Golf
A
fter my school years, I did two years of applied chemistry at college and quickly realised that I was meant for an outdoor job. I had a summer job as a gardener
at a local park prior to enrolling on the NC Greenkeeping course at Elmwood College, where I did my NC and SVQ level 3. At the end of the course, I had to find a work placement position and I was fortunate enough to start at Kingsbarns Golf Links in March 2000. I was kept on for the summer in a seasonal position before gaining full-time employment later that year. After seven years I was promoted to First Assistant, which is where I remained for almost four years before moving to New Zealand on a permanent basis. I worked there as second in command at Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club,
just north of Wellington, for fourteen months. I then moved back to the UK as the Course Manager at Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club in Kent, where I remained for three years before moving back to my native Fife and my current role at Scotscraig Golf Club. The 18-hole course at Scotscraig is a
links/heath hybrid, with a few holes in the corner which lean towards a more parkland feel, owing to heavier soils. Broadly speaking, the course is situated in a square of land covering around sixty hectares. This is broken up into 2Ha of greens/surrounds, 0.8Ha of tees, 12Ha of fairway and around 8Ha of maintained rough. The remainder is largely Fescue rough, gorse/broom and pine trees, interspersed with heather. The course is currently 6669 yards long and par 71 from the Championship tees. The soil profile at Scotscraig is generally a
stone free, sandy loam, which is ideal. However, there is a corner of the course which is very close to sea level and the soil is significantly heavier here with a higher clay content. The greens are constructed using the indigenous sandy loam for the most part, but there are a few newer tee constructions that are built out of a heavier material, which must have been imported in the past. The process of reconstructing these to change the rootzone has already started and will continue over the next few years. I’ve had soil samples tested twice since
starting at Scotscraig. A few of the greens perform differently to the others and soil testing was one way of working out what was actually going on to cause this. We suspected it was more of a physical issue, for example shade from trees, and the sampling showed that the soil at least was relatively
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