“You work with Mother Nature. If you do she’ll reward you but, if you don’t, she’ll come back and bite you”


Duncan Campbell, Head Greenkeeper, Ilkley Golf Club environment


Golf caring for the


board, has little use for modern technology and tends to keep his staff. Of the five of them (which includes himself), First Assistant, David Featherstone, has been with him for twenty-five years, Nick Holmes for sixteen years and Tom Day for ten. The final member of the team, Ben Burrill, arrived as a student in 2007 and went on to become runner up in last year’s Toro Student Greenkeeper of the Year awards.


“Looking back, the thing that’s changed the most is modern machinery,” he says. “The introduction of fairway mowers has made the job a lot easier and, finish wise, it’s vastly improved.” Ilkley has no ‘rough’. Every hole is immaculately mown, including holes two and three which are situated on an island in the middle of the river. There’s always been a footbridge for golfers but, up until now - a new, larger, dual purpose bridge has recently been installed - all machinery, other than hand mowers, had to be driven across a ford in the river. Visiting in November, tractor tyre marks bore testament to Ilkley’s ford which, Duncan says,


during the last two summers has often been unpassable. “When the river’s in flood there’s no way you can get across and, sometimes, we had machinery marooned on the island for days,” he recalls. “When people ask me how fast the river rises I tell them it’s the fastest rising river in Yorkshire. It can rise up to a foot a minute. A few years ago, a lad who used to work with us was halfway across the river towing a trailer when his tractor began to float away. He got onto the trailer and we had to use a double extension aluminium ladder to get him off.”


Despite the inevitable seasonal flooding (Duncan has photographs taken in 2002 when even the greenkeepers’ shed was under a foot of water), as long as he is in charge, none of Ilkley’s 570 odd members will ever play on temporary greens. “The course is either open or its shut of its own accord,” he declares.” If it’s open, they play tee to green.”


Ilkley Golf Club, founded in 1890, is the third oldest in Yorkshire (being just younger than Cleveland and Beverley) and was originally 9 holes built on top


of Rombald’s Moor. The legendary Harry Vardon won his first prize as a professional up there before, in 1898, work began on the present 18 hole course designed by Alister MacKenzie and Harry Colt.


Duncan Campbell’s greens are all soil based, with, what he describes as, ‘proper’ drainage systems on two of them. The soil structure ranges from predominantly sand for the first 7 holes along the river, to clay further up, then silt, and stone and silt at the top end. Asked about his aeration programme, he tells me he hasn’t got one - ditto a nutritional programme. “My style is not textbook greenkeeping and my maintenance is based on what I see,” he explains. “We don’t use a lot of water or a lot of feed, and I’ll do it as and when I think the course needs it. We hollow tined and topdressed late September to early October, but we hadn’t hollow tined for six years. Two years ago, we used the Graden and that worked well, but that doesn’t mean to say that I’ll use it every year. We try not to do the same thing year on year, and everything depends on the condition of


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