By Dave Allen
JP Shepherd picked one heck of a time to start his new job as Head Golf Professional at Bonita National Golf & Country Club. One month after leaving Alabama for Southwest Florida, Hurricane Ian came ashore just northwest of Bonita Springs, pounding the club with sustained winds of 150-plus miles per hour for several hours. The winds were so strong, Shepherd says, that they produced waves 4 to 6 feet high on the aqua range.
“We have video of these waves white capping in the pond,” says Shepherd, recalling the late September 2022 storm (bottom, top image). “The waves got so high that they actually lifted two of the greens out of the water. One was thrown upside down on top of our driving range deck, and the other drifted to a corner of the cove.”
Both greens suffered severe damage, but only one was salvageable. The 16’ x 24’ kidney-shaped green that had turned up on the range had literally been split in half (bottom, second image).
“There was nothing to fix,” says Matt Gault, owner of Aqua Greens, which built and installed the first set of target greens back in 2015 not long after the club opened. “Most of the anchor lines snapped, and some were pulled right up through the frame. In some cases, the anchoring was found on land. That was one crazy storm.”
It was Shepherd’s first experience with a hurricane, but not the aqua range’s. Hurricane Irma, a high-end category-3 storm, smashed into the Southwest Florida coast just south of Naples in September 2017, bringing wind gusts as high as 140 mph to the area. The storm destroyed the range’s 20’ x 30’ centerpiece green, flipping it upside down and ripping off all of the floatation underneath the frame.
Aqua Greens provided relief support after Irma, repairing and re-anchoring the three remaining salvageable greens and the floater ball containment system, just as they did after Ian. Following the latter storm, Bonita National installed six nautical-style buoys to serve as additional targets for its members and guests. But earlier this year, a decision was made by the club to restore the aqua range and introduce some new target greens.
Originally, Bonita National thought it would be best to go with two smaller 8’ x 8’ circular target greens that they could easily remove from the pond should another hurricane threaten the range. “But after speaking with Matt, that wasn’t really the best idea because we didn’t have a dedicated area to store those greens,” says Shepherd. “And he was pretty confident that with more anchor points, the larger target greens would be a better option for us.”
How large would they go? In original discussions back in 2015, plans had been made for the centerpiece green to include the club’s signature red, white and black shield logo stenciled into the top surface. But the developer opted not to go in that direction for budgetary reasons.
“When the renovation was on the table, they were asking me about doing something unique there, and all I did was grab a 10-year-old deck and showed them what we had drawn,” Gault says. “And they were interested in pursuing the idea.”
“It was an immediate no-brainer when we found out we could actually put our logo on the turf,” Shepherd says. “Not only from the standpoint of the driving range, but the range is viewable from the dining facility upstairs in the main clubhouse and from several holes on the course. If you’re having dinner on the terrace with your guests, the club’s logo is branded right out in the middle of the pond that you’re viewing anyway.”
The 20’ x 26’ shield logo green (top photo) was installed in late October, along with two 8’ circle greens and two refurbished target greens—one 9’ x 12’ and the other 12’ x 18’—that had somehow managed to survive both hurricanes. (Aqua Greens overhauled the anchor systems and made extensive repairs to both greens.)
The new-look aqua range was a sight for sore eyes, says Simon Coulls, general manager at Bonita National. Members gathered nearby to watch Gault and his team put the centerpiece green together (bottom, third image), and several others took selfies with the shield logo behind them the morning after it was installed. Needless to say, the members were “absolutely delighted” to see the finished product, Coulls says.
“I’m not going to say it [the pre-existing range] was embarrassing, but it wasn’t great,” Coulls says. “We’re continually talking about how do we improve the member experience, what avenues do we have. This is a perfect example of providing that to the membership, making them proud of their community and their club. That’s the main goal, to have members that are proud to bring their guests here and proud to talk about their club.”
The renovated aqua range was the final step, the “crowning moment,” in a driving range upgrade which included the addition of a short-game practice area and 16,000 square-foot putting green. The tee line was also re-grassed and TurfHound synthetic turf mats were installed. The timing couldn’t be better, either, as the new target greens were in the water one day before the start of the club’s Member Guest tournament, its biggest event of the season.
“The reality of doing 53,000 rounds of golf per year on an 18-hole facility is that not everybody can be on the course as much as they’d like to,” Shepherd says. “We really wanted to give them the opportunity to enjoy the game without having to be on the course, and with the completion of this project we’re extremely confident that we have a practice facility that, all in all, is probably unmatched in our marketplace.”
