Fresh from the Fairways

Update from our Head Greenkeeper

Welcome to Fresh from the Fairways, the quarterly blog from Robert Rogers, Head Greenkeeper at Portsmouth Golf Course.

Having been at the course since March and in my new role as Head Greenkeeper for just over a month, I am gaining an understanding of what is expected and trying my hardest to meet expectations.

Five inches of rain within that time has made for some tricky conditions to work with, but we are trying to manage the wear on the course until we inevitably have to drop down to 14 holes.

The team are also down by one person, and with annual leave to use up, were up against it a little. My replacement has been found so we now have a full team with another well-qualified greenkeeper which should help us continue to improve. Tasks like edging the bunkers, more raking, divoting etc will now be completed a lot more often to keep the course in top shape.

Our major course renovations were a success at the second time of asking, unfortunately hired machinery let us down, but the greens are almost at a point where they can be taken back down to greens height and playability shall improve. I will outline below what we have done so far and what we aim to achieve over the coming months.

I hope you are noticing some changes and are enjoying some more interesting rounds with marker and hole positions!

Greens

The greens are the first area I addressed when taking over in my new role. The cut height of the greens is now down considerably from the summer months and I feel this has helped their playability.

Another area of concern was the patchiness and unevenness as a result of losing some coverage during the summer months, some of which was dry patch and dollar spot, especially on the 16th green. Dollar spot is a fungal turf disease that occurs during high humidity, warm days and cool nights. The affected patches are the size of a dollar, hence the name. Moisture from dew, light rain or irrigation and lack of air movement can encourage development of the disease.

We had another dollar spot break out following this but we managed to deal with it swiftly with no lasting damage/scaring through a chemical application.

As mentioned the greens are recovering nicely and should be back up to a fair standard in the coming weeks. We originally planned to deep scarify the greens to remove the spongy thatch layer that holds water. This will be revisited in the spring.

On the subject of recovery I feel we achieved fine results getting the 2nd green back to decent standard in a timely manner, following a spate of vandalism. Although demoralising, our efforts are paying off and demonstrate that it doesn’t have to take months to get the greens back after what is mindless vandalism.

As a compromise we double verticut the greens, followed by a deep verticut just before we solid tined the greens with 12mm tines and followed that with 20 tonnes of topdressing. We went for a more organic rich dressing rather than straight sand which is best suited to sand based greens. We overseeded the greens with a mix of fine bent and rye grasses which should aid playability, drought and disease tolerance.

I have changed our nutrition for the greens which should also help with disease tolerance and stop them drying so severely come next summer. I have implemented a disease management programme to try and lower our reliance on expensive fungicides, which will potentially enable us to utilise budget in other areas on the golf course. The first treatment for disease management has gone out as well as a new product to try and combat the bird pecking especially on 16 and 18.

Plans moving forward to further improve the greens will include a herbicide application to rid the greens of the weeds that have become quite invasive. This will be done in the spring followed by another overseed. The more fine grasses we get in, the better the greens will be.

Growth regulator and wetting agent will be part of our programme next spring, which again should help with the general health of the greens year round. We will also revisit the 6th green where the work carried out to make the putting surface larger struggled and failed to establish.

Tees & approaches

The tees and approaches have been considerably taken down in height to try and create better surfaces and to be less penalising if just off the green. My plan moving forward is to try and implement more of these cultural practices.

Also a regular divot and feeding program to try and keep them healthier and thriving for most of the year. The approaches will be growing quite a bit come the spring and will be much more pleasing on the eye.

Other areas

I feel first and last impressions are vitally important and feel the car park and especially the overflow let us down somewhat. We will be transforming these areas during the winter months when the course is going to benefit from us not dragging our heavy machinery over it.

I am going to improve the bunkers and possibly reshape some of them. Work has begun on a new path on the 14th for the winter tee to try and keep the surrounding areas in better condition. I am also going to introduce white trolley lines and it will be greatly appreciated if these are abided by to help eliminate the course from being damaged by buggy/trolley marks, especially around the greens.

One of our winter projects will be thinning/lowering the area surrounding the 6th pond. It has been brought to my attention that it has become a very challenging tee shot from the 6th ladies tee area and we want to give everyone a fair chance!

We will update a more accurate plan for winter projects in due course.

So in summary we plan on raising standards across the board and that will centre around improving the greens and working our way out from there! I’m keen to improve the practice areas on the range and 12a so people feel more inclined to use them.

I hope this gives an idea on what we are doing and where we hope to take things!

Happy golfing, hopefully the weather is kind to us all!

Regards,

Robert Rogers

Head Greenkeeper