Course News

Please click HERE for information on the extension to the 4th green.

Copurse Committee

Please click HERE to view a report prepared by the Sports Turf Research Institute following their annual consultancy visit.

We would recommend reading the report in full as it contains information on the challenges facing the industry and the steps we are taking to meet these challenges.

Council fully endorses the comment in the report that our course staff should be heavily praised for the very high standards achieved.

As part of our winter programme the area at the rear of the 5th green is being reshaped and expanded.

The front portion of the green is unplayable for most of the year and this area is being lifted and re-laid at the rear of the green, which will allow additional pin positions and thus spread the traffic on the green to reduce wear.

The 5th hole will be closed from Wednesday, 19th January while this work is taking place. This work is very weather dependent but we expect to have the revised hole back in play at some stage in April.

As a replacement, we will play a temporary hole to the chipping green from a teeing area adjacent to the Proshop ( 85 metres to the centre of the green ) . This hole should be played first and scores should be entered on scorecards as the 5th hole, using the index applicable to the 5th hole. Golfers should then proceed to the 1st hole on the scorecard as usual and continue their round.

Please note that the putting green in the walled garden and the chipping green in Pig’s Hollow will be open as normal, further details are available in the ProShop.

It’s been a great start to the winter as the weather has been so good.  We have been doing some cutting right up to the start of December. Unfortunately with winter comes ropes, tee mats and fairway mats. I realise that these are not very popular with members but they are there to help protect the course so it can be presented in better condition early in the spring when competition golf returns.

We have mats on the par 3s where most golfers use low irons. This means that when we return to full tees in the spring we have full use of the tee. You need to use a short tee with these mats as the rubber backing is not perforated. We have recently added some rubber tees to the mats and Davie has some tees especially for the mats available in the pro shop.

Fairway mats are used on fairways that are narrow and suffer quit badly with divots.  By using the fairway mats we dramatically reduce the amount of divots in these areas. While we could fill these divots, it is not as effective as using the mats. It can take up to a month before a divot has recovered after is has been filled with divot mix, providing you have good growing conditions. Again, using the mats means we can present the fairways in much better condition once we return to competition golf in the spring.

Ropes are used on areas of high wear.  Due to the design of some holes and different ground/soil conditions we put up ropes to direct traffic away from high wear areas where everyone tend to travel.

If we did not redirect golfers, these areas would become very compacted/muddy and would take a long time to recover come the spring.  We are trying to avoid areas that are very highly trafficked during the summer.

Gone are the days of golf being a summer sport, and with improvements in course maintenance practices and investment in drainage it’s great that we can now play golf all year round but we are still putting the course under a lot of pressure with an average of 700 rounds per week for November.

Golf could be played during the winter with no mats or ropes, but if you expect the course to be in top condition as quickly as possible when we return to competition golf in the spring (and I think you should) we need to be conscious of the damage we are doing during the winter when there is NO recovery, and take measures to reduce it. With this in mind I would ask you to keep repairing pitch marks, take a different route to everyone else to spread the wear and keep buggies and trolleys as far from greens and tees and you can.

We are taking on a number of projects along with our usual winter work this year. Some of the larger projects will include,

• Extend the Irrigation towards the tees on holes 4 and 9. These areas suffer any time we get prolonged dry periods and are in play for a lot of golfers so the added Irrigation will improve the surface.
• Renovate the bunker edges on 9, 11 and 17. Over time sand builds up on these edges and can no longer support the machinery used to cut the grass around them so we will remove the soil, build a new artificial face, replace the soil and re-sod..We did the bunkers on 1, 2, 8, and 11 a few years ago in the same way and it has been very successful.
• Extend the rear of the 5th green. We will reshape the area to the rear of the 5th green and take the green surface that we can’t use from the front and re-lay it at the back. This will give us more usable green space and more pin positions.

Keith Clancy – Course Superintendent

Below is some work on the course we hope to complete this winter, weather permitting.

• Drainage around new 4th tee.
• Prune tree back of 9th tee.
• Verti-drain & slit all fairways and tees.
• Reshape back of 7th tee.
• Remove lavender from garden, repair edge and tidy.
• Renovate gates of garden.
• Remove trees from 12^th/15^th.
• Install irrigation on 4th and 9th fairways.
• Extend irrigation on 7th approach.
• Prune roots on 12th tee and 18th green.
• Plant wild flowers at back of 12th.
• Renovate bunker edges on 9^th 11^th and 17^th.
• Rip out briars to right of 1st tee gates and plant hedging
• Paint gates and railings at entrances
• Make a divot box area for bottom of practice area
• Split hedge on 18th tee
• Reduce size of bunker on left 4th green, very difficult to keep sand on face with current design
• Shape area right of 17th green to remove kink/dip
• Tree pruning
• Mulch under trees with exposed roots
• Remove suckers on trees

The Sports Turf Research Institute (STRI) is the world’s leading authority on the maintenance of golf courses (https://strigroup.com) One of their key clients is the R&A, advising them on the presentation of the courses used for the Open Championship. They have been providing advice to Greystones Golf Club since 2012 on the maintenance of the golf course. Included in their service is an annual visit where objective data is gathered and an advisory report produced. Their most recent visit to the club was on 2^nd September 2021.

Over the past 3 years the STRI have been assisting us to face the challenge presented by the banning of many of the fungicides and pesticides traditionally used by golf clubs to control disease and the damage caused by worms and leatherjackets. The key recommendation has been to attempt to seed finer grass, in particular bentgrass, on our greens. This grass type is far more resistant to disease than the dominant meadow grass native to our greens.

The highlight of the most recent report is in the first paragraph:

“The performance of the greens presented on the day was reflected in the best set of data collected this year in my travels which is being achieved without ironing and with a slightly more relaxed mowing height. They were within Open Championship standard in terms of ball roll quality Managing the greens as you do to balance bentgrass promotion and playability is best practice.”

Other highlights included:

“It was hard to fault the quality of the tees in terms of grass cover, appearance and stability underfoot.”

“The definition and quality of the fairways from the tee was of the highest order.”

Below are some photographs and comments on the course:

Figure 1: Good increase in creeping bentgrass to the 4th green away from the front. The medium green coloured bentgrasses are the desired types rather than the native grey tones. There was more noticeable increase, albeit mainly to less trafficked parts, to the front nine. It is reported that there is more casual golf played on the back nine.  A very good bentgrass seed strike was seen on the day. How much persists will be down to the traffic levels and height of cut.

Figure 9: High quality definition on the 18th. The mowing regime is responsive to growth fluctuations and well on top of it. The quality of cut was impressive to it and all short mown elements.

Figure 6: The 17th tee like all was coping very well with wear due to the stability under foot (due to sand inputs), good nitrogen and water inputs. It is an achievement to deliver such condition given the extremely high volume of traffic.

Figure 8: Great work seen to lighten the right side of the 12th hole.

Council wishes to thank Keith Clancy and his team of Eoin, Dave, Keith, Peter, Shane and Liam on their excellent work.

Keith has written a piece on the factors governing green speed below:

Factors that influence green speed.

As we have communicated before, we are taking measures to promote bent grass in our greens and reduce the amount of meadow grass.

We have also mentioned the fact that the days of producing very fast greens all season long are a thing of the past as it is no longer sustainable due to changes in legislation and also environmental factors. Particularly as we go through the transition stage.

In order to produce an environment that encourages bent and reduces meadow grass we must disrupt the surface as little as possible, raise height of cuts as much as possible, reduce thatch, increase topdressing, reduce fertility and maintain optimum moisture levels.

The main factor that contributes to the speed of a green is the friction with the ball.  That can be a combination of friction with the grass leaf, moisture or sand particles.

With the higher height of cut there is understandably more grass on the greens so the ball will run more slowly, however there are a number of factors that will influence the amount of grass and the quality of the grass tip that will influence green speed.

In an ideal world greens would be cut with very sharp mowers and only when the grass leaf is dry and there is no sand on the green.

The mowers work with a similar action to a scissors. As with a scissors if it tries to cut something that is wet not all of it will be cut leaving some parts longer than others. It will not cut cleanly and leave a somewhat serrated finish.  The same is true with the mowers.  It is thought that the difference in speed between a dry and a wet cut is approximately 1 foot. It’s very difficult for us to cut greens when they are dry as golf starts so early in the morning. There is almost always a dew on the greens.  The dew has been particularly bad over the past 2 months as there has been very little wind during the night which helps to stop it forming

When we feed the greens there is usually a flush of growth.  This means that the mowers are trying to cut more grass leaves at any given time. As with a scissors it’s more difficult to cut 10 pieces of paper than 4. The solution to this is usually to double cut the greens.  This however has an impact on the bent grass as we are trying to reduce the amount of wear on the greens surface.

We also have to continue topdressing the greens which takes the edge off the blades very quickly.  Ideally the greens would be top-dressed in the mornings and left to dry out. Then the sand would be brushed in (when dry). However, because golfers don’t want to play on sandy greens we have to do our best to get as much sand into the surface while it’s still wet before golf starts . This means that there is always some sand on the surface the following morning when the greens are being cut.  This also impacts on green speed as mowers are not getting a clean cut on the grass leaf therefore more friction.

I think most golfers understand that when a green is wet it’s slower.  It doesn’t have to be visible to the eye though. Even the slightest bit of moisture on the grass leaf will impact on green speed. This  is very much out of our control.

We are working with a number of variables that will impact green speed and during the season we do our best to maintain a consistent speed, but when working with nature there are always going to be things that are out of our control and speeds will fluctuate.  This has always been the case but perhaps not so obvious when the greens were running very fast at 10 or 11 feet.  If there was a reduction of 6 to 8 inches the greens were still very fast.

Now, when the greens are running between 8.5 and 9.5 the small reduction in speed is a lot more obvious. However, as the STRI report attests, we are still producing good data in terms of smoothness and trueness despite the higher height of cut necessary to promote the finer grass.