The Duke’s Green Keeping

With rain forecast for Wednesday evening we took the opportunity to top dress the greens before it arrived which should help wash the sand into the sward. Conditions were not ideal with the high winds causing a less than uniform coverage but with some events coming up and the course getting busier over the next [...]

I was fortunate enough to be selected by BIGGA to travel with 9 other greenkeepers to the GCSAA show in Orlando, Florida. Arriving on the evening of Saturday 5th Feb, we had another day to acclimatise and get to know our fellow delegates before the festivities began. Monday 7th Feb consisted of two course visits, [...]

Before the snow arrived on an overcast day, this shows the 7th hole from the tee where the bunker in the fairway had become completely obscured by the gorse bushes. There is a lot of this type of work to undertake this winter as a lot of the gorse on the course is becoming too [...]

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week we had the HNC golf course management students from Elmwood College come for a course visit to talk about various drainage problems/solutions and installation techniques that we have here at The Dukes.

On the 19th and 20th of October we hosted the Sprint to St Andrews Final. The tournament was an inaugural event which saw 30 qualifiers from the Tartan tour compete over 36 holes for a prize fund of £10,000. The event was won by Scottish PGA Champion Chris Doak after a play off. With only [...]

The beginning of August saw 4 of our greenkeeping staff volunteering to work at Whistling Straits for the USPGA championship. They all had a great time and put in plenty of unsociable hours, sometimes starting at 3am to rake bunkers etc, Jon even ended up visiting the hospital due to some pretty serious mosquito bites. [...]

See the below link for some info on the maintenance at Whistling Straits for the USPGA Championship. Our mechanic Austen Cameron makes a brief appearance http://www.gcsaa.tv/view.php?id=302

Hopefully the guys out volunteering at the USPGA can come back down to earth after being interviewed for sky sports news. Although they did get their names mixed up!.

See the below link for some info on the preparations at Whistling Straits for the upcoming USPGA Championship. http://www.gcsaa.tv/view.php?id=292 Four of our guys are heading Stateside to assist on the course. Craig Parry and Steven Wilson to assist with the preparation the week before the tournament, Austen Cameron and Jon Methven to assist the week [...]

We are experiencing problems with take all patch on a few greens at the moment. We are using a 100% fescue mix to over seed these areas. This year we are trying a different method of seeding. spike the area with a fork to create as many holes as possible seed to drop into. use [...]