Golf Course Maintenance - Winter Work

By: Sue de Zwart

The mercury is dropping and the growing season is coming to an end. This is the ideal time to undertake winter maintenance on your golf course, as the work that you complete during this period will have a lot to do with you enjoying a trouble-free spring and summer ahead. I don’t believe in fighting fires. Preventative maintenance & planning are key. There are always unforeseen issues which crop up, but these are the exception.

IRRIGATION Irrigation is always my starting point. This is, after all, the heart of the golf course, and it is easy to neglect this department when the system is working well. The quality of your turf is depends on the efficiency of your irrigation, and it is much better to take stock of your system in winter rather than during long periods of hot dry weather, when a shutdown could be disastrous. Use this irrigation maintenance checklist as a guide:

• Systematically clean and service every sprinkler.

• Replace nozzles every five to six years, or as close to this as your budget allows.

• Check irrigation patterns in the dew to ensure no uneven coverage.

• Print station detail sheets off the central control & make sure that the information in the field correlates with the pc.

• Take satellite box casings apart, clean them and do the necessary maintenance.

• Clean the pump house.

• Service the pumps & filter bank

BUNKER MAINTENANCE This is a great opportunity to check that your bunker sand depths are uniform throughout. Aim to achieve the perfect balance between playability and shot value – we do not want the bunkers to be too soft or too firm. Wetting agents may be used when the sand is too soft. If your bunkers are too hard, then either turn them over by hand, or use St Francis Links superintendent Charl Blaauw’s invention, the Fluffy. It’s a handy tool.

BUNKER EDGING: For those who haven’t installed one of the fantastic liners on the market, second prize would be to install a rigid plastic lining 100 mm deep (clear if possible) pushed in around the bunker’s edge: it isn’t visible, does not affect play, but does allow one to use an irrigation flag to find the exact line and edge back to it consistently every three months. Install a misting system on your bunker faces or Netafim drip irrigation on your bunker edge. If budget allows. It is a wonderful tool, especially if you have a fertigation system in place.

CART-PATHS EDGING, PAINTING AND MAINTENANCE While you are edging, painting and maintaining your paths, it is a good idea to take the time to prune any branches that get in the way of golfers. Try walking the same route golfers do and you will see how annoying it is to have to dodge overhanging branches. People often neglect to attend to this minor inconvenience.

TREE AND ROOT PRUNING Follow a yearly tree-pruning programme to remove deadwood, shape trees and trim branches that affect play. You should also take care to prune the roots and install barriers where they intrude on the greens.

EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE Equipment-maintenance programmes for winter include:

• Grinding reels

• Facing bedknives

• Servicing equipment according to the maintenance schedule

• Working on old equipment

• Attaching riggers to walk- behind greens mowers, to enable you to maintain a consistent collar width

• Attaching brooms to walk- behind mowers, to allow you to stand the grass up a few times a week during the growing season.

STAFF TRAINING One of the most rewarding parts of the job. I would like to encourage you with a success story: when I joined Leopard Creek in 1997, Siphila Mhlongo, the irrigation technician, had never operated a computer. I clearly remember saying, “Siphila, this is the ‘on’ button.” Every afternoon Siphila and his assistant, Louis, would meet me at the computer, where we would set the irrigation together.

We then sent the irrigation staff and two supervisors on a beginner’s computer course and, later, for training in MSWord and Excel. Siphila is now one of the top irrigation technicians in the country and has conducted numerous training sessions, which have been well received.

It is important to provide computer literacy training to the people higher up in the golf course staff ranks. Leopard Creek’s superintendent, Derek Muggeridge, has trained one of the greens operators to be a very successful administrative assistant, and there are many other such stories at clubs around the country.

Set aside a few hours a month for staff operator training that’s linked to multiple-choice questions. Once the greens operator begins taking an interest in disease, detail, pitch-mark repair, and so on, you’ll see an immediate improvement in the operator’s work ethic.

ADMINISTRATION This is a necessary evil that few course superintendents relish, but winter is a great time to get your spreadsheets organised and to carefully analyse all this data. Putting this off, although tempting, will wind up with you having to catch up later – never ideal. This list is a good place to start:

• Rainfall and irrigation records (I like to include all the pertinent daily information rainfall, irrigation applied, and so on)

• Soil temperature

• Lab results for greens, tees, fairways and water – it is always good to track your base elements and pH.

EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE RECORDS Winter is often thought of as a time when there appears to be less that needs doing, but this is not true. Remember – put in the effort now and you will reap the rewards of a stress-free spring and summer.