Golf Course Renovations

Along with our drainage project this autumn the Greenstaff have been busy with end of season renovations this October. All the main playing areas have been renovated, with fairways the last to be finished today. It's certainly been a busy month!

A2G2 in action

We decided to tweak our greens programme this year. Instead of going with the usual deep tine and heavy sand dressing in the autumn, we pushed that forward to mid-summer and this autumn went less aggressive. We tried a new machine called the A2G2 which puts compressed air down to a depth of around 300mm and then followed that up with an 8mm micro tine on the top. 

No sand was applied as over 150tonnes had already been applied by the end of the summer. The theory is to work on both shallow and deep aeration at certain stages throughout the year setting them up for the winter ahead.

8mm Micro tine following behind

The work went well and greens have recovered very well. We will use our comprehensive data programme to analyse results to see if this is a new path for us to take.

Along with the greens the tees were deep aerated, sanded, seeded and then fertilised. The approaches have been deep aerated and fairways scarified and deep aerated. Walkways and stress areas too have been worked on. Combined with our drainage improvements, the aim is to provide top quality golf in the off season to go along with the already excellent playing surfaces in the main season. 

Fairways getting deep aerated

Drainage Project Recommences - Year 4

Last week the greenstaff got back to the drainage project that was started in 2012. Over the last few years we have concentrated on holes 1,2,3,4,8,11,12,13 and 15. This has made a huge difference to the playability of the course during extreme wet weather. Combined with good cultural practises such as fairway scarifying and hollow coring, the difference in performance has been great to date.

This year we are concentrating on the 6th and 7th fairways, whilst linking in to the area to the right of the 12th green. Over 2000 metres of pipework was installed. The 6th fairway in particular proved very challenging. Unfortunately the ditch (which is the outlet) sits slightly higher than the fairway.

The weather was superb during this works and even though the hours were long and hard, the procedures went very smooth. This week we are now concentrating on 'snag jobs' with lots of gullies and headwalls with tidal flaps being installed.

From next week we will start to link up the primary drainage with secondary by means of our 'gravel bander'. This has proved very successful on our clay based golf course and helps to move the water sideways in to the pipes. We set the bands at 0.8metres, with the main drains sitting in general at 10 metre centres.

We are really pleased with the work so far and will continue over the whole of October.

Pipe in stock

All loaded up!

Irrigation pipework getting marked out

Drain lines turf cut off

Straight sand to backfill

Crossing irrigation lines is always a pain!

6th Fairway, solid clay

View looking up the 6th fairway

View looking up the 7th fairway

Gravel Banding to the 6th fairway