INFINICUT® mowers land in Latin America

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INFINICUT® mowers land in Latin America: Turf Managers Specialist (TMS) Grass have become the first sports turf contractors in Central South America to own a pair of 34” floating head mowers from INFINICUT®.

Having spent years travelling the world to discover the top tools and techniques for grounds maintenance, Owner Enio Cubillo began to see the INFINICUT’s at leading venues and decided that the sustainable credentials would be a perfect fit for their projects around Latin America.

INFINICUT® mowers land in Latin America

INFINICUT® mowers land in Latin America

TMS Grass began life seven years ago in Costa Rica and the team have since installed and maintained hybrid and natural surfaces in countries including Mexico and Guatemala. One of their most recent projects was to install a new pitch at Panama’s National Stadium, Estadio Rommel Fernández Gutiérrez. “We were responsible for all stages of the new hybrid surface at the stadium in Panama City from installation through to the ongoing maintenance” explains Enio. “We wanted to use the newest and best technologies in the market to do this and was the reason for the purchase of two INFINICUT’s from FLexGrass in May 2021.”

“The INFINICUT’s are very comfortable to use and being battery powered, bring multiple benefits to the operator and surrounding environment. We are increasingly finding that venues worldwide are looking for greener solutions so having two electric mowers is a great addition to the services we can offer. Since the stadium pitch was completed in July, the pair have been used on a daily basis, with everybody very impressed with the quality of cut and the definition of stripe we achieve.” Enio has also praised the versatility and the adjustable parameters on the INFINICUT®, particularly the adjustable bedknife angle which means it has delivered cut consistency on the Bermuda grass construction.

Together with National League and LPF training and fixtures, the Estadio Rommel Fernández Gutiérrez is also hosting five qualifier games for the 2022 Qatar World Cup. “It’s important that we are delivering the best surface possible and the quality of finish with the INFINICUT® is unbeatable. As important as the machinery is the support package, and we have had nothing but excellent service from both FLexGrass and INFINICUT® with any technical help we need, no matter the time difference” he concludes.

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Oakland Hills highlights role of Bernhard

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Oakland Hills highlights role of Bernhard: Oakland Hills Country Club’s South Course has made a meteoric rise in Golf Magazine’s (Golf.com) World Top 100 Golf Courses rankings list, as it celebrates the completion of an extraordinary restoration project and improved course conditioning, through the support of Bernhard and Company.

The South Course at Oakland Hills has played host to 17 major golf championships in its illustrious history, including six US Opens, three PGA Championships and the 35th Ryder Cup in 2004. The restoration project has allowed the course, once again, to offer its originally intended playing style, with larger fairway landing areas and greens. That, coupled with pristine conditioning, has enabled the famous course – nicknamed ‘The Monster’ – to rise a phenomenal and unmatched 41 places in the new rankings list, moving into 31st position.

Oakland Hills highlights role of Bernhard

Oakland Hills highlights role of Bernhard

Following the renovation work carried out by renowned course architects, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, Directory of Agronomy, Phil Cuffare, and his team of turf professionals were tasked with elevating the conditioning on the South Course to its highest ever level. With industry-leading grinding equipment and educational support provided by Bernhard and Company, the team was able to work with profound efficiency in delivering attention to detail mirroring that of the very best courses in the world.

Cuffare said: “We are very excited about the recognition that our famed South Course is receiving after the completion of its extensive restoration. To bring back to life something that had been lost for so long is a great feeling and we are continuing to express that through our conditioning efforts.

“The ultimate compliment to great golf course architecture is great conditioning. As such, the most important aspect of our agronomic programmes is turf health, and the cornerstone of achieving that is using our reel and bedknife grinding machinery to sharpen mowing equipment used to maintain our fine turf areas.

“The ability to achieve the perfect cut in an efficient and precise manner is what separates Bernhard and Company from others. We have very high expectations that need to be met and Bernhard is the partner that helps us to achieve those goals.”

The project involved the course being largely stripped back to the bare soil, to make way for a total revamp. When managing the growth and health of the new turf, it was more important than ever to ensure that all grass cutting was carried out with perfectly sharp blades to prevent any damage to the young plants.

What’s more, each hole was covered with sand in traditional USGA specification, meaning that mower blades were constantly subjected to sand damage. However, with the Bernhard and Company Express Dual 4250 Reel Grinder and Anglemaster 4500 Bedknife Grinder machines in the workshop, the maintenance teams were able to sharpen blades as regularly as necessary to ensure that they were operating at maximum efficiency as the course began to blossom.

The latest Golf Magazine Top 100 ranking reaffirms Bernhard and Company as the dominant grinder supplier to the world’s best courses. In addition to Oakland Hills, Bernhard and Company are also the official grinding machine provider for over half of the courses named in the list, including major championship venues all around the globe. Impressively, Bernhard and Company machinery is used by 13 of the world’s top 20 courses and seven of the top 10.

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MM seed making waves

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MM seed making waves: Newquay Golf Club is reaping the rewards from using three mixtures belonging to the market-leading MM grass seed portfolio.

Newquay may well be known more for its surfing and sandy beaches, but it also boasts a truly superb golf course. Located in the heart of the town, the picturesque 18-hole Newquay Golf Club is a challenging yet rewarding links course.

MM seed making waves

MM seed making waves

Dan Kendle, who has been a greenkeeper for the entirety of his career, moved to the Southwest seven years ago to take on the head greenkeeper role at Newquay Golf Club. It was his first managerial position in golf, and with a thriving membership and renowned for having some of the best greens in the county, it’s safe to say that Dan has made his mark.

His attention to detail and his insistence on using only the best products certainly has helped Dan to maximise results.

“I’ve never insisted on using one particular brand or manufacturer,” he said. “The most important thing is to use the products that work best on the course.”

Dan understands the importance of having a grass seed he can rely on and for the past two years he has been impressed with a range of MM grass seed mixtures.

“David Bevan from Agrovista Amenity recommended the MM brand to me, and I’m glad he did,” said Dan. “I started by using MM13 on fairways and tees, and a little bit of MM50 on some high-wear areas, such as walkways. They have performed really well. It is a small compact course, so the tees and walkways tend to get a lot of wear, and these mixtures have given us a lot more wear tolerance.”

As Dan says, MM13 is a high-quality traditional mixture for overseeding or renovating fine dense tees, fairways and roughs, particularly where maintenance and input levels are low. It has good winter colour and high disease resistance. MM50, one of the UK’s biggest selling grass mixtures, is also ideal for use on extreme wear areas and is fast establishing and resilient.

Dan and the team overseed the fairways and tees with these two mixtures twice a year in the spring and autumn but will also target specific areas as and when needed.

Based on the success of those mixtures, David decided to investigate which MM mixture would be beneficial to his greens. After consultation with Matt Gresty from MM Seeds and David Bevan from Agrovista Amenity, he decided that the all-new MM Coastal mixture would be the way forward.

“We actually did some trial plots with the MM Coastal mixture and based on the results we decided to overseed the greens with it,” he said. “It is a 100% slender creeping red fescue mixture which has a high salt tolerance. This is perfect for us because we are very exposed here. It is a dry site too so the fact that MM Coastal is drought tolerant, works very well for us.

“My plan is to start overseeding the greens and surrounds with MM Coastal on a more regular basis now,” continued Dan. “I’ll probably apply it at a lower rate every 5-6 weeks just to keep pumping the fescues into them to try and out-compete the areas of less desirable species such as Poa.”

“Germination is excellent and that is across all three seed varieties. You also get great colour from the mixtures all year round. On top of that, I get good support and backup from both Matt and David. I can always bounce ideas around with them and we enjoy discussing different overseeding techniques.

“With MM – it’s the whole package.”

For further information, please contact MM Sports Seed on 01386 791102 or visit the company’s new website www.mm-seeds.co.uk. You can also follow the company on Twitter: @MM_Seed

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Rapid ROI on Capillary Bunkers

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Rapid ROI on Capillary Bunkers: Last year, the six-course Landings Club, in Savannah, Georgia, installed the Capillary Bunkers liner on its Magnolia course, as part of a large-scale renovation with Arnold Palmer Design architect Brandon Johnson. And director of ground and projects Chris Steigelman says the results are already showing the wisdom of that decision.

“We have dabbled with various bunker drainage techniques across our courses, though none of them apart from Magnolia have wall to wall liners,” he says. “But part of the goals of the renovation project was to reduce our bunker maintenance workload. Brandon’s designs called for the bunker surface area to be reduced by 50 per cent, and with the Capillary Bunkers liner, the amount of time we now spend on bunker sand maintenance has gone down dramatically.”

Rapid ROI on Capillary Bunkers

Rapid ROI on Capillary Bunkers

The new-look Magnolia has retained the steeply flashed bunker faces that the course previously had, and Steigelman says that the liner has played an important role in making the design work effectively. “We get around fifty inches of rain a year, and in the summertime we often get thunderstoms coming from out of nowhere and dumping a huge load of rain on us,” he explains. “Previously, every time we got a big rain, the bunkers were destroyed, and I had to put several guys on rebuilding them for several days. Now, that doesn’t happen.”

The club started the renovation project in March 2021, with the Capillary Bunkers installation starting in June. The bunkers were finished in August, and the course reopened – hosting a Korn Ferry Tour event in its first week – at the start of November. Georgia-based contractor Todd Godwin Construction handled the work.

Steigelman says the benefits of the Capillary Bunkers technology have already been made very clear. “We operate two golf courses out of the Magnolia maintenance facility, the Marshwood course as well as Magnolia,” he says. “We got hit by two tropical storms, one on a Sunday night at the end of June: seven inches of rain, four in an hour and a half. It trashed the bunkers on Marshwood, to the extent that we had to spend $25,000 dollars on new bunker sand. The bunkers on Magnolia were like nothing had ever happened. It was incredible. I took our board out there and said to them ‘This is what you’re paying for’.”

“I’m very grateful that we chose Capillary Bunkers, because of the ease of installation. During the build, it was raining every day, and so we wouldn’t have been able to install some of the competitor products. But the guys were just out there laying the concrete and then putting plastic sheeting over it to help it dry!”

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‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised

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‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised: Good consistent products and excellent customer service are the two reasons why Jeremy Browne, Head Greenkeeper at the Herefordshire Golf Club, chooses to use Mansfield Sand.

Established in 1896, the Herefordshire could well be the oldest club in the County, but it certainly is moving with the times. The new owners have invested in a number of improvements as they attempt to boost membership and secure the future of the club.

‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised

‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised

Jeremy, who has been at the club for 21 years, is playing an integral role in this respect too.

“There are four of us that manage the course, one of whom is an apprentice, and it is important to look ahead,” he said. “The plan is to bring in more apprentices because the three of us senior members of staff are all in our late fifties, so whether we like it or not, we probably won’t still be working here in say ten years. It is essential that we leave the course in safe hands – we want people to come through and learn all our knowledge and benefit from our experience.”

One tip Jeremy will be sure to pass down is how a high-quality sand can be vital to the overall health and performance of a golf course. Therefore, choosing the right sand is not a decision to be taken lightly – as he explains.

“We did use another company for our sand, but we were having problems getting deliveries and the products were not consistent,” he said. “We’re a hilly, clay-based course and it gets incredibly wet in the winter, so I wanted a good consistent, coarse sand to introduce into the greens.

“I did some research and had lots of samples sent to me. We looked at the analysis of all of them, tried them all and the one we decided on was Mansfield Sand’s MM35.”

Jeremy chose Mansfield’s MM35 Golf pure silica sand for top-dressing his greens because it brings a number of benefits such as improved recovery, firmness, smoothness and an improved rootzone. MM35 Golf also makes for a great bunker sand as it has fantastic playing characteristics as well as being aesthetically attractive.

Sourced directly from the company’s Two Oaks Quarry in Mansfield, the Mansil Silica products are predominantly used in the construction and maintenance of a wide range of sports surfaces – from winter sports pitches, golf courses, bowling greens and all amenity turf areas.

‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised

‘Consistent’ Mansfield Sand praised

“Once you pick a top-dressing, it is best to stick with it, providing it is good of course,” said Jeremy. “I don’t believe in using different ones all the time because you end up getting a build-up of different sands in your profile.

“The consistency on the MM35 seems to be very good, and my aim is for it to help improve drainage and keep the surface dry. We use the product on all of the greens and on our tees too. I’d like to top-dress the greens monthly and I’m hoping to be able to do that with MM35 sooner rather than later.

“The service from Mansfield Sand is also excellent – I like my deliveries to have come and gone before the golfers get in at 8am and they have never let me down.”

For more information visit www.mansfield-sand.co.uk

You can also follow the company on Twitter – @MansfieldSand and Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/MansfieldSandSportSurfaces/

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