Golf “


When you’re on the top here, you can see all the views over towards


Shropshire including Church Stretton to the east, and Snowdonia over to the north west, with mid-Wales and the Brecons south


exactly low at 1,120ft above sea level. “When you’re on the top here, you can see all the views over towards Shropshire including Church Stretton to the east, and Snowdonia over to the north west, with mid‐ Wales and the Brecons south,” said Jon. Jon and his co‐greenkeeper, 31‐year veteran Mark Richards, 53, have the 5,700‐ yard par‐70 to themselves, as the moorland is maintained in the old way with minimal inputs and a lot of sheep, which are allowed on because the course is built on common land with grazing rights.


“The course where I'm doing my placement is at Elmwood College, Scotland, and they take a field trip to a similar golf course as ours; they have one greenkeeper maintaining 18 holes, and sheep to help.” They pride themselves on their ability to run the course on an ultra‐tight budget: “It’s one of the slimmest you’ll ever hear of in the


UK. It remains the same each year.” “For course materials, our budget is £14,000. That’s for Bathgate topdressing, fertiliser, Limagrain MM10 and MM22 seed, contracting and all that other stuff that comes with it.”


“That can be chalked off pretty quickly if you’re not careful. Out of our £14,000… the greens mower was £900 to service and the same for the tees and fringes. That’s £1,800 gone.”


“We’ve not sent the fairway mower for service this year, but when we do next year, and that’ll be another £1,500. Two new tyres on our tractor just recently was another £450.”


“You just work with it. In the eighteen years I’ve been here, we’ve only ever been over that budget once. Last year was a little over £13k ‐ in fact, we do usually come in just under rather than exact spend.”


“I had an interview for my R&A scholarship the other day in front of a panel of three. One of them was an R&A sustainability manager.”


“He was asking me questions about sustainability. They were shocked. I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve sprayed up here in my eighteen years.” “He told me: ‘You boys are miles ahead in terms of sustainability project planning’. And I said to him that we’re going to try to introduce wildflowers and a couple of other things too.”


On a greenkeeping philosophy, Jon said: “I stick to the old techniques that have been used for hundreds of years. They work well here because we’re on bent/fescue greens. And they’ll work well at the links course on my placement, because they’re on the finer grasses too.”


“My philosophy is exactly aligned with


32 I PC JUNE/JULY 2018


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156