Article on Maintenance Practices and Grass Species at Delamere Forest GC

[Brent Hutto]

I came across the following article during a Google search concerning Delamere Forest GC, a course I played last year and hope to play again this year on my UK golf vacation. The linked article is about a decade old but it has all sort of very interesting information about how the course and particularly the putting greens are maintained.

https://www.pitchcare.com/magazine/sustainable-golf-at-delamere-forest.html

I personally can't understand the majority of what they're talking about but thought maybe some folks here would find it interesting, especially in light of some of the other threads currently running on types of grass and how to encourage fescue, discourage poa and so forth. I particularly liked the table breaking down (someone's) visual estimate of the proportion of various grass types on each of Delamere's 18 greens.

Again, this article is from 2006 so I don't know if everything in the following quote is still true. Given the fairly immaculate presentation of the course when I was there last September it would truly be amazing if it those conditions were produced with only rainfall.

asked Andy about his watering regimes and was surprised to learn that the last time he applied any water to the course was in back in 2003 when there was a prolonged spell of dry weather. They did a bit of localised hand watering to help prevent some of the greens from dying off completely

Not only is watering avoided, feeding is rarely undertaken either. There is an application of lawn sand on the greens at the start of every season and a couple of application of seaweed, but other than that, nothing.

The club have never sought to install an automated watering system, they simply do not need one, they let nature takes its course.

[Jon Wiggett]

Brent,

It is a shame that golf has gone so far from the general practices that are sustainable to the point where many experts do not only not know how to maintain low input courses but many cannot accept it is even possible. Nice to see someone posting about such practices other than the usual few suspects (me included )

Good article which makes for an interesting read.

Jon

[Peter Pallotta]

Brent - I can't make heads or tails of this talk either, but I do know that a couple of years ago the superintendent from St Andrew's gave a talk in Guelph at the turf institute here and similarly noted, if my memory serves, that he hadn't put water on The Old Course in over a decade (except for that hand watering of greens), and the other 'inputs' were also similarly sparse/almost zero. It brings to mind the notion of the virtuous circle instead of the vicious spiral.

Peter