Creeping Bent green at Castleknock Golf Club in Ireland (courtesy of Gaunt Golf Design) © Victor Lucas
Even if a development has a greenkeeper experienced in maintaining CBG surfaces, they have to have the equipment and manpower resources in place to implement the management programmes required
CBG was bracketed, along with Augusta National, as having no place in, or bearing, on the management of golf courses in the UK. Many, who knew even less than those
wrestling with its maintenance, made statements like, “it is not suitable for our climate in the UK”, “it won’t survive our winters” and, rather more stupidly, “it causes thatch”. Bad greenkeeping practices, thus bad greenkeepers, cause thatch!
This said, there were no great success stories with CBG until East Sussex National or, more importantly, its Course Superintendent, Ken Seimes, arrived in the UK. I remember Jack McMillian, who was at Sunningdale at the time and as ever had his ear to the ground, phoning me to ask if I had seen what was going on there.
I had not, so Jack and I went down to meet Ken and what we saw was amazing. Ken had greens, that had only been sown down sixteen weeks, that putted better than either Sunningdale or Wentworth
or, for that matter, any greens I had seen in the UK. Not only this, but all of his playing surfaces were Creeping Bent! Penn Links greens, Penn Eagle fairways, Penncross tees. Ken was brought over by the Canadian developer to work with the American architect, Bob Cupp, and to grow-in and maintain the courses. As a graduate of Penn State University, Ken had been tutored by Dr Joe Duich who has pioneered the ongoing development of the Penn varieties of CBG. So, Ken knew what he was doing and also had the budget to do it. The initial agronomic success of East
Sussex National, coupled with the boom in golf development at the end of the eighties and early nineties, led to seven new courses with greens sown with CRB in the UK. All of these being at the top end of the market, employing Course Managers conversant with managing its operating maintenance budgets to match the needs.
In addition to the Penn varieties, we
saw Providence (an Agrostis stolonifera that was developed by Seed Research of Oregon and brought to market in 1987), sown at The London Club. Meanwhile the breeders in America continued to develop their varieties and we have since seen greens sown with Penn A-4 and Penn G-6, most notably at The Grove.
How many?
When I sat down and thought about how many courses in the UK have greens seeded with Agrostis palustris, to my surprise I could only come up with twenty-five courses. This only represents 1% of the UK’s golf course total. When you consider that Ireland has approximately fifteen courses with CBG, many of them recent developments, it is not really a number that makes an impact. Except that they were all top-end projects of their era, this high-end use is the reason that there have been so many projects using CBG in Ireland. Of the UK projects, I think it would be fair to say that half were very successful
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