways, who could resist spending a few weekends a year at Sky Valley?
Prior to 1996, Sky Valley primarily relied on a single row of quick couplers in the fairways for the course’s supplemental watering needs. While this may have been a viable option many years ago at the time of installation, the poor turf quality showed that an upgrade to a more advanced irrigation solution was needed. Beyond the quick coupler situation, outdated impact heads around the greens were also causing unsightly brown areas. On many holes, the surrounding cuts of rough were not receiving any water at all.
In 2007 Sky Valley completed a 4 million dollar renovation that included new tee boxes, greens, bunkers, turf, and irrigation components. In order to ensure that this expensive investment would be protected for many years to come, specifiers decided to install a Hunter-centric irrigation system. Central control software was upgraded to Surveyor 2, and fairways now had a proper configuration of valve-in-head and traditional rotors to provide complete coverage. Heads and quick couplers were also added to each tee box, along with multi-Stream Sprinklers where appropriate.
With the course improvements and Hunter upgrades, Sky Valley is now able to irrigate exact areas of turf efficiently and effectively while meticulously monitoring every gallon of water used. Beyond accurate, efficient course-wide coverage, the choice to go with Hunter has also decreased the amount of time the staff dedicates to maintenance. With significantly fewer problem areas in the turf, and the convenient serviceability of Hunter’s Total Top Service rotors, the course has never been easier to care for.
