Turf on all playing surfaces is dominated by finer bent and fescue
Mowing the 18th green
Taylor, Head of Ecology and Enviroment at STRI, who was visiting as part of his biannual ecology inspection. He was putting a schedule together for the ecology work required over the next five years. More about that later. The club also
Close-up of the green - 12 on the stimp!
on the greenkeeping staff, Emyr Price, who has been at the club for thirty five years, Owain Aeron, with eight years service, and Gareth Evans. My reasons for visiting Royal St David’s were threefold. Firstly, I had heard of the exceptional condition of the course with its high bent and fescue greens. Secondly, I was interested to learn more about their ten year ecology programme and, thirdly, Roger and John, as ‘Gingerbread Men’, were to form part of our series on this group of greenkeepers taking a sustainable approach to course management. On the day of my visit I was given the opportunity to walk the course with Bob
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employ the services of STRI agronomist, Alistair Beggs. He also visits the course on a regular basis to assess the playing surfaces. His comments, from March of this year, do reflect the condition of the course. “It is an exemplar site in respect of best
practice. Turf on all playing surfaces is dominated by finer bent and fescue turf types, and the benefits they convey are very apparent at this time. Putting surfaces are firm, smooth and incredibly fast for late March. On the day after the visit they showed a stimpmeter reading of 12 at a height of 6mm! The current management programme, and the results it is bringing with it, is the perfect demonstration that greenkeeping is a study of infertility and that the best possible year round results are produced by promoting the finer grasses within a supportive and consistent club framework”.
Course maintenance
The greens have between a 60% and 80% composition of bent/fescue grasses. This has been achieved by the minimalist approach to greenkeeping that Roger and his staff employ. For example, they have not carried out any grooming or scarification on the greens for at least ten years and, with a minimal feeding and watering programme, which consists of two summer feeds of 8:0:0 NPK at half recommended rate, plus some iron over the winter months, the results have been astonishing. In 2006 and 2007 no feeds were applied at all! Headland’s Tricure wetting agent is used on the greens to help prevent them from becoming hydrophobic, especially during the summer months when the combination of strong sea breezes and sun can soon dry out the surface. After the third week in August no watering is undertaken, the intention being to ‘drought out’ the Annual Meadow Grasses (AMG). This strategy usually works. Bare areas are then overseeded with the desirable bent and fescues.
Thatch levels are kept low by judicious aeration work throughout the year using a combination of solid and slit tines. Topdressing is restricted to four applications a year with a total of forty tonnes being applied annually. The imported dressing is a 70/30 sand/soil mix that, once on site, is mixed with sand taken from the course. This then brings the ration down to 85/15. By comparison, twenty five years ago
the Royal St David’s greens were 90% Meadow Grass with 2” of thatch sitting on compacted soil, resulting in the
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