Golf
When Gary moved on to Portmarnock Golf Club in 2007, Andrew took over as course manager, applying his own greenkeeping style to a golf course which, he says, is best described as a downland links, situated seventy metres above sea level. “Grasses growing on the front nine overlooking the sea are predominantly bents and fescues, all well-established on undulating and springy links-style terrain formed by centuries of sand deposits carried in by the westerly winds,” he said. “The remaining holes, located further inland, overlie rocky, silty soils, much like the remainder of Southerndown’s 2,800 hectares of common land where sheep freely graze.”
Because these soils offer higher nutrient levels than the impoverished sands found closer to the sea, they display a higher incidence of Poa annua, which has been steadily pushing out the fescues on the golf course in recent years. The result is grazing conditions which, due to regular mowing, appear to be preferred by the sheep over the longer, tougher, more straggly grasses growing off course close-by.
The high incidence of sheep, primarily on the back nine, has resulted in costly damage to greens, tees and bunkers as well as the continuous year-round task of clearing-up sheep droppings from a large part of the eight-five hectares of land utilised by the golf club. Andrew estimates that this operation alone is costing the club between £12,000 and £14,000 a year in labour and machinery utilisation, involving dragging an inverted grassland chain harrow across the turf most days to move the droppings away from the main playing areas.
“Being common land, no part of the golf course can be fenced, so a programme was implemented in 2010 to improve those areas of ground lying within the course boundary that were densely covered with gorse and rougher grasses,” explained Andrew. “The aim was to provide improved grazing for the sheep, encouraging them to stay off the main playing areas using wholly natural methods.”
Utilising the club’s own tractor and
heavy-duty flail mower, around twenty hectares of formerly impenetrable rough ground has been cleared by golf course staff over the past three years to provide a series of level, open, paddock-like areas, bounded by gorse. Three cuts were taken in 2010 and 2011, with just two cuts possible in 2012 due to poor weather and ground conditions. The treatment, says Andrew, has proved very successful, with sheep definitely preferring to graze and lie on grass that has been allowed to grow longer than on the main playing areas of the course just a few metres away. Persuading the sheep to stay off the actual golf course has had a positive effect in reducing the damage to fine turf by their hooves and urine. It has reduced also the erosion of bunker sides and faces caused by sheep and lambs exiting sand traps as golfers approach. Andrew pointed out that, prior to 2011, many of Southerndown’s bunkers had needed rebuilding every three years on average, including revetting of the front and side faces. However, the “favourite” bunkers of sheep and their lambs would require rebuilding every year due to the very high levels of wear and tear they experienced.
Such bunkers tended to be the deeper,
more remote, south-facing ones where lambs could lie snugly in the sun out of the wind. When animals exited bunkers, Andrew said that the preference always appeared to be at the steepest point, eroding and exposing carefully revetted faces to the wind and rain. The winter of 2009-10 proved particularly expensive for the club. Between November and March, Andrew and his team rebuilt thirty-four bunkers at a total cost close to £20,000. “It is a good job we established our own turf nursery some years ago, otherwise the cost might have been considerably more,” he commented. Determined to find a way of reducing the time, energy and expense involved in continually repairing and rebuilding bunkers, Andrew said that several options were being considered, including replacing sand with grass and reducing the angle of bunker faces. However, such actions would not be popular with golfers as it would adversely affect a notable and long-established feature of the course. An event then happened that
appeared immediately to offer a better and more acceptable alternative for revetting, retaining the shape and content of the bunkers while greatly extending their durability and longevity, as Andrew explained:
“In late 2010, the club was approached by local company, Envirosports Ltd, who offer a sustainable, patented bunker renovation and repair system known as EnviroBunker. It uses recycled synthetic turf for revetting, helping prevent bunker face erosion to cut-down on repair and maintenance.” Andrew was invited to visit a nearby golf club to inspect a bunker that had
Laid out on common land, Southerndown Golf Club has shared the ground with free-roaming sheep for more than 100 years. Clearing-up faeces and repairing turf damage costs well in excess of £10,000 a year
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