Greens renovations - or improvements as I call it !!

I have never worked so hard, planned so thoroughly, to make something which looked so nice look so poor. On top of this, one knows that even though you felt you did the best job you could, it was inevitable that customers would complain.

After just walking in to the pro shop with a wide smile on my face about the quality of the recovery of the renovations, I was met with several staff telling me about a members discontent with our product. It can get very depressing. This is part of the job unfortunately and golf is the only sport where renovations have to be undertaken while people are playing, unless the golf course shuts for renovations, which would be nice!! Someone said to me a while back, "they don't do this at Lords and I've been going for twenty years". They do, and more aggresivly but like football it is done in the off season. I would love to see a groundsman trying to renovate the pitch during a premier league game!!!


So you wonder, why do we do it to the greens and ourselves? Although most members know why, it is vital that the greens are renovated some of the following reasons;

1. Improve or maintain good drainage ( this is why we  were still playing golf in excellent conditions during the heavy rains of the club championship!) 
2. Improve gaseous exchange in the rootzone to keep the plants healthy
3. Maintain greens firmness (see above comment on drainage)
4. Reduce disease susceptability - this is very important going into the winter period
5. Maintain green speed ( everyones favourite topic)
6. Improve grass sward composition. This also helps with points 3 and 4
7. Improve rooting which helps keeps the plants healthy, rootzone drier, speeds up and disease down ( all good really!)  

I wont go into all the reasons as to how these points help, but you must trust me that if we dont regularly renovate the greens, the opposite of all these points will happen and then I will be really unpopular. I always liken it to your car. You must service it regularly or it will break down. Unfortunately we just don't have a hire car equivilant give you in the mean time. 

The recovery from this work is always very painful. It can be slow and it seems like it will take forever to recover. We publish this work a year in advance so members can use this time to play other courses or  take a break to practise other areas of their game and not bring guests. 

To speed up the renovations we apply lots of fertiliser. The problem here is that it makes the plant very green and lush. This is not great for getting good speeds and as you can see from some of my photos the greens have recovered very quickly but the greens will be very slow. It is a very difficult balancing act to get recovery quickly whilst still maintaining the speed. 

Another reason for slower speeds is the grass height. During the renovations the grass which has not been cored or scarified keeps growing. Once the sand has been worked in you are generally left with long grass. Therefore we have to cut the greens a little longer to make sure we dont scalp it all and kill it and also to protect the new seedlings which are starting to come through. This higher height coupled with lush growth will result in slower green speeds for a while. 

Once we are starting to cut the greens regularly, we will bring the height down slowly and keep dressing to make sure the greens are as smooth as possible. We normally allow 3 weeks to a month for this work and the pictures below show where we are after 10 days. 

I hope you find this useful - we try hard to make sure the greens are as good as possible for the longest amount of time - and when they are good it is not just luck but hard work, good planning and doing the right work at the right time. 

Below are some pictures of the work being undertaken. In brief we have hollow cored the greens with 13mm tines, gradened the greens in two directions with 1mm blades at 10mm depth, overseeded with A4 creeping bent grass seed and applied 90 tonnes of topdressing. 

Stage one - Core, collect (all by hand to make sure greens damage is minimal and levels are maintained) topdress, brush in and water.  Hard work in near 30 degree heat. 

Stage 2 - Scarify with Graden, clear, dress, brush and water

 

Stage 3 - Repeat stage 2 and include fertilizer and seed 

RECOVERY - day 1

 RECOVERY - day 6

 RECOVERY - day 10

 and gernimation to boot !!!!!!!!!

To all members and to any other golfers reading, we undertake this work to improve the golf course and maintain the quality of the surfaces in the long term. Short term thinking or even poor management of the renovations will result in poor surfaces in the future. Please bear with us its the right thing to do. 

Thank you - Daniel Lightfoot MG MSc