Spring has brought with it an unprecedented challenge. This has been the driest spring on record for over 50 years. 

Unfortunately, these extreme conditions have severely limited our ability to make the spring renovation improvements we had hoped for across areas of the course.

Much of our time and effort has been focused on simply managing moisture levels and keeping areas alive. As a result, we’ve had limited opportunity to address some of the key problem areas. However, we remain committed to steady improvement, and with time, favourable weather, and strong cultural practices, progress will follow.

Greens

Due to limited irrigation last year, a dry winter and ‘currently’ no irrigation system, the greens have developed significant dry patch. This condition has been made even worse by the spring drought and unfortunately these damaged areas will not recover any time soon, these areas struggle to accept water and nutrients and remain thin/ bare.

In the photo below you will see a lot of dry patches (LDS) – Even after multiple hydro jetting procedures the greens were struggling to accept water and nutrients and a renovation is needed imminently.

The affected turf areas require thorough and consistent renovation. We will now need to enter into a program of frequent aeration, topdressing and seed applications to break down the hydrophobic organic matter which will encourage new growth. 

Additionally, a thatch layer of approximately 25mm is also present across the greens, which also impedes water and nutrient penetration these creates a two fold problem needing to be solved (the dry spot and thatch). These areas will need constant work until improvements are made, this will be a long and slow process.

Greens will continue to be aerated, a vertical cut will be carried out, and they will start to receive applications of sand top dressing to dilute thatch levels, as an added benefit it will also true up the surfaces, these repeated practises will improve the above problems over time and greens will become more consistent. 

Tees

Tee boxes have been re-shaped and squared off, at the moment we have a much larger area of tee boxes to mow, than that of golf greens – ideally this should be roughly equal. This makes it very time consuming and costly to manage these areas. After initial inspection, many tee boxes are also un-level, worm casting and contain poor grass composition for a links golf course, a plan will be proposed and put in place to strip the turf on un-level tee boxes, a portion of soil removed and replaced with good quality sand and levelled out. Tee’s will then be re-seeded or re-sodded with quality fine fescue which will improve drought and disease resistance, and provide a firmer teeing surface with less worm casts in the winter.

Rough

Due to a large flail mowing exercise in the previous year (2024) and with the current drought conditions, growth and recovery of ‘native rough’ has been severely impacted. Until there is some sufficient rainfall, these areas will continue to be very sparse, there is very little that can be done to enhance these areas at the moment, fertilisers sprayed onto these areas will essentially evaporate almost instantly due to the high evapotranspiration rates (ET) – so patience is needed with the rough.

Newly Shaped Surrounds and Other Areas:

The recently reshaped areas around greens and fairways are beginning to show signs of improvement. These zones require regular cultural maintenance throughout the future to condition into better surfaces. While they may currently look raw or uneven in places, given time and rainfall they will start to take shape.

Sand Scrape Area

Normally a scrape would be completed in the autum/ winter time when there is sufficient moisture levels in the ground, however the area was in such poor decline and worsening, steps had to be taken early to set the project underway.

Phase 1 – of the sand scrape project has been completed. This involved clearing dead heather, gorse and rough grass species to establish the foundation for the scrape, and the area has already shown positive signs of regeneration with new marram grass encroaching onto the sand. The area remains Ground Under Repair (GUR) and will receive further attention in the autumn when soil moisture levels are more favourable. At that time we plan to carry out the finalisation of the scrapes shape, lay turf and plug in marram grass to stabilise the area and enhance visual character.

Bunkers

In the past bunkers have been turfed with eco-bunker – an astroturf type material which uses sand and cement as the base for packing the turf tightly together. The problem with this type of construction is that normally the top layer of turf struggles to retain moisture and dries out, leaving an unpleasing aesthetic around the bunker edges. The astroturf edges will also get a build up of moss and it becomes hard to remove without damaging the material, so in turn what sounds more sustainable becomes more costly down the line as it is a very expensive material to purchase and construct.

I believe if we can build a turf nursery some where on site with good quality fescue seed, we can become sustainable and rivett bunkers at very low costs, on a roughly five year rotation, which will keep the traditional aesthetic of a links bunker/ in line with the course, also keeping sharp crisp edges, and also be somewhat sustainable in the sense we will only need to routinely seed areas of the turf nursery when we remove turf and it is a much cheaper process.