This is a story of history in the making. Last summer St Andrews Links Trust opened the seventh course at the ‘Home of Golf’. This is the story of the grow-in of the greens at The Castle Course.
By Richard Windows, STRI Turfgrass Agronomist for Southern Scotland
GROWING IN THE CASTLE
T
he Castle Course was built to take the pressure off the already very busy courses on St Andrews Links.
The Old, New, Eden, Jubilee and Strathtyrum courses each support over 40,000 rounds of golf per year. A dramatic cliff top location became available to the south east of the town. It was here the Links Trust chose to develop The Castle Course. It really was a location like no other in the world. David McLay Kidd from DMK Golf Design was commissioned to design the course and Paul Kimber was given the role of permanent on-site architect through course construction. DMK Design undertook the shaping, while subcontractors were commissioned for bulk earthworks, irrigation installation and drainage. Greenkeepers from St Andrews Links Trust, led by Allan Patterson, completed the final preparations, finishing and seeding. The STRI was commissioned by the Links Trust as consultant agronomists for the project.
This unique set-up of having a project 30
team, with no main contractor, meant there were no limitations on the finished design. The result has been something truly special. The design and layout has been described by Golf Course Architecture magazine as the single best example of shaping and one of the finest examples of modern golf construction in the UK. This article describes how skilled
greenkeeping turned the exciting design into reality. Our task was to create playing surfaces that brought the design to life.
The course is situated on heavy, poor draining soils, which meant the greens had to be constructed artificially following the USGA guidelines. After much laboratory testing, the final rootzone mix consisted of 90% Levenseat sand and 10% peat. This provided a good, but very free-draining, growing medium. Consequently, moisture management and fertility control were going to be crucial, especially with regard to the severely contoured nature of the finished putting surfaces. Add to this the cliff top location of the site, the wind and
the salt-laden air, the grow-in was always going to be a challenge. Thankfully, there was no rush. The Links Trust would only open the course when it was absolutely ready. The pressure was on to get the job done right, not in a hurry. The rootzone mix was extended into the wide surrounds and approximately 30 metres into the green approach to ensure a firm and consistent surface was created. This allowed the running game to be played, which is an integral strategy of the course. As the soil type on the fairways was heavy in nature, a programme of intensive sand topdressing was required through the grow-in, with approximately 5,000 tonnes being applied to date over 15.5 hectares. This was required to provide firm, tight and crisp lies to allow the golfer optimum ball control when playing into the greens. Fescue was sown throughout the course and an 80:20 mix of fescue and browntop bent was used on the greens. The seed was supplied by Barenbrug. The mix for the greens was 50% slender
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