Golf
bible, Jim Arthur’s Practical Greenkeeping. People call the course here a links, but its heathland. I once wrote to Jim Arthur when the club was building a new green to see if he could give us some advice. He replied saying he had walked over the course at some stage and described it as heathland. I bow down to the man. Of the thirty-five acres that the course sits on, three quarters is heathland and one quarter is reclaimed fields. The soil is typical heathland and, I would assume, acidic from the types of grasses that grow and the heather that roots itself onto the fairways, which can become a bit of a problem.
When the course was first built I think they must have put lots of topsoil where they thought it would be best to create a green. I even found a piece of angle iron one day when changing a hole! Any newer greens look as though they were constructed in a similar way. In dry periods, the greens suffer from
severe compaction, so we terra-spike twice a year. There is a small bore hole that we use, but the amount of water is very limited. If I can, I try to water as
many greens as possible just before it rains to get it soaked in as best I can. In drought years, the course has gone
all brown making it almost impossible to see where the fairways end and the greens begins.
Being right on top of the island the
ground acts like a sponge and becomes very wet underfoot. High winds, yes, drought, yes, but frost and snow are very rare visitors to our islands. The course can be closed due to the water, but the wind is ever present and can make for some interesting golf. We use temporary greens for a short time when we overseed in the autumn, closing down three at a time for about five weeks to give the seed time to germinate. Greens are cut at 6mm in the winter and 5mm in the summer using a Toro 3100 Greensmaster. We use a Wiedenmann Terra Spike for deep aeration and a sarrel roller with 50mm spikes, towed behind an old Allen National, for all other aeration. We use a pedestrian scarifier for deep scarifying when overseeding, in conjunction with
the Terra Spike and the sarrel roller. For weed and pest control, we hire a contractor to spray for us. This is because we have no spray qualifications. Each volunteer has his own tasks; Garfield uses the John Deere triple for mounds, surrounds and fairways. Bill uses a topper to cut the rough and I’m responsible for the greens and approaches. Then we use a set of towed gang mowers for the fairways. The “all hands to the pump” approach comes when we do the topdressing, which is also when we request for a few more helping hands from the members. The management committee is
responsible for budgets as money is very tight, so all requests go through the Chair of Greens. It’s really only the price of the grass seed that fluctuates, so I have to strike a balance and choose a mix recommended by Dave Manley. Overseeding is the main area of renovations as there is a need to battle meadow grass in the greens. People seem to have different ideas of how a tidy golf course should look. We are always battling with the weather here.
“Some days I can look at the course and go wow, we did that, but within minutes it can look completely different”
The view across to Hugh Town, St Mary’s
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