Noel Mackenzie: The growing season is lasting longer – costing your club more money 0
The current, longer, growing season has begun to have some very important implications in relation to machinery, budgeting and purchasing.
The current, longer, growing season has begun to have some very important implications in relation to machinery, budgeting and purchasing.
Hankley Common, Beaconsfield and Royal St George’s golf clubs have been praised for their quality of ecological stewardship.
The landscape of a golf course should be unique; every course has its own character and charm.
Broughton Heath, in the Derbyshire countryside not far from Dovedale in the tiny village of Church Broughton, is an 18-hole golf course with 18 par three holes.
As winter draws closer, the number of visiting parties decrease and the frequency of member visits to the course start to decline, it is a time of year when thoughts should be turning to winter work.
As the sun gets lower in the sky and daylight hours shorten so the plants on the golf green receive less light and heat reducing the ability of the grass to maintain condition under low cutting heights.
Neil Sjoberg, the manager of Epping Golf Club who built his club from scratch, has revealed that he uses glass for sand in his course’s bunkers, as part of his club’s environmental strategy.
Described as the one ‘they all want to play’, the West Course, or Burma Road, is arguably Britain’s most famous golf course.
The business of managing fine turf for good putting green speeds is demanding and at nearly all courses these days it is a 365 day-a-year operation with around 2.5 hours of triple mowing undertaken per day as an average for 18 holes.
Drainage and irrigation both depend on a few similar phenomena such as gravity, hydraulic laws, the behaviour of water molecules and so on.
Probably the biggest area of turf supply is the finishing off of tee constructions and bunker refurbishments during the winter months. The turf will vary depending on the type of surface and the situation.
Summer preparation requires planning when the inevitable need to restore and replenish the playing surfaces through renovations is being considered.
“We don’t try and compete with Sunningdale or Wentworth.”
What is needed to run a course well?
Late December and early January are not very nice times of year for grass.
To keep turf healthy and maintain continuity of service, greenkeepers need to do everything possible to ensure that their courses can cope with prolonged wet weather and sudden influxes of water.
Leading agronomist Noel Mackenzie has said that too little topography and ecology goes into golf course design.
There are a number of reasons why compost, produced from garden waste such as grass cuttings, prunings and leaves, has such good water retention properties and can be of considerable benefit.
One of Britain’s top agronomists has said that golf clubs should renovate their tees, greens and fairways as far ahead of winter as possible.
A good course manager runs his / her business as if it’s their own, while ensuring that the golfers have an enjoyable experience.
Rule 24-1a does not require the player to mark the position of the ball but it is considered good practice to do so as if the ball does move, the player can be certain that the ball is returned to its original position.