Non-sticky Greens

An exploration of the playing issues around fine grass greens.   

Greenkeepers usually have to circulate through several golf clubs in order to develop their career and if they have served at courses like Muirfield and St.Andrews or Carnoustie, where everybody knows the fairway turf and the greens are of top quality, it always looks good for the CV.

Another course high in the ranking of being a true, firm, running game experience is Royal Dornoch, whom Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw publicised  favourably in the 1980’s.

Nevertheless, even Royal Dornoch went through a phase of following the fashionable policy of the time, of fertilising and greening-up, perhaps as a result of pressure from members to follow what they saw on TV at Augusta and other target-style courses.

Anyway, whatever was the reason, one month of the wrong policy can take ten years to put right and having played there every year since the mid 1980’s I now can report good news. The Dornoch greens are back to 80% fescue and indigenous bent grasses with the heavier areas of Poa annua (Annual meadow grass) and coarser rye grasses having been identified and being converted.

What effect has this had on the playing quality of the course? 

EC Fraser winner putts on the 16th at Royal Dornoch

Although the Highlands like every where else had a dry spring in 2011, they also had a drenching summer and so for the Carnegie event (the main Open tournament of the year held in August) the course was not as firm and fiery as the greenkeepers would have wished. However, two experiences I had over ten days of golf there this August, convinced me of the ‘playing’ sense in pursuing a fine grasses policy.

Firstly, on one of the Carnegie qualifying days it rained hard while playing  all of the 18 holes and yet the greens were still running at between a 10 and 11 stimp, with a consistent, smooth roll-out. They didn’t get what I call ‘sticky’.

The greens were cut at 4.5mm during the Carnegie week (Dornoch cut to 6mm in the winter) and it should be remembered that many courses around London have to cut their Poa annua greens at 2mm to obtain sufficient speed to satisfy their members’ demands.

The golf writer Henry Lord on the 17th at Royal Dornoch

The second experience was that of seeing some quite good MCC Golfers (members of the third MCC Highlands golf tour) struggling to score well, primarily because if an approach shot to a green at Dornoch is not quite perfect, the firmness of the turf and the humps and hollows around the many raised greens and perhaps the breeze, exaggerate what is wrong with the shot and; “your errant ball rolls off and casually explores nooks and crannies until settling eventually on a spot where gravity can influence it no longer”.

In contrast, we also had most enjoyable rounds at Nairn and the Old Moray links  at Lossiemouth. Here the greens, with predominantly bent/poa grasses, will receive the ball with a divot and stop quickly when any backspin is imparted; a ball thrown to the pin will stay close by.

At the other links courses north of Inverness and particularly Dornoch and Brora, as well as on the beautiful pure fescue greens at Castle Stuart, such an outcome is less likely. Instead, a running shot is usually the best choice and though many of the greens are huge at Dornoch, it is a true challenge to get a ‘bump and run’ shot close to the pin, considering the amount of roll-out the bent/fescue grasses give.

A lot of golfers are more used to controlling their shots on ‘sticky’ greens, particularly inland golfers from around London where many of the fine heathland courses, that are blessed with natural drainage, nevertheless still employ a high proportion of Poa annua (Annual meadow grass) in their greens.

Remarkably, we southerners won the match with our hospitable hosts at Nairn, admittedly on a calm day, while there were some high scores at Dornoch and close to a thrashing in the match at Brora!

It was mentioned to us that Nairn’s greens are being cut longer (ie 3.5mm) than the normal 2.5mm as a strategy until the lead up to the Curtis Cup in 2012. Perhaps this makes the famous Nairn turf a little more ‘sticky’ than usual but it is still a four star ‘joy to be alive’ experience to play at Nairn’s ‘raised beach’ course along the Moray Firth.

There is good accommodation in and around the town (and those on the right can be recommended). Nairn Dunbar is another fine course on the east of the town, recently upgraded, that is well worth playing.

Eoin Riddell, the Royal Dornoch Course Manager, who took over from Bob Mackay in 2006, has been on the Dornoch staff since the 1980’s and perhaps is the exception that proves the rule, that to get a top job you need to move around!

The Club earns nothing but praise for its pursuit of sustainable greenkeeping in the fashion of the greatest ever golf agronomist Jim Arthur, a founding influence on FineGolf. 

If you want the true running game of golf you can do no better than visit Dornoch, Brora, Golspie, Tain and Fortrose & Rosemarkie, courses all located north of Inverness, whose greens are all going in the fine direction, a direction that is supported by the new R&A website.

How does Riddell’s team achieve this excellence? They aerate the tees and greens fortnightly and the fairways quarterly. Slit-seeding to greens, aprons and fairways with fescues is undertaken during and through-out the growing season and a minimum of fertiliser is applied while a seaweed application is given twice per annum.

Though I am an amateur in these agronomic matters, as a golfer I can see it works and what a joy it is to play to and roll your putts out on Riddell’s firm bent/fescue greens.