Kevin Munt Golf Consultant

Golf Greens - 2mm Height of Cut your USP?

After over a dozen articles on the subject, more than 200 thread posts, and in excess of 22,000 Forum page views, the issue of mowing greens as low as 2mm, on a continuous basis throughout the growing season, came to a head at the BIGGA’s BTME currently being staged in Harrogate.

Since Ealing Golf Club’s Course Manager Greg Evans went to press with this radical concept, I have not been slow in making my opinion known on this subject. So like everyone else in the 220 plus throng, who attended at 08.00 yesterday morning, I have been eagerly looking forward to this debate for sometime.

Golf is played on a green surface!

Here’s a new one for all you greenkeepers in England. What are you expecting to find once the snow cover melts on your greens? Unless you are managing a course in the highlands of Scotland it is unlikely that the majority of you have seen snow cover on your course last this long before.

How to grow great Poa annua Golf Greens

Come on lets admit it at least seventy percent of the golf greens in the UK have Poa annua (Annual Meadow Grass) (AMG) as their dominant species. Some Golf Course Managers are fighting it and trying to encourage the finer grasses to gain a greater hold, and more power to them, but the majority are making best of what they have and what they have is Poa annua!

So if you are working with Poa annua just how do you get the best out of it and how do you get it to give you good putting surfaces?

The Wentworth Club resurfaces the Burma Road

This is a slight exaggeration, but the reconstruction of all eighteen greens complexes on the West course (Burma Road to give it its nickname, for those who remember such days!) has caused much gossip, rumour and debate within our industry. So what is the truth, are the greens going to play better than in the recent past, is the design in keeping and of tournament quality, just what has been going on at Britain’s richest estate?

Listed Protection for Golf Courses?

In the latest edition of Greenkeeper International its Editor, Scott MacCallum, poses the question of whether golf courses in the UK should have a system of national protection, the equivalent of a Listed Building status. Good question Scott.

True Greens - Smooth talk is not cheap

They are off and trundling again. Yes Messers Windows and Bechelet of the STRI are once again promoting their Trueness meter. I reviewed this machine during Harrogate Week at the start of this year, and I hate to be smug, but I was right. It is far too expensive for the regular members golf club to purchase.

I quote from an article in, this industry’s most informed magazine, Pitchcare. “At present, it (Trueness Metre) does have its limitations because it only measures the smoothness/trueness of the greens at a single point in time and, at present, it is beyond the resources of most clubs to purchase one. Maybe in ten years it will be a standard assessment tool available to everyone”.

‘Virtually’ mowing golf courses

Well I never. The message about the differing playing qualities of traditional links golf and America’s penchant for target style golf may just be getting though.

In an article written up on Fastcompany’s web site, Craig Evans the Director of Marketing for EA Games (Electronic Arts), the creators of the Tiger Woods game franchise, commenting on their ‘Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online’ stated;

Soil the final Frontier?

Do Compost teas have a place in golf green maintenance?

There is undoubtedly a growing interest in this country in ‘growing your own’ and it is spreading to golf clubs, I am not talking about vegetables though, no I am talking about beneficial micro-organisms, The life in the soil that provides life on this planet.

I have been asked a lot lately what I think about their part in management of golf greens, so here is where I am at on the subject of bug life.

Greens - The Need for Speed?

Pitchcare’s cleverly juxtaposed articles in last months magazine on heights of cut for golf greens inspired me to rustle up some views on the topic from within the greenkeeping profession.

Hence I posted a thread on the subject of the Windows/Bechelet versus Evans approach to mowing heights for greens on the BIGGA’s Open forum to see what the mood was out there at the ‘coal face’.

Well the thread has had over 20,000 ‘views’ to date, making it by far the most popular thread ever. I guess that the two articles were also the most thumbed pages in Pitchcare last month as well.

This goes to show that green speeds are the single most emotive topic in golf course maintenance and rightly so, after all, the whole reason for playing the game, and thus having a Greenstaff, is to put your ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible.

Having got this overwhelming response, I thought that I would keep the ball rolling!

Spring Greens renovation programme (pictorial)

I have no doubt that most greenkeeping teams this side of the equator will have completed a spring renovation operation on their greens ready for the season ahead.

Most clubs in the UK now seem to have a ‘maintenance week’ set aside to accommodate major works to greens in spring and autumn.

This is true at Buckinghamshire Golf Club and Course Manager Simon Graham and his team undertook his programme in a dry warm week at the end of March (pure luck!).