As Kingsbarns Golf Links prepares to host this year’s Ricoh Women’s British Open from the 3 – 6 August, the renowned European Tour venue has released details of a series of changes which have taken place both on and off the course. The North East Fife course, which co-hosts the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, will also start the 2017 season on a high following a string of accolades from the golf media.

The course improvements, which appear on two of the par five holes, have been introduced to optimise the relationship between the course and the rugged North Sea coastline. Under direction of course architect Kyle Phillips, new tees on the 3rd and 16th holes have been constructed on existing land immediately beside the rocky beach. Golfers will now enjoy even more views along Scotland’s east coast while retaining teeing options for players of all standards.

The on-course developments have been accompanied by a number of key appointments to bolster the Kingsbarns roster and its ongoing drive to deliver exceptional customer service. As Kingsbarns chief executive Alan Hogg noted, the developments have been carefully planned.

“The changes both on and off the course have been implemented wholly to enhance the customer experience,” he said. “With the Ricoh Women’s British Open being contested over the links here in August, 2017 will be an exciting and busy year at Kingsbarns. We were conscious of implementing these changes ahead of the tournament and formally unveiling them at the start of the season. This has been achieved through a lot of hard work by our highly skilled maintenance team supported by local contractors during the winter months.”

Released in December 2016, Golf Monthly’s Top 100 Courses of UK and Ireland registered a four-place climb for the Fife course which now holds 17th slot in the respected poll and was the third highest climber in the top 20. “The course is jam-packed with strong golf holes and wonderful views,” the magazine noted. “It is a very special course indeed, and one that should be on every keen golfer’s must-play list.”

The result followed an unprecedented leap earlier in the year when Kingsbarns jumped 10 places to enter Golf World’s top 10. “There has always been a great deal of fondness for the links,” explained Chris Bertram, Golf World’s Top 100 editor, “with plenty among the panel eager to see it rise into the top 10.”

As well as on-course changes at Kingsbarns, the practice facility has been enhanced with the short-game area being expanded and the grass-tee driving range extended. “The recent polls recognise our continuing commitment to develop Kingsbarns by fine-tuning our customer service and delivering a unique playing experience,” said Hogg. “This extends from making detailed improvements to the practice area and on the course to taking important decisions regarding our management team.”

As part of the ongoing programme of improvements, Kingsbarns is delighted to announce the appointment of PGA professional Garry Forrester as its new golf operations manager. With over 20 years’ experience in the golf industry, Forrester has amassed a wealth of experience in retail, tournaments and golf coaching after a number of appointments across Asia and operating his own golf school in St Andrews. He has also had success on the course recording a top 10 finish in the prestigious Scottish PGA Championship and is now looking forward to sharing his experience at Kingsbarns.

“Kingsbarns has been one of my favourite courses for a long time, so to come here to work alongside a fantastic team of professionals is extremely exciting,” said Forrester. “This year’s Ricoh Women’s British Open and everything else that goes on at a European Tour venue will make 2017 a fantastic season, and I am just thrilled to be a part of it.”

The Kingsbarns team has also been bolstered by the promotion of Josh Anderson to the post of caddie master; a key linchpin in the delivery of the Kingsbarns experience. A talented golfer, Anderson started at Kingsbarns in 2008 as a caddie. He played college golf in the US before returning to Fife to complete his PGA training. Anderson has also worked at The International in Amsterdam and is a fully qualified greenkeeper.

“I have a passion for providing great service and sharing my knowledge of golf,” he says. “Building lasting relationships with the customers and staff at Kingsbarns has been so enjoyable that to become caddie master has been a real honour. Our caddie team takes pride in everything we do.”

The changes at Kingsbarns have been led by the idea of creating unforgettable golfing experiences year after year. “The principle that has underpinned Kingsbarns since its launch in 2000 has been to realise the unquantifiable value of an exciting round of golf with good friends and colleagues,” said Art Dunkley, director of Kingsbarns Golf Links. “That has been our guiding philosophy and with the changes made over our closed season, I think we have raised our standard once again.”

Article written by Henry Bechelet

When we conducted a survey of golf greenkeepers from the North of England on the subject of getting the greens ready in the spring, it became clear that there is a big difference between what the greenkeepers thought was reasonable and what the golfers were actually expecting. The greenkeepers said that they generally manage to get their greens to their “summer condition” by late May. The problem was that these same greenkeepers then said that their members were expecting the greens to be ready by mid-April! We have to deal with “Augusta Syndrome” every year.

Having worked in our industry for the last 25 years, I have never failed to marvel at the incredible pace of evolution with course maintenance and the methods that are used to achieve the incredible playing surfaces that we routinely see these days. This progress has been driven in no small part by the desire of modern greenkeepers to keep pace with the expectations of the golfers and your willingness to adopt new techniques and ways of working to bring about an improvement in standards. If we looked at the current management practice of even the most staunchly “traditional” greenkeepers we would see techniques and methods that would have been considered new and even revolutionary 10-15 years ago but have now seeped into common use.

It is clear to me that all aspects of our greens maintenance programmes have evolved radically in recent years. Mowing regimes have become more precise and regular grinding to keep the blades sharp is more and more common. Powered brushing has come to the fore, along with more regular top dressings and turf ironing to polish the surfaces fast, smooth and true. Pure sand top dressings are commonplace and regular aeration/deep scarification are being used to manage the upper the soil profile with air-injection being deployed more and more to manage the soil lower down. These were all radical innovations when introduced but they have become accepted methods in a relatively short period of time. Not to mention the use of moisture probes, Clegg hammers and other objective measurement tools to guide decision making. But even with all this progress, the spring still remains a problem.

The problem with spring is that there is usually a significant amount of pre-season preparation work required to get the greens in shape. The greens need to recover from winter play and possibly disease activity and then get through hollow tine/aeration and top dressing work. We will certainly need to refine the surfaces with repeated top dressings, brushing/verticutting/grooming to create smooth surfaces for play. The problem is that we will need to get through all this work before the turf has even started growing if we are to satisfy the golfers. So, a key requirement for successfully preparing the greens in the spring is to establish growth as early as possible.

Over the last 4 years we have invested in trial work in order to understand what fertiliser type and analysis is the most effective at initiating early spring growth. The initial trial work carried out at STRI in 2013 and found that the best fertiliser (of those tested from our portfolio) for stimulating good early turf colour and quality responses (coupled with the least Microdochium patch disease activity) was the Greenmaster Prolite “Cold Start” 11-5-5 +8Fe formulation. This was certainly not a usual analysis for use in early spring in the UK. Rather than being received as progressive and helpful these findings were generally viewed skeptically by greenkeepers and agronomists as being an example of a fertiliser supplier giving irresponsible and cynical advice – mainly due to the perceived high Nitrogen (N) inputs for this time of year.

Undeterred, we carried on with the work and in spring 2015 we set up a rigorous on-course field trial. This work also confirmed the superiority of “Cold Start” compared to more “traditional” early spring feeds and it also cast doubt on potassium nitrate as being an effective way of generating strong growth at this time. We communicated these results in early 2016 with written articles and seminars (see “Getting Greens Going” from Greenkeeper International, March 2016). At this time those greenkeepers who really wanted to take on the challenge of getting through the spring earlier and with a greater level of top dressing to come out in better shape pricked up their ears and adopted the advice. Feedback from those who had used the “Cold Start” analysis was that they were impressed and they felt like it was a real step forward for the spring schedule.

Last year we continued the trial programme to gain further insight. This time we set up our trial on a working green at Harrogate Golf Club using a sand-based green with the sward comprising predominantly annual meadow grass (Poa annua). The trial this time tested various fertiliser treatments under different top dressing regimes. This time we were looking to get the greens “good” through a spring preparation schedule rather than just getting growth going. Easier said than done as it turned out!

The fertiliser treatments in this latest trial deployed different Nitrogen sources and applied them in different forms to review their relative impacts. They all applied the same amount Nitrogen over an 8 week period from the start of April with some requiring a couple of applications to even out the N inputs. At this time the soil temperatures were at 6-7oC and so we wouldn’t necessarily have expected a growth response. There was a micro granular fertiliser with the N coming solely from sulphate of ammonia (“Invigorator”), there was also a micro granular formulation with sulphate of ammonia and urea (“Cold Start”) and there was liquid applied urea and also potassium nitrate. Top dressing was applied 6 days later at the equivalent of 10 tonnes/ha and 20 tonnes/ha to see how each of the fertiliser treatments generated recovery.

In terms of the strength of response (growth, colour and turf quality) the results were entirely consistent with the previous trials. The assessments showed that all the fertilisers produced a growth response within a couple of weeks of application, but it was the “Cold Start” that was clearly the best at generating the strongest recovery through the top dressings (soil temperatures still in single figures). The Cold start plots also reached the NDVI target for “healthy growth” 2 weeks before any of the other fertilisers. The unfertilised areas sat beneath the dressing and didn’t move at all and so weren’t in any fit state to consider further applications any time soon. The “Cold Start” was streets ahead.

A second top dressing was then applied 3 weeks later (at a rate of 17 tonnes/ha) and the same results were borne out. The granular feeds packed a bigger punch than the liquid urea and potassium nitrate even though they were delivering the same amount of N. This would bear out our contention that properly formulated products perform better than “straights”.

The passage of progression through the trial was constantly being hampered by the cold spring weather with only short-lived warmer snaps occurring (daytime temperatures were still only 12-14 oC at the end of May!). Disease pressure (Microdochium nivale) was high during April and May (as a result) and its development certainly affected the progression of the surface preparations. Annual meadow grass particularly susceptible to Microdochium. Interestingly, it was the untreated control plots that were affected by the disease first but all were affected to some degree after 3 weeks from the start of the original outbreak. Where sulphate of iron was applied with the second application of “Invigorator”, the severity of attack was notably less.

The Poa seedheads then came with a vengeance to set the surfaces back even more. After making good early progress the nature of the surfaces started setting them back. The Poa seedheads had a shattering affect on the visual quality of the surfaces and also on the quality of the ball roll. Despite getting through 2 top dressings (along with verticutting, grooming and more intensive mowing) the seedheads destroyed the playing qualities – and right at the time when the golfers are becoming impatient for “summer best”. The true nature of the Poa had revealed itself at its devastating worst and it was then that I remembered why we wrote so many articles on sward species composition all those years ago. It also reconfirmed why I wanted to get all those “Phase 1” top dressings done and set the foundations in place for an agronomic change. I absolutely believe that effective spring nutrition is a key part of a transitional plan because it widens the maintenance window and allows a far greater amount of top dressing to be applied.

So, it has become clear that early spring nutrition is essential to help us get the greens through an early spring maintenance schedule and in particular recovery through top dressings. We have also established that some fertilisers are better than others. It is interesting that the “best” fertiliser for stimulating strong early season growth is not the analysis that anyone would have considered credible even 5 years ago. The Cold Start formulation certainly won’t be for everyone but if you need to get through some significant work in the spring then it might help you. The greens won’t magically become like Augusta but they will get moving.

The problem with progress is that we sometimes have to change our beliefs to make it happen. But if we base our new beliefs on solid evidence and we keep monitoring, then I really don’t see the problem.

To read the original article from ICL click here