these Open Championship Clubs choose to relief grind - Pitchcare

Golf
As the course has
100% floodlights we
can work when we
want. In the summer
the temperatures
are up to 50 O C
My next stop was Antalya in Turkey!
Unfortunately, the course had been sown
with cool season grass. On the first day I
had a course inspection with the owner!
There was a few tufts of lolium under the
trees, and that was the only grass on the
course - the rest had been wiped out by
pythium! The owner’s demand was “we
need to be open in three weeks!”
September in Antalya is generally hot,
but I ‘got lucky’ with the temperatures
and managed to blitz the course with
lolium, providence (Agrostis) on the
greens. The course opened on time, but
was a little rough. It became playable,
within ten weeks and I received not a
single complaint.
The following summer, we converted
the course to Bermuda 419, and the
greens to ‘tiff dwarf ’ the summer after.
I have never seen anything like Turkish
Pythium in my life! You could just about
set your watch by it. 21st, 22nd May,
same spot every year, it would start, (we
overseeded with Bermuda during the
winter months). From the 20th of May,
whilst the greens were Agrostis, we had a
‘pythium man’, and all he did was check
the greens all day. I have seen pythium
38 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
Defence Raya under floodlights
strike at 2.00pm there! I have seen foot
marks through the green when a golfer
walked through an infected area. It really
was quite incredible. Because of the high
Ph. in the water - 7.5 up to 8+when the
tide came in - full or no moon, salt went
from 700 to around 1300 - 2050 was the
highest we measured - so trying to work
out your fungicide active duration was
pure guesswork!
Again, cut worm was easy to deal with,
as was the dreaded white grub! What a
nightmare, the aim was to eradicate
them in their first instar (development
stage); after that it becomes very difficult.
I met some great characters during my
time in Antalya, including the local
Mayor, who had been detained by the
authorities, for six months, for some
financial deal. When he was released, the
whole village was out celebrating. It was a
great party that night.
So, on to Pakistan. I am sure, to most
from the outside looking in, it is
perceived to be a dangerous country.
However, having spent over a year here,
the people are delightful, and I have
never seen such a highly skilled and
motivated labour force in my life.
The Defence Raya Golf and Country
Club is as good a course as I have seen,
designed with a housing complex around
the course. As luck would have it, the soil
structure is fairly similar to the Turkish
south coast. Here, winter dormancy is
from late November through to mid-
February, which is our main golf season.
It has been a long fourteen months.
Everything we do here is in-house, with a
staff of one hundred and twenty,
including eight masons to construct and
maintain the cart track, water feature,
shade canopy etc., and ten
mechanics/electricians who look after all
machines, plus twenty odd generators
around the town.
We have constructed a tree and flower
nursery that produced 250,000 shrubs
from cuttings and seed - six staff are
allocated to this. The plan is to turn it
into a commercial enterprise next year.
We hand planted ten acres of gardens
with Bermuda grass, in the housing area,
over a two month period in the summer.
Then, during the monsoon season, is
when tree planting starts. There’s an
eight to twelve week period (depending
on the rains) in which 10,000 trees and