Lynch clinches the BIGGA National Championship

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Lynch clinches the BIGGA National Championship: West Sussex Golf Club greenkeeper James Lynch won the BIGGA National Championship at the first attempt following two wonderful rounds of golf at Enville Golf Club.

Taking place on the 10th and 11th October, the event was hosted by the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association (BIGGA) and was sponsored by the association’s official Golf Partner, Origin Amenity Solutions.

Lynch clinches the BIGGA National Championship

Lynch clinches the BIGGA National Championship

James pipped three-time winner David Simpson of Crieff Golf Club by a single stroke to lift the BIGGA National Challenge Trophy, contested for over Enville’s Highgate course. Located in Staffordshire, Enville is a Regional Open Qualifying venue that is also the current host of The R&A Girls U16 Amateur Championship.

Playing in his first BIGGA National Championship, James shot two rounds of 74 to card a 4-over par 148, with David shooting 149 and previous winner Oly Browning of Queenwood Golf Club shooting 150.

In the Stableford competition, Tyler Holmes came out on top after shooting a combined total of 73 points. Anthony Duffield of Ham Manor Golf Club was second with 68 points.

James was accompanied throughout the two rounds by his fiancée April Watkins. The pair are due to marry in August next year, but with James set to defend the championship at Saunton Golf Club next September, he will have to convince April that Devon is a nice place to enjoy their honeymoon.

A scratch golfer, James said: “It feels amazing and I’m so happy to have won such a prestigious tournament. It’s my first year that I’ve been playing in it and it was a battle to the end. The lead changed hands throughout the round and I’m so relieved that I was able to win. My thanks go to BIGGA, Origin Amenity Solutions and Enville Golf Club for hosting such an amazing tournament.”

Andy Wood, golf course manager at Enville Golf Club, said: “It was a pleasure to host the BIGGA National Championship sponsored by Origin Amenity Solutions. We always enjoy preparing the course for a championship, but to host this prestigious event for fellow greenkeepers is a real honour and I hope everyone enjoyed their visit to Enville. Our greenkeeping team has done the club proud in setting up for this event, which gave them an opportunity to showcase their work to fellow professionals.”

On behalf of Origin Amenity Solutions, Glen Howard added: “It has been a fantastic two days. The course is looking amazing, we’ve been blessed with great weather and I’ve witnessed some cracking golf. It is a privilege to sponsor the BIGGA National Championship, which brings together golfers of all standards from across the association. It gives us an opportunity to catch up with people from within the industry, which I and the rest of the OAS team find invaluable. Congratulations to all the trophy winners, thank you to Enville Golf Club for a warm welcome and well done to all involved, particularly the greenkeeping team, who did a superb job.”

The 2023 BIGGA National Championship sponsored by Origin Amenity Solutions will take place at Saunton Golf Club on Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th September 2023.

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Turf Tank returns to SALTEX

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Turf Tank returns to SALTEX: Turf Tank, leading robotic line marking company and winner of the 2017 Saltex Innovation Award, is bringing the revolutionary Turf Tank One back to Saltex 2022.

Booth No G085

This year the company is bringing a new surprise to the show, the next generation robotic line marking software. Visitors will have a chance to discover the latest features, that improve usability, make the process even faster and easier, and offer more customisation options.

Turf Tank returns to SALTEX

Turf Tank returns to SALTEX

The Turf Tank UK team is inviting everybody interested in the technology to visit Stand G085 and learn how Turf Tank could improve their line marking operations.

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We’re dealing with an establishment where people are investing a lot of money sending their kids to a private school which excels in all areas of education on and off the pitch. So, I want to make sure that the pitches reflect that level of expectation. The Turf Tank robot brings a quality of perfomance and reliability that we expect.

– Lee Marshallsay, Grounds Manager, Eton College

With the traditional way of marking pitches, there was a lot of time wasted. Today we’ve marked five pitches, which would have taken our staff three-four days. With the robot, we’ve done that in an afternoon! It’s the future of line marking!

– Richard Hare, Head Groundsperson, Bromsgrove School

It wasn’t until we used the GPS machine that it highlighted the fact that when you come to mark a line freehand, they creep a bit. And then they creep a little bit more. And then they creep a little bit more, and you don’t really notice the little bit of creeping until you get a GPS line marker overmarking the pitches that were already there. You realise that they’ve moved a considerable amount of distance, and it kind of highlights that the lines were actually in the wrong place.

– Ewan Hunter, Grounds Manager, Nottingham Forest FC

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Foamstream proves a real all-rounder

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Foamstream proves a real all-rounder: Switching to the non-herbicidal Foamstream system for total weed control hasn’t only brought benefit for the team at Tim Brooks Garden Services in terms of time and efficiency, the fact it is glyphosate-free has been very well received by their customers too!

Owner Tim Brooks purchased an L12 from Weedingtech two years ago and comments that the machine has already paid itself back multiple times over – both in terms of the additional work it has generated and the convenience and fewer treatment cycles that Foamstream demands per year.

Foamstream proves a real all-rounder

Foamstream proves a real all-rounder

Tim and his team of three undertake all gardening and landscaping tasks, mainly in domestic settings, which was the reason for the switch to a weed control solution that would be kinder to both people and the environment. “Customers are far more conscious of the negative impact of chemicals now on health and their surroundings, so we decided to trial various different alternatives to Glyphosate. We tried burning and hot water treatments, but found Foamstream to be by far the most effective” Tim explains.

Foamstream is an organically approved process, utilising a plant-based foam comprised of naturally-occurring oils and sugars which acts as an insultation blanket to the active ingredient – hot water – maintaining ‘kill zone’ temperatures of 57oc+ to penetrate and kill a full range of broadleaf weed species. In independent trials, the efficiency of Foamstream was found to be comparable to that of Glyphosate, out-performing other non-chemical methods.

“One of the big benefits we have found is that we can use the same method for multiple purposes – treating weeds, moss and algae but also for surface cleaning and pressure washing which is fantastic. Not only that, but because Foamstream sterilises the spores and seeds before weeds appear, we have found that we are only having to treat surfaces once or twice a year which is significantly less than the multiple applications of Glyphosate that were previously required.”

Safe to use around children, animals and environmentally sensitive areas such as watercourses, Foamstream has also opened up new opportunities for Tim when it comes to working on commercial jobs in conjunction with local authorities. “We’ve demonstrated our Foamstream service to a number of town councils who are all looking for more sustainable, chemical-free alternatives. Their positive response mirrors that of everyone we speak to, and we can only see that Foamstream and its benefits will continue to open more doors for us in the future.”

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Aberdeen FC purchase INFINICUT® mowers

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Aberdeen FC purchase INFINICUT® mowers: Aberdeen Football Club have made a major step forward in their aim of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 with the purchase of a brace of battery-powered mowers from INFINICUT®.

The combination of an INFINICUT® SM34 rotary and 34” floating head mower form part of a wider sustainability strategy for The Dons – reducing not just their carbon footprint but noise pollution too.

Aberdeen FC purchase INFINICUT® mowers

Aberdeen FC purchase INFINICUT® mowers

The Club have recently added their signature to the UN Sports for Climate Change framework – underlining its intent to become carbon neutral, and are implementing a plan across all areas of operation to meet this commitment. In charge of this for the fibre-sand stadium pitch is Head Groundsperson David Nicholson, who alongside his team of four are now discovering the many benefits of battery-power.

“From our very first conversation with Bobby McDougall at INFINICUT®, we could see how the purchase of these mowers would be a fantastic step forward in reducing our fuel usage and improving our green credentials” explains David. “Once we’d decided battery was the way to go, it didn’t take us long to settle on the INFINICUT’s® – we had a demonstration of both the rotary machine and floating head cylinder mower and were so impressed that we didn’t look at anything else!”

“We thought the cut quality of our previous petrol-driven machine would be hard to beat but the cut we get from the INFINICUT® SM34, together with the powerful suction, is superb.” Used for the post-match clean-up cut, another thing that has impressed David and the team is the noise – or lack of it – emitted from the mower, equipped with a UXR lithium battery. “Sometimes it would be half an hour or more before we could resume work after a fixture because of media interviews happening around the ground but with the SM34 we can be out and cutting straight away.”

“It’s comfortable to operate and simple to control. We can manually adjust the height of cut really easily and settings such as the walking speed can all be set via the INFINIApp® which means that in the winter, when the ground is softer and the plant is more vulnerable, we can simply slow it right down and achieve a better result.”

Also delivered in July 2022 was an INFINICUT® FL34. “This has been another fantastic purchase and the floating head has without doubt improved the quality of cut and, in turn, had a really positive impact on plant health even in this relatively short period of time.” David concludes, “These machines tick a lot of boxes but ultimately do the job of cutting and presenting a first-class surface better than any other machine we’ve used.”

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GroundWOW® helps celebrate St. George’s Park anniversary

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GroundWOW® helps celebrate St. George’s Park anniversary: When the F.A Group Marketing Department wanted a grand scale commemorative design on the centre of pitch four at St George’s Park, North-West technology innovators GroundWOW® were very happy to take the call.

Using their SFX ULTRA™ model, GroundWOW® printed the tenth anniversary design directly onto the perfect canvas of pitch four at one of the world’s leading training and educational establishments. Created pixel by pixel, the image contained the highly detailed design intricacies of the Three Lions as part of an activation that measured a whopping 21 x 17M in size.

GroundWOW® helps celebrate St. George’s Park anniversary

GroundWOW® helps celebrate St. George’s Park anniversary

The whole activation was a class act completed in time for the Home of England Football to welcome The Prince of Wales, President of the F.A. His Royal Highness observed activities across some of the venue’s 13 outdoor pitches, full-size indoor 3-G pitch, and indoor Futsal arena to celebrate the occasion.

GroundWOW’s Chief Commercial Officer, David Pritchard, said it was “an enormous privilege for us to contribute to this event. Our technology is aimed at all sport and so much of our inbound interest has in fact come from football. It was a real pleasure to be on site and a great opportunity for us to showcase what we do at the home of the nation’s favourite sport. None of this was lost on the whole team at HQ, all of whom were immensely proud to have helped create this grand scale art”.

The Staffordshire facility oversees the development of elite English football in a performance-first environment, a fitting location therefore for GroundWOW® to demonstrate its transformative technology that is taking on the sports sector with a performance-first approach.

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