The last good course with unirrigated fairways?

[Frank Pont]

No plans for fairway irrigation in my planned new-build De Ullerberg, a reversible 9 holes heathland course

[BCowan]

Lyke's Links in the Crystal Lake area of Michigan.

I did a search couldn't find this track.  Is this someone's private 9 hole track or just too GCA hipster for the net? 

Forget top 100 tracks, are there any Doak 4's out there without irrigation left in the states?  I'm assuming I'd have to drive to Maine?  No GCA hipster courses suggestions please. 

[Tom_Doak]

Forget top 100 tracks, are there any Doak 4's out there without irrigation left in the states?  I'm assuming I'd have to drive to Maine?  No GCA hipster courses suggestions please.

I'm sure there are still lots of courses left in the U.S.A. that don't have fairway irrigation.  I don't think there are any that reside on the top 100 lists, but there must be a bunch that would be 4's on the Doak scale.


It takes real guts to build a new course without fairway irrigation.  I'm surprised to hear that there have been several in the UK and Europe, just because it makes grow-in so iffy.  [I suspect Ally can vouch for that.]  Most clients are going to want at least a single-row system, just for grow-in and for "insurance" ... but of course then they are likely to make insurance claims at the slightest sign of brown. 


We never considered trying to grow in The Renaissance Club without an irrigation system.  I have thought about it on the various projects we've looked at in Ireland over the years, but we're still waiting to build one there.  I even thought about it for our project in the Dominican Republic -- there are about nine months of the year where you'll rarely need one, but unfortunately it's the other three months when the paying golfers come in force.

[Adam Lawrence]

I'm pretty certain Close House doesn't have fairway irrigation.

[Richard Fisher]

Harlech emphatically does not have fairway irrigation, and has no plans to install same even if it could afford to do so, although it is currently considering major capital expenditure on replacing the current (c 40-year-old) irrigation system for tees and greens. Much the biggest problem at RStD in recent years has been not drought but wet and the rising water table, combined with poorly maintained drainage towards the north end of the morfa (the Ynys estuary): as many GCA visitors will know, this has driven the club to remove significant numbers of sand bunkers that were especially prone to flooding, and to replace them with grass-based hazards. Not sure how many other GB top fifty-ish courses are left without fairway watering? Macrihanish?

[Matt Frey, PGA]

With the way the world seems to be headed and the importance of water conservation coupled with the increase in frequency of droughts, will fairway irrigation become more or less important to golf courses in the next 50 years?

[Willie_Dow]

Boy, are we getting irrigated down here in Vero these days.  Only by rainfall, however!


On the river, here at the Moorings, the bunkers are like lakes, and the fairways are mush.  Maybe OK on tuesday, hopefully.


The Hawks Nest acquisition certainly came to the Moorings like a godsend.  Those sand Hills are an unbelievable sensation, and played just fine yesterday.


No irrigation needed down here, across the tracks.