GOLF
par 5’s in Essex, measuring six hundred and thirty-four yards off the backmarkers. It predominantly plays into the prevailing wind, making it a pretty tough hole.
The course is built upon quite inert clay soil, so they have made sure to build their tees and greens to USGA specifi cations. “Something I have changed, and I feel has been successful, is that we were predominantly sown-in with fescue on the North Course but, with how wet the winters have been, the fescue on the greens just wasn’t surviving. So, I decided to introduce some bent grass, and we seemed to get some okay results to be honest, but it is quite a problematic grass species to establish on an open golf course. In 2019, I made the decision to go with a dwarf ryegrass mix from Barenbrug and have had some great results with it. So much so, we have introduced the ryegrass to the fi rst four greens on the East course along with the North. But, since then, I have overseeded any new greens with a dwarf ryegrass and fescue mix. Ten years ago, if I had said I was introducing dwarf ryegrass to the greens, I would have been laughed
at, but the new species are really good. It seems to be working well for us, although we are still learning with that species as they tend to be a little more hungry; mind you, they are a lot more resilient to wear and disease. I have only applied one fungicide so far this year, which is excellent, and we had a little bit of anthracnose, which has just gone, but it seemed to only attack the Poa when the greens were a little bit leaner. We are also seeing a reduction in the amount of Poa, and that is something we will keep our eye on.”
The courses have a wall to wall Toro irrigation system on the tees, fairways, approaches and greens. This is fed by the main lake which holds 120,000 cubic metres of water, and they have another lake that primarily feeds the par-three Mini-Links course and the driving range. “We really benefi tted from the system last year with all the drought conditions we had, and we were able to keep one hundred percent grass cover. It does have its teething problems with the soil moving, but we will work through that this winter to resolve those issues. Looking around at other golf
Another factor I have to consider when choosing
products is the cost as we have a large area of greens but, at the same time, we want the best products available to us
36 PC December/January 2021
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