How the pros carry out lawn maintenance at championship golf course (Golf greens) Irish golf club

How the pros carry out lawn maintenance at championship golf course (Golf greens) Irish golf club

Welcome to Clandeboye Golf Club. I’m the Golf Course Manager, I’ve been here 30 years actually this year. We have a 36-hole parkland  course. One would be predominantly heath land come parkland under Ava and the Dufferin is our main Championship Course which would be predominantly uh parkland. We have around about 1250 members 
at Clandeboye and uh this year we’ve taken 170 new members. We would be averaging around 350 
to 400 rounds per day at the moment which is uh very very good but again- very sore on the Golf 
Course. So we are going to take a look at our main autumn maintenance and try, and I’ll try  to explain as much as we can. It’s a new grading system that we’re using grading Verti draining grading and overseeding. so I’m putting on lots of sand to firm the greens up. So this is what we’re going to try to show the viewers today. What we’re doing today we’re doing a Verti 
draining at eight inch depth and two inch centers then we’re carrying out a scarification which is 
called grading so it’s a linear lines procedure to remove the thatch. Afterwards the thatch is cleared 
up we over seed with a Fescue and Bent mix then we the top dress with straight sand we roll that in 
and then wait for uh germination of the seed and hopefully our greens will be back in 
good condition and maybe three weeks time. The reason why I started this grading – everybody 
used to hollow tine, and then the grading was more American uh thing that came actually well 
American, Australia, the graders from Australia so we felt that you’ll get 80 percent more 
thatch removed using a grading system rather than something like only 40 percent through 
hollow tineing so the reason why i went down this line STRI I sent away to STRI they told 
me my problem was 18 mil below the surface so instead of we thought then we’ll target 20 
mil using the grading system to get into that thatch so we really pull the thatch out of 
that to 20 mil that allowed the water to channel quicker through the surface and make 
my greens a lot firmer I always found my greens were becoming very soft to walk on even when I
was doing a hollow tine twice and three times a year but once I started the grading – different. My greens 
now are firm, the water comes through the greens far quicker and uh members are happy and I’m 
very happy. You can see the debris you can just see what the the thatch content is in the greens 
now it’s not all thatch but it it’s it’s a mixture of surface uh turf sward and thatch so it’s 
a mixture. We do first a procedure of Verti draining you can see the small holes at about two 
inch centers they allow the water to penetrate further down through the soil profile 
these linear lines are three mil tine to to 18 mil to 20 mil in depth we clean the profile 
of the soil profile up and then we seed into them and then we hope to get a good germination 
rate when we seed into these lines. It’s a very aggressive procedure our greens were 
absolutely amazing our membership were complementing us on the greens and if they could just see them 
now but in three weeks time these greens will be repaired and back to normal and we need to do 
this and i’ve found that this year with very little maintenance uh on the greens due to the 
Covid at t the start that my greens were puffed up uh we were down the only cotton greens three times 
a week and uh we felt that we needed to do this so i’m actually a little bit more aggressive this 
year we’re down 20 mil we’re putting on more sand and we just want to try to get the 
greens more compact on the top surface. At the moment what we’re doing now at the 
moment we’re introducing seed to the greens and we’re using a Fescue and Bent we’re using 
around about three three bags for 18 greens. The product is MM11 we’re using some mixtures of 
Fescue and Bent and what we’re trying to achieve is introducing more Bent into our greens and 
Fescue there’s no doubt that carries would germinate a lot quicker than the Bent we’re using 
a Fescue and Bent and allow for the Fescue to carry the Bent because the the the Bent is the 
very small seedlings where the Fescue is larger Our make up on greens uh are we’re predominantly 
at Clandeboye Golf Club an 80 20. I Iwould say we would have 80, 80 percent Bent and some Fescues 
very little Fescues on this course more in the Ava course which is drier so would be 
predominantly 80 20. Poa Annua would be or 20 maybe even creeping to 30 percent but we’re 
trying our best to keep it down which is difficult we we would use a lot of growth 
regulators through the season we would spray our greens every 12 to 14 days 
with primo max a growth regulator using organic liquids as well with that and that we would use 
seaweed mix as well straight seaweed at the moment and then we’d use a separate seaweed in iron for 
presentation spray. We’re trying to introduce more seaweed meal into our greens. This time we don’t 
do that, we do that at the beginning of the year on our spring maintenance we introduce uh two 
bags of uh straight seaweed meal this is more for soil conditioner and trying to just uh 
be the only thing that is on the market for con condition conditioning soil at this stage it 
would be nice to have other products on the market for conditioning but as I say seaweed is something 
that we’re we’re working closely with a company down south and we can see the benefits of it 
the greens are uh we’ve got it we apply this we would only apply the seaweed once a year by 
a granular form but liquid form then we would apply that every 14 days around about maybe 
12 liters per uh hectare on our greens um seaweed is a a a product that it’s 
very difficult to see what it does but it’s really the only product out there that 
enhances the soil it does strengthen the plant but again it’s something that we 
just add in as another additive So he’ll just be kind of doing like a 
rotation like this and and what he’ll be doing is staying on the green yep so 
he’ll stay on the green on a figure eight so because we’ve got grass seed on here as well and 
we don’t want the grass seed matted on to here because it’s too expensive so he’ll just keep on going and 
then once we get this in as much as we can without doing too much because sand is very abrasive so 
we don’t want to do too much pushing because that bruises the turf and knocks it back so we just 
need to do the right amount and then leave it and then we’ll roll we’ll put our speed ruler on and 
roll it and then we’ll hit it with water so that’s the procedure of getting it in but when we can see 
this a roughly up to nearly three ton of sand on our greens for 12 to 13 weeks weren’t played 
on and we felt then that we were getting the the surface was puffed up a little bit and 
and that’s why i’m doing a deeper thatch uh reduction taking more thatch out putting on 
more sand and we’re just trying to get the greens firmer for going into winter and we’ve got a 
European Tour event here next August and uh those professionals want firm fast greens so they could 
be they don’t want pudding greens they don’t want soft greens they want a green that will actually 
uh when the perfect shots hit onto the green it’ll accept the ball and it’ll and a bad shot down will 
be disregarded and come right through the green. Well this is our bigger shed now 
that holds all our cutting equipment. You can probably see that we have a multi-coloured 
shed with John Deere with Jacobson with Toro. I would buy a Haiter, an old Haiter sitting 
in there. i would have to be a green keeper that would probably buy the best from each 
distributor I wouldn’t solely go in red I wouldn’t slowly go in green or wouldn’t slowly 
go in orange. This is the new hybrid Eclipse she’s battery operated we’ve 
got uh electric motors on her so she’s a half hybrid so there’s an engine in 
it which drives a small generator which sends electric to the cutting heads so you would get a 
consistent cut all the time. We would normally cut three mil we wouldn’t we wouldn’t really come 
much lower than three mil we’d maybe go to maybe sometimes for a major competition if we 
felt that growth was uh but rampant we would then bring her down to about 2.85 but that’ll 
be only for a short time with I think we feel that we can at 3 mil now with the speed 
rolling on our top dressing regime on our growth regulators we can get a true consistency of putt 
in around 10 all the time with not going too low because I feel when you go too low it’s 
detrimental damage to the grass plant. But we have a Toro rough mower we just purchased this year. This piece of kit here is a hydraulic 
serving unit for cutting the rough we cut the rough at about 50 mil this particular 
machine was over 60 thousand pounds so all equipment is very expensive now and 
the upkeep of the equipment is very expensive Mechanics on site we 
have our own in-house mechanic we try to do everything in-house to keep the cost 
down. At the moment uh we have we would be roughly running on uh maybe thirty thousand pounds just 
to maintain the machinery which is quite high. I’d like to pull that back down. Absolutely invest in more modern equipment and 
maybe put that on to hire purchase then we would have maybe two years warranty and some machines 
are giving you a three year warranty with them so that’s the only way to try to pull your 
daily maintenance your yearly maintenance down.

How the pros carry out lawn maintenance at a championship golf course (Golf Greens) Irish golf club at its best.
Premier Lawns was invited to Clandeboye golf club (36 holes) to see how the pros carry out autumn lawn maintenance on the golf greens on the Dufferin the championship course.
We met up with Terry Crawford, the course manager, and he explains every step that this process takes.
Aeration in the form of verti draining
Grading the greens with a Graden, this is a form of deep scarification to remove thatch
Overseed with fescue and bent seed mixture
Apply a USGA sand and mat it in.

Grading is something that is relatively new to Northern Irish golf courses, having been brought over from America and Australia and is great for dealing with subsurface thatch having been recommended by STRI.

Clandeboye is a club that I know very well. I worked at Clandeboye for a long time before leaving to start Premier Lawns. Terry has been a great mentor to me over the years and I would like to thank him and Clandeboye golf club and its membership for letting the channel film here.

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Clandeboye Golf Club: Championship Golf Course Bangor – https://www.cgc-ni.com/

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