We need to work with, not against, our committees and memberships
Average cares about so little) leaving them virtually unputtable right through the winter and, in some cases, into early May. Is it any surprise that members complain about the price of their ‘annual’ subscription, when they have to put up with aggressive aeration techniques that effectively mean they can only really play for seven months of the year?
Of course, that’s easy for me to say,
isn’t it? I work on a relatively underplayed, free-draining links that is blessed with a biologically active, alkaline rootzone. I don’t have to aerate much (in fact I sometimes have to fight my natural inclination to overwork my rootzone), and yet my fescue-dominated greens still putt relatively fast and true all year round even though it appears that I am actually having to put in very little effort to make them work for me. Would I be so quick to comment if I
worked on a heavily played inland course with 15 year old USGA spec greens that were so bacterially sterile that they had a total inability to break down thatch without the regular help of a hollow corer and an aggressive set of verticut units? Probably not. But this very argument hints at what I believe the problem to be with all this sustainability stuff; that it suffers from the same intrinsic problems that have plagued every other greenkeeping fad over the last 100 years - that every golf course has different surroundings, different soils, different levels of play, and therefore every course needs to be maintained in a different way.
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That seems so obvious and yet not once have I ever read anything written by Jim Arthur, or many other experts for that matter (even from today’s most eminent agronomists), that admits that not every golf course can achieve the same goals and outcomes using the latest programme or the latest innovation. While it may be perfectly reasonable,
and extremely beneficial, for me to follow the current vogue of minimal disturbance in order to maximise my potential to grow fescue dominated greens that will be so easy to look after that, eventually, all I will have to do is go out and cut the grass, what would happen to the greenkeeper with the 15 year old USGA spec greens I mentioned earlier if he went blindly down this road? His thatch layer would surely overpower his greens, leaving them breathless and lifeless; a sulphurous, hydrophobic, meadow-grass dominated swamp. And then he would get the sack. Surely it would be wiser if he were to continue to aerate and verticut, removing as much decaying organic matter as possible, while simultaneously looking at
products and nutrients that might enrich his soil sufficiently to allow his greens to work for him in the future rather than against him. Once he has done that, then, and only then, can he begin to introduce perennial grasses with slower growth patterns and lower thatch building properties, in order that he might then cut back on his vigorous use of cultural thatch-removal practises. He may then decide that, even having reached that advanced stage of remedial action, all he can hope for is a strong, healthy, bent-poa mix, as wear patterns, soil characteristics, and even the very pressures of his job may force him to accept that he is never, in a million years, going to be able to introduce and sustain the growth of fescue in his greens. Surely, he should be applauded for doing his homework and figuring out the course of action that best serves the needs of his employers, rather than being lambasted by so-called experts for not following a path that would ultimately lead to folly? I do believe there is a sustainable path that can be followed for the benefit of every golf course, but I also believe that
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