Golf
We appear to be in the midst of an historically important period for recreational golf where the ‘elephant in the room’, that most golf journalists, TV commentators, professional golfers, and the chemical companies want to ignore, is that there is a return to a running game in full swing and grasses are at the very root of it
fescue/browntop bent grasses and hindered annual-meadow-grass (Poa annua) invasion.
It’s not just my subjective emotion that says they give most enjoyment; professional organisations have objectively proved, in tests on some 4,000 greens across 580 British courses over the last five years, that “in all aspects of smoothness, trueness, high green speed, dryness, firmness and low thatch content, greens with a higher proportion of fine grasses give better outcomes of putting performance all the year round, than those dominated by annual- meadow-grass (Poa anuua)”. If fine grasses give the highest enjoyment factor to the serious golfer, then why are there so few of the thousands of golf courses around the world with fescue/browntop bent dominated greens?
The first simple answer is that fescue/browntop bent grasses do not like a hot season climate, such as one might find, for example, in Florida, South-East Asia or southern Europe.
Temple Fescue meadows
published in 1962, which reviewed 128 of some of the finest courses in Great Britain and Ireland (GB&I). By 2004, after some forty years, I had eventually played them all.
But I still had not twigged the real connection until I came across Jim Arthur’s sharp, amusing and campaigning bible of natural greenkeeping ‘Practical Greenkeeping’ and the scales suddenly fell from my eyes, as the Holy Bible would say, as I realised the one thing they all had, (apart from the overall attractive environment, views, design, clubhouse and facilities, etc.), was fine, wiry, firm turf on well drained, poor soil terrain that encouraged indigenous red
One type of course where one is most likely to find fine grasses is on linksland next to the sea. George Peper and Malcolm Campbell, in their brilliantly researched book ‘True Links’ published in 2010, argued that there are no more than some 246 links courses in the world and they identified them as all being in regions with cool season climates such as Oregon, Tasmania, northern Europe and GB&I. Their analysis also suggests that over 85% of the entire total are in GB&I. There was some confusion at the heart of their concept, as they were really trying to identify all the firm running courses in the world, but their target audience thought of these as ‘Links’, so they cut out any course that was not within sight of the sea; their dilemma was, for example, having to include Royal Lytham & St Anne’s, but omit the likes of Aldeburgh! But, the point for us is that, it is not just on linksland that we find indigenous red fescue/browntop bent grasses giving golfers the ‘running game’.
It is the running game, not just links golf, that defines the most enjoyable ‘fine golf’.
When we were updating the list in Frank Pennink’s ‘Golfer’s companion’, which
”
identified the finest 200 courses in GB&I, we were mystified as to why so few of the country’s 2,800 golf courses had fescue/browntop bent dominant greens? Having launched our website six years ago, as a campaign for the fine running game in contrast to target-golf, I have gradually come to understand why grass is so controversial.
We appear to be in the midst of an historically important period for recreational golf where the ‘elephant in the room’, that most golf journalists, TV commentators, professional golfers, and the chemical companies want to ignore, is that there is a return to a running game in full swing and grasses are at the very root of it. To support that theory, let me retrace a bit of history.
In the 1950/60s, professional and amateur championships were all played on the finest running courses. There followed a period when clubs installed automatic watering systems that were overused and, in combination with an American domination of the professional game, this brought with it the development of new, target-style, inland courses, built with big bulldozers, on lush ground near urban centres, often with hotels attached. This brought much sponsorship money into the professional game and events like the team-based, match-play Ryder Cup (an inherently enjoyable form of the game) gained world wide attention through attractive television coverage. At the same time, the chemical companies, equipment and ball manufacturers prospered greatly. Nevertheless, by around the turn of the millennium, it was starting to dawn on both leading American entrepreneurs and British administrators that not everything was rosy in the golf market. The R&A persuaded Jim Arthur to capture his thoughts in a book that they published and ‘Practical Greenkeeping’ became the bible of natural greenkeeping by encouraging fine grasses. At last, greenkeeper training could counter the chemical companies’ mantra. The first major ‘running’ course to be built for decades (apart from a few community developed ones on west-coast Ireland) was Kingsbarns, near St Andrews, by American Mark Parsinen. He recognised that the best investment for the future should be one to attract the high-end
PC JUNE/JULY 2014 I 41
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156