GuernseySport
L’Ancresse Golf Course
A tale of two clubs ... and horse racing!
TWO clubs play on the L’Ancresse Golf Course - the Royal Guernsey Golf Club (RGGC) and the L’Ancresse Golf Club (LGC). Royal Guernsey Golf Club was founded in 1890 and achieved its Royal status a year later.
During the German occupation of the island in the Second World War the unwelcome visitors commandeered the clubhouse; turf was stripped from greens, tees and fairways to provide camouflage for their gun sites. A newly designed course, by Scottish
architect Mackenzie Ross, came into play in 1949. Subsequent alterations to this design were carried out by Fred Hawtree, twenty years later, to form the marvellous links that is played today. In 2000, the maintenance of the course was passed to Golf Course Management LBG (GCM) from the States Works Department. Golf Course Management was formed in late 1999 by the members of both clubs, and consists of two members of RGGC and two members of LGC who act as directors. The company also have a chairman and a secretary.
Marcus Hamon
GCM employ seven full time staff and one part time staff member. Marcus Hamon is the Head Greenkeeper and has been at the course for twenty years, achieving his NVQ level II and III qualifications under the guidance of Peter Jones of PJA. Marcus was nominated for the Toro student greenkeeper of the year in June 2003, just missing out on the final twelve. In February 2004 he was nominated for a City and Guilds medal for excellence and received this in July 2004 from HRH Prince Philip at
Buckingham Palace. Marcus is now a qualified NVQ assessor and has three members of staff who have achieved NVQ level II under his training and supervision.
Greens programme
Aeration is the key at L’Ancresse to keeping the greens in excellent condition. Marcus has not had any temporary greens in play in the twenty years he has been at the golf course. They are vertidrained with ½” solid tines and full heave to a depth of between 6” and 9”, depending on ground and weather conditions, in November and February. The greens are pencil tined (8mm solid) once a month during the playing season (March to September) to a depth of between 4” and 6” with no heave. Topdressing is carried out once a month in the playing season at about 500kg per green, and Marcus likes to do this after verticutting to get the dressing worked in to the base of the plant. They are not normally cut the day after dressing, only getting a vibrating roll. They are fed with Scotts Double K (7:0:14) as a base feed, normally at the beginning of March when the weather starts to warm up, and again towards the end of April at a rate of 30gm2
. They are
then fed with liquids, every four to five weeks, with Headland Trisert KS at a rate of 60lts/ha mixed with Proturf at a rate of 20lts/ha and Scotts PrimoMaxx at a rate of 400ml/ha. Headlands Tricure AD is applied after pencil tining at a rate of 10lts/ha and mixed with Turf Complex at a rate of 20lts/ha, once a month, between Trisert
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