Old Course greenkeeping blog

Greenkeeping Blog - Cold and Frosty

Here at the Links the cold weather has finally arrived after what has been a very mild winter so far. The temperature hit 14 degrees on Christmas day and last week I recorded soil temperatures of 5.8 degrees which is almost unheard of in January. This does however mean that we made good progress with winter work on the course. Bunker builds are on-going and I am hopeful that we will finish Shell bunker in the next few days.

With the cold spell at the moment we are litter picking areas of gorse and removing some gorse from in front of 6th tees and 12th fairways.

By the end of week we should be back to milder weather so in the next week we will be starting to apply sulphate of iron to greens, surrounds and fairways which may turn things slighter greener but will help suppress any moss activity.

Gordon

Strathtyrum Course Update

Following the recent dry spell, all 18 Holes on the Strathtryum Course are open for play again although buggies are restricted to the front 9 holes only.

Please check here for further updates.

Gordon

Greenkeeping Blog - Happy Christmas!

Well another year is nearly over. The weather here has been very good over the last few weeks which has allowed us to work through our winter programme and complete several more bunkers.

Over the next couple of weeks we are on holidays although we will have a skeleton team in each day to check over and set courses for play during this time.

On behalf of all the greenkeepers we wish you a Happy Christmas!

Christmas Holidays

Well that’s another year nearly over!

The weather here has been very good over the last few weeks which has allowed us to work through our winter programme and complete several more bunkers.

Over the next couple of weeks the majority of staff are on holiday although we will have a skeleton team in each day to check over and set courses for play.

On behalf of all the green keepers we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Gordon

Greenkeeping blog - Happy St Andrews Day!

A happy St Andrews Day to everyone from us all in St Andrews. If I remember correctly this time last year we were in the depths of winter with several inches of snow lying across the courses. This year sees a much milder spell of weather at the moment, so long may it continue.

The mild weather has allowed to crack on with our winter programme, which is progressing well. Shell bunker is still ongoing and we actually stopped work in there for a couple of weeks to allow the turf on the bunker wall to settle. With this being such a large build and a considerable amount of weight of turf in the wall we build in several stages to allow for natural settlement, so we don’t envisage completing this job until after Christmas.

We have continued to re-build other bunkers and at moment we are working on Wig bunker which guards the left handside of the 16th green.

On top of all that work we are planning very soon to re-level the 12th medal tee which has slightly sunk to the right handside but forecast this to be completed within a few days.

During the close season I am changing all my green sprinklers to a different specification to allow me more flexibility and further reduce my water usage, the new model of sprinkler being installed will allow me to reduce arcs on site very simply when needed. Another irrigation related job which will be happening in the next few weeks will be the changing of all sprinkler heads on fairways with new lids with a much better yardage reading which will be more visible to the golfer than what we have at moment.

Finally, our fairway plugging programme is going well and the team have plugged a considerable amount this year, a big thanks to all the team for their efforts over the last couple of months.

Enjoy your St Andrews Day!