Golf
watched the brilliant TV spectacle of The Masters played across its totally artificial course, too often demands his greens be cut lower to generate more speed.
100% Brown-top Bent turf
If a golf club has plenty of money it can afford to have a costly, non-conservationist high-maintenance budget and then re-turf its greens when they die every so many years, but this is not a policy open to the majority of recreational golf clubs.
It is becoming recognised by many of the old established clubs (particularly because of the economic recession) that the move to fine grasses with their need for less water, little fertiliser and pesticides is the conservationist, high performance and less costly way forward.
The development of the science of soil biology and use of compost teas also seems to be part of the way forward, with courses like Perranporth having used compost teas for twenty years, proving its efficacy. One might add in passing, that Perranporth only needs four greens staff to pursue their austere regime. The fertiliser and pesticide chemical companies are today on the back foot and hurriedly trying to invent new ‘natural’ products.
There is nothing new to the realisation that golf is at its finest as a running game on fescue/browntop bent turf. To quote Jim Arthur; “what was surmised a century and more ago has been proven by research and analysis countless times since. The secret of good golf
greenkeeping is to copy basic infertile conditions and ensure ideal conditions for deep- rooting by intensive deep aeration. These same principles apply equally to every part of the golf course.” Putting performance is a very subjective matter and course managers need an objective measurement of greens reliability so as to resist the low handicap golfer who, once on his club’s greens committee and having
Clubs need their course manager to regularly carry out objective measurements of greens reliability and performance themselves with the use of the greenstester (rather than focusing on speed with a stimpmeter), to be able to argue successfully for a pursuit of a robust long term policy.
To sum up: money is starting to flow away from target-golf in a modern retro- trend back to the running game. More clubs are going down the conservationist route of introducing fescue/bent grasses to give firmer, truer performance and use less water, fertiliser and pesticides.
Some of the short term commercial interests of the chemical, ball and equipment manufacturers are pulling in the opposite directions and they continue to dominate the thinking of the regulators of the game.
The USGA’s excellent ‘pace of play’ initiative is one attempt to break out of this straightjacket, but have golf’s administrators created a rod for their own backs by being so focused on short term commercial gain rather than the longer-term interests of the recreational game? There is a story to be told about the return to a running game, if the golf journalists and TV commentators can get off the chemical company/ ball and equipment manufacturers’ bandwagon and if greenkeepers can learn how to present and communicate their case. The serious golfer will listen and take an interest.
Lorne Smith invites people to register for the free bi-monthly Fine Golf Newsletter
www.finegolf.co.uk PC JUNE/JULY 2014 I 43
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