The greens had three to four inches of thatch and, on some, only 50% grass cover!
Greg Evans
Northwick Park replicating Royal Birkdale
then oversown with A4 and G2. From the start these greens were amazing. Germination took place within nine days and, within three weeks, they were being cut at 9mm. By the sixth week the height was reduced to 5mm and Greg believes that the greens could have been playable within three months. The approach taken at Northwick Park was aggressive from the outset with low cutting heights, frequent verticutting and heavy sand dressings. With a balanced fertilitiser and water programme the course achieved excellent results. The two designers, Peter McEvoy and Ricky Willison, have played on some of the best golf courses in the world, and both have reported that Northwick Park was equal to anything that they had putted on before. But, above all, this regime has proven its sustainability in that location. Greg feels that there are a few myths that he hears about creeping bent from time to time in Britain. The first is that
you don’t have to throw on the water and fertiliser to keep them alive. Yes, they do like a nice balanced feed, and probably more than fescue, but Northwick Park used to keep them quite lean, and they responded well. The second is that they become poa (annual meadow grass) infested within a few years. This has not been the case at Northwick Park, or any of the other courses that he has been involved in, and has found the opposite to be true. Because the sward is so dense, it keeps the Poa out.
The last is on cutting heights for
creeping bent. This grass has been bred to be cut low. Anything above 3mm and the grass doesn’t like it and can become very thatchy. Greg is now Course Manager at Ealing Golf Club and is a participant in Complete Golf Solutions, a consultancy business which he manages. When he took on the Ealing Course, the greens were completely different.
The course is 110 years old, clay based, undrained, grass species containing 90% to 100% poa, disease ridden with some of the most aggressive fusarium he had ever seen. The greens had three to four inches of thatch and, on some, only 50% grass cover! The previous winter some greens had been closed on numerous
occasions due to waterlogging. This old course represented a new challenge, requiring different solutions. From the start, Greg implemented a very aggressive maintenance regime. The backbone of his regime would be low cutting heights, frequent verticutting, heavy straight sand dressings and lots of aeration. The greens were immediately taken down from 5mm to 3mm and were put on a fortnightly verticut and sand programme. Fertilitiser was cut right down and watering was only done by hand. The bare greens were spiked, seeded and sanded. Sections were roped off and allowed to germinate. Within two months the results were outstanding and the greens had sprung to life. All of a sudden they started to get a bit of pace and the ‘snakey’ ball roll improved dramatically. The seed heads started to disappear. This was partly down to the reduction in height, but also a programme of Shortcut (Primo’s predecessor) was implemented. They started to firm up and the colour went from a dark green to a light pale colour. By the end of the summer, the cutting height was down to 2mm. The bare greens had 100% grass coverage and, most important of all, the Ealing course started to get golfers’ praise again. The
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