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Pinnacle Design president Ken Alperstein pulls into the parking lots of a lot of golf courses these days to help operators craft a plan for using less water.
Pinnacle Design president Ken Alperstein pulls into the parking lots of a lot of golf courses these days to help operators craft a plan for using less water.
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Ken Alperstein has been a road warrior the past several years, logging about 50,000 miles a year doing golf course visits. Driven by Southern California’s drought and a need for courses to reduce water consumption, it’s a busy time for the course landscape architect and president of Pinnacle Design Company in La Quinta.

To date, Alperstein and his Pinnacle golf team have redesigned 17 Southland courses, including Anaheim Hills Golf Club, Bermuda Dunes Country Club, Big Canyon Country Club, Canyon Lake Country Club and Tustin Ranch Golf Course. At those sites and others, multiple acres of turf grass has been replaced by drought-tolerant shrubs, native grasses and wildflowers designed to blend in with the existing course environments.

“For us, it’s not turf reduction. It’s landscape enhancement,” Alperstein said. “We’re the guys behind the curtain that golfers never see, but the changes we make augments their experience of being out in a natural setting.”

In 2015, the Metropolitan Water District mandated a 20 percent reduction across the board in water consumption. One MWD incentive to help people comply with the order was a program that paid homes and businesses a rebate for replacing turf and implementing alternate landscapes. At Anaheim Hills, for example, the MWD funded $2.5 million to remove 29 acres of turf and install drought-tolerant landscaping. The redesign means the golf course will conserve 35 million gallons of water a year.

“Essentially every course we redesigned was the equivalent of 1,000 to 2,000 homes replacing their lawns,” Alperstein said. “I think the MWD was surprised by how many golf courses took advantage of the program, but from their standpoint it was a lot easier to write a bunch of big checks than all those little checks to homeowners.”

Although the MWD-funded program ended last year, Alperstein said many golf courses are self-funding turf removal projects.

“They’re penciling out the savings and recognizing it’s a smart decision that also enhances the aesthetics of the golf course,” he explained. “With the current conditions it’s about survivability and financial foresight; the drought isn’t going to get any better any time soon.”

Landscape redesign goes further than the stated mandates, however, and into how the new look will affect golfers.

“First, you want to identify those turf areas that have a 99 percent chance of never having a golf ball hit into them,” Alperstein said. “That’s where you can install high-density plants. Second, where are the medium density areas where there’s a 60 percent chance of a golfer hitting a ball? We want to put in landscaping that will accommodate the golfer finding his ball and still have the ability to advance the ball. The third areas are low-density sections where there’s a 90 percent certainty of golf balls and you want the golfer to be able to play from those locations.”

Once those areas are identified, playability and water reduction goals must coexist.

“Each course presents their own set of challenges,” said Alperstein, who works with and talks to top course architects such as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Fazio and Rees Jones for ideas on what works best.

“You learn in turf reduction programs that your analysis bleeds from the golf course to the clubhouse, and from the clubhouse to the entry to the property,” he said. “There are a lot of areas to consider where you can conserve water with intelligent landscape choices.”