Fresh from the Fairways

Update from our Course Manager

Welcome to Fresh from the Fairways, the quarterly blog from Roger Mills, Course Manager at Richmond Park Golf Course. This edition highlights our plans to make the course more resilient to the extreme changes in weather we’re now experiencing.

While we’ve all been enjoying a run of summer sunshine in August, you won’t need reminding of the devastating impact of last winter’s weather, with constant rain and widespread flooding leading to course closures, in some cases for many months.

Richmond Park Golf Course did not escape this blight. The topgraphy and drainage systems on our 100-year old course were overwhelmed by such high volumes of rain.

The course has bounced back well, thanks to a robust recovery programme and the efforts of our greenkeeping team. However, now is the time to prepare for what challenges may lay ahead.

There is no magic wand solution, but we’re taking proactive steps to ensure that the courses can handle sustained periods of rainfall, leading to improved quality in the summer.

Major drainage overhaul

These steps start as soon as this September, with a major investment into drainage improvements, targeting areas that are worst affected during the winter months.

Most of the greens at Richmond Park are original, built in the 1920s using native London clay, and inherently difficult to drain during prolonged rainfall.

We’ve appointed a specialist contractor to carry out a process called ‘sandbanding’, across both courses. The work involves injecting kiln-dried sand under high pressure into channels cut into the turf. The result is rapid surface drainage and is ideal for areas prone to waterlogging.

We’ll carefully monitor the effect of this new drainage system over the coming months. If everything goes to plan then we’ll add a secondary system in 2025, which will further improve performance.

Greens Renovations

Our annual greens renovations will also be carried out in September. This will involve deep tining (spiking), followed by hollow coring and top dressing. Finally, we’ll apply new grass seed to aid recovery. The whole process helps keep the turf healthy, resulting in high quality playing surfaces.

To minimise disruption, we’ll carry out the greens renovations and sandbanding programme together. The impact from the works is mainly visual and won’t affect your enjoyment of the courses. The narrow sand channels in the greens will be visible for few weeks while fresh grass grows in.

Monday 2nd to Tuesday 3rd September – greens renovations.
Monday 9th to Thurday 12th September – sandbanding.

New year, new machines!

2025 is rapidly approaching. We’re already thinking ahead so we’ve finalised our machinery investment plans for next year.

We have three frontline greens mowers at Richmond Park. They are relatively new, but we’ve suffered reliabilty and cutting quality issues with them this year.

It’s vital that we provide the very best quality playing surfaces, so we’ve made the decision to replace these mowers in 2025, to make sure we continue to do this. The rest of our fleet is in really good shape and well maintained.

At some point in the near future we’ll be turning our attention to automated, electric mowers for fairways and rough. They’ll be a big part of our move to greener, more efficient greenkeeping. Watch this space!

Wildlife

One of the unique characteristics Richmond Park is the variety of wildlife that share our amazing green space with us. It’s vital to preserve this habitat, even if that might cause some inconvenience for golfers.

Badgers are nocturnal creatures and the peaceful setting of our golf course is a haven for their night time foraging. They tend to target areas such as tees surrounds, as they are easy to dig up and provide a plentiful supply of food.

They are protected by law so deterrent options are limited, but we’ve been trialing humane methods such as motion sensor lighting, to try and move them away from sensitive areas.

This autumn

Here we are talking about 2025, when it’s not even in autumn yet! One of the most important tasks for the remainder of the year is to condition the rough areas. Every year we plan to flail mow, which thins out the rough and reduces the amount of unwanted weeds. However, due the incredibly wet ground conditions we had last autumn, the machine we normally use would have caused damage to the soft ground, so the rough has been a little thicker than we’d like.

This time around we’ve sourced a different type of flail mower, which is quicker and more efficient, so we’ll have a much better chance of completing the job before the winter sets in.