Golf
want. In the summer the temperatures are up to 50O
My next stop was Antalya in Turkey! Unfortunately, the course had been sown with cool season grass. On the first day I had a course inspection with the owner! There was a few tufts of lolium under the trees, and that was the only grass on the course - the rest had been wiped out by pythium! The owner’s demand was “we need to be open in three weeks!” September in Antalya is generally hot, but I ‘got lucky’ with the temperatures and managed to blitz the course with lolium, providence (Agrostis) on the greens. The course opened on time, but was a little rough. It became playable, within ten weeks and I received not a single complaint.
The following summer, we converted the course to Bermuda 419, and the greens to ‘tiff dwarf ’ the summer after. I have never seen anything like Turkish Pythium in my life! You could just about set your watch by it. 21st, 22nd May, same spot every year, it would start, (we overseeded with Bermuda during the winter months). From the 20th of May, whilst the greens were Agrostis, we had a ‘pythium man’, and all he did was check the greens all day. I have seen pythium
As the course has 100% floodlights we can work when we
C Defence Raya under floodlights
strike at 2.00pm there! I have seen foot marks through the green when a golfer walked through an infected area. It really was quite incredible. Because of the high Ph. in the water - 7.5 up to 8+when the tide came in - full or no moon, salt went from 700 to around 1300 - 2050 was the highest we measured - so trying to work out your fungicide active duration was pure guesswork!
Again, cut worm was easy to deal with, as was the dreaded white grub! What a nightmare, the aim was to eradicate them in their first instar (development stage); after that it becomes very difficult. I met some great characters during my time in Antalya, including the local Mayor, who had been detained by the authorities, for six months, for some financial deal. When he was released, the whole village was out celebrating. It was a great party that night. So, on to Pakistan. I am sure, to most
from the outside looking in, it is perceived to be a dangerous country. However, having spent over a year here, the people are delightful, and I have never seen such a highly skilled and motivated labour force in my life.
The Defence Raya Golf and Country Club is as good a course as I have seen, designed with a housing complex around the course. As luck would have it, the soil structure is fairly similar to the Turkish south coast. Here, winter dormancy is from late November through to mid- February, which is our main golf season. It has been a long fourteen months. Everything we do here is in-house, with a staff of one hundred and twenty, including eight masons to construct and maintain the cart track, water feature, shade canopy etc., and ten
mechanics/electricians who look after all machines, plus twenty odd generators around the town. We have constructed a tree and flower nursery that produced 250,000 shrubs from cuttings and seed - six staff are allocated to this. The plan is to turn it into a commercial enterprise next year. We hand planted ten acres of gardens with Bermuda grass, in the housing area, over a two month period in the summer. Then, during the monsoon season, is when tree planting starts. There’s an eight to twelve week period (depending on the rains) in which 10,000 trees and
38 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
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