Golf
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Rightly or wrongly, I don’t believe in chemical use, unless as a last resort, and I advocate the inclusion of bent and fescue only
emulate when I do my work here or anywhere.”
He said that links and heathland golf are his “cup of tea”, and this is reflected in his approach to techniques and tools. “Rightly or wrongly, I don’t believe in chemical use, unless as a last resort, and I advocate the inclusion of bent and fescue only.”
“Meanwhile, if that’s what works for you, I’m not going to disapprove of it. If that’s what your golfers want from you; fine.” “Like I’ve mentioned, I’m in a position here to do things the way I like to do them. The previous guy here put a course into action, and I’ve just carried that on.” He doesn’t have a minimalist approach to every aspect of his maintenance, however. When it comes to aeration, he said his attitude is to re‐aerate as soon as a hole heals.
“The only exception is that I don’t hollow core. I don’t need to, so I don’t. If you need to; great. We can just topdress with fen instead of sand, and this year we’ve only used 65kgs of nitrogen, which is lower than in previous years. We haven’t needed to use more.”
We’ve not sprayed anything this year. We’ve had worm casts, but we’ve had far less, because we boxed the fairways and collected clippings
“This is just the way I do things. We have a low amount of poa on the greens by doing it that way. The irrigation system is shot anyway, so we ask ourselves what resistant types of grass there are, and the only answers to that are ‘bent and fescue’.” Tim doesn’t know what the specifications of the irrigation system are, but knows that it was installed in the late 1980s. It is a manual, pump‐based system with four heads per green.
Theoretically, these could be controlled by a Rain Bird computer, but the wires aren’t connected to the heads, so it isn’t active. “It needs a new system, but we’re on such heavy soil here that they went quite shallow in places when installing it. So, my colleagues can hit the pipes when verti‐draining.” “These greens are quite happy sitting around 10‐11% moisture. We use the system
36 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018
when we must, but what would take a good system four minutes to distribute takes us ten‐to‐twelve.”
“There just isn’t the flow. We’ve tried using different heads and they don’t entertain it, so a new system is what it’ll take.”
Tim said he has done sampling in the past, but that he currently has no idea what the pH values of his soil are. When he sampled, it was for organic matter levels.
“I have two strong greens which have lots of organic matter in them. I’d take sixteen more of those over the ones with lower levels, which are weaker ‐ the worst two greens are at 3% organic matter, and the best two are at 5.5%.”
“What that tells me is that the business of trying to reduce organic matter is just fine, unless what you’ve got is good organic matter.”
“There’s good and bad types, and if you’ve got the good stuff, leave it alone. I think a lot of this is roots. As I say, we don’t need to hollow tine, which tells you most of what you need to know about that layer, and we’re not riddled with thatch.” The source of all this naturalism is that Tim doesn’t believe in the preventative approach. He compared it to someone taking a daily antibiotic with their morning coffee. He tries not to take paracetamol if he gets a headache, because he feels there must be a root cause which can be fought more organically, for example dehydration or lack of sleep.
“If there’s something that’s causing these problems, stop what’s causing it instead of just the problem itself.”
The same with worms? “Yes. We’ve not sprayed anything this year. We’ve had worm casts, but we’ve had far less, because we boxed the fairways and collected clippings.” “Reduce compaction, reduce thatch, good airflow, lots of light on your greens, good drainage under your greens, inclusion of bents and fescues, certain feeds, removal of dew ‐ all these things are the real solutions
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