Golf
“
We hand mow the greens every day with brushes during the growing season and alternate with dew removal and rolling during the summer months
Rory McIlroy on the 1st tee at the Turkish Airlines Open
just sending an email and lots of photos!” Additional help comes from the European Tour agronomist team, whom Ben has worked with for the past few years. “This will continue as we are now a European Tour Destination,” he explains. “We also work closely with EGD on all design changes and use the original contractor to carry out these works. We are currently in the process of gaining certification from the Golf Environment Organisation.” “We are on pure native sand which, although a little fine, is very good for growing grass on. The greens have a gravel layer to help speed up lateral movement of water, but are pure sand, unlike a USGA green. The tees are square and built with gravel drains and a sieved native sand. Greens and tees do require regular aeration, but nothing outside our normal maintenance programme.” “We have a wall to wall RainBird satellite
decoder system and have sensors in a couple of greens monitoring temperature, EC (electrical conductivity - the concentration of dissolved ions) and VWC (volumetric water content). In the past, we had ten fixed fans
Greens and tees do require regular aeration, but
nothing outside our normal maintenance programme
” John Deere Aercore at work on a green 26 I PC APRIL/MAY 2016
on some of our more shaded greens but, through our work to improve shade and air movement issues, we have been able to get rid of these and have adapted them to be mobile, just in case of extreme weather conditions. All lakes have underwater aerators and fountains to help with water quality.” “This region of Turkey has what I would
call an ‘extreme climate’, with cold winters and hot summers. This means we have to overseed our Bermuda with ryegrass in the winter when it goes dormant. Our summer temperature reaches the high 40s Celsius, and this makes maintaining bent grass greens very difficult. In the winter, we get regular frosts and, when it rains, we get large volumes in short periods of time. We are fortunate to have a free draining sand rootzone and good quality irrigation water available in sufficient amounts. Over the year we have tailored our maintenance programme to prepare the greens for the summer temperatures and put a lot of work into root growth.” The course is tree lined, but the design was very good at limiting areas affected by
shade issues. “Three years ago, we undertook a tree management programme where 8,000 trees were trimmed and 1,000 removed. On top of this, we now undertake regular undergrowth removal to improve air movement.” As for general maintenance regimes, Ben
confirms that the greens are kept at 3-4mm, tees and approaches at 8-10mm, fairways 10-14mm and rough 25-35mm. “We hand mow the greens every day with
brushes during the growing season and alternate with dew removal and rolling during the summer months, as well as lifting the height to alleviate stress. We vent the greens every two weeks in conjunction with a topdress. How we perform this depends on the amount of golf being played and the temperature. When possible, we solid tine with pedestrian aerators but, during busy periods or high temperatures, we utilise a PlanetAir or Star slit after applying sand. This is followed by bushing or blowing to get the sand into the canopy. On top of this, we aim to vertidrain two or three times a year - December, February and April.” “For irrigation, we monitor using our
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