Golf
Greenkeeper’s position at Falmouth some six and a half years ago. “It’s not a long course, at just 5903 yards
(par 72) and, up until recently, covered a total of 100 acres, but we recently purchased an additional twenty acres where the new holes have been built.” Simon has an experienced team working under him, with First Assistant, Keith Kellow (58), having been at the club for thirty-nine years. he has two Assistant Greenkeepers; Mark Moore (45), has been at Falmouth for ten years and Paddy Ibbotson (29), six and a half years Ninety-nine percent of maintenance and
servicing is undertaken in-house by Mechanic/greenkeeper, Shaun Cuffin (22), who joined the team two years ago after completing his apprenticeship. “Shaun has just passed his qualification in Land Based Engineering,” confirms Simon, “but spends as much time on the course as he does in the workshop. He has made a big difference to us. He has been able to service all machines and complete several repairs that have been required, saving me from having to spend time doing it. If there are jobs that he cannot do, we will employ a mechanic to come in to do them and I’ll ask Shaun to watch and learn what is happening so it will
help him in the future.” Falmouth Golf Club can best be described
as ‘clifftop with some parkland holes’. “Due to its clifftop position the course can be windy at times,” says Simon, “but, on a lovely summer’s day, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.” “The soil profile is clay loam in varying depths. On the cliff holes, the depth of soil is very shallow. In places it’s only a few inches before you hit the stone level. This is good in winter as it allows us to use these holes if some of the others are closed due to waterlogging but, in the summer, they dry out quickly and it is difficult to keep grass cover on the fairways.” “The greens are clay based push up and
the tees have all been constructed using native soils and materials. The new greens have been constructed with a rootzone which uses our topdressing sand. They have herringbone drainage systems and the sward has been created using hollow cores from our current greens which was overseeded with two cultivars of Browntop Bent.” “Our maintenance techniques are nothing
more than ‘the usual’ for clay based greens; lots of aeration and topdressings of sand. We have tried to construct the new greens so that they are not too dissimilar to our
others, so there isn’t too much difference in our feeding and watering regimes. Although the winter rainfall we have just had has been exceptional, we are trying to always improve the drainage of our old greens and, this year, we have used our posthole borer to create vertical drainage columns to link to the existing drains to help the greens drain quicker.”
“During the winter, the bottom four
greens sometimes become wet, but we are lucky that we can open the cliff holes to get people out playing. This has helped us this winter immensely. These four greens are also the holes where the frost sticks around for the longest; we tend to start golfers on the 12th hole so these are the latest that get played on.” Simon explains that he uses temporary
‘frost greens’ on days when the greens are frozen, but this winter, due to the excessive rainfall, he used them on some of the holes, complete with bucket cups, to try to get the members out on the course and playing. “We don’t do any maintenance to these temporaries other than cutting them throughout the year as we find that, during the winter months when we have days that we have to close, it is usually the areas around the tees and greens that are the
“
If there are jobs that Shaun cannot do, we will employ a mechanic to come in to do them and I'll ask him to watch and learn what is happening so it will help him in the future
The view from the 14th towards Pendennis castle PC APRIL/MAY 2014 I 29
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