How does a links course get ready for summer?
This article was featured in the Spring 2018 edition of Your Course magazine
Imagine a season that never really stops.
“I try and keep out the summer furniture all year round because I want people to come here,” said James Bledge, course manager at Royal Cinque Ports in Kent. “If they are coming all the way from London, from a clay parkland course to come and play our course, I want them to feel like it is summer.”
A true links on pure sand, Royal Cinque Ports’ course manager isn’t “fire-fighting” when the spring starts to poke its head above the parapet.
It’s not muddy and the team isn’t running round repairing walkways. The only things you might notice on a trip to Deal, to give you a clue that you might be in winter, is the roping and traffic management to stop areas getting worn. And, of course, the temperatures.
“We don’t have to do as much hardcore thatch management in the autumn or the spring,” James said.“Parklands and heathland have got the big machinery out, whereas we are very subtle with ours. We will just keep applying six to 11-tonne top dressing to dilute thatch.
“There’s very little disruption, to be honest with you. But people treat this as the summer and I like to treat it as the summer. That’s maybe why links courses have got this reputation. You’ll often see a lot of parkland courses have got their old plastic hole cups out and their thin pins and their worn flags. I try to keep the attitude for as summery a feel as possible.”
You might think that a coastal location and the harsh sea air would cause some problems but a sea wall, built in the 1970s, keeps the salt at bay.
James added: “If we have a long spell of northerly wind, then the wind is a problem to get growth going in the spring. For that reason, I have sown some bent grass into the greens this year – some Arrowtown fine bents – just so we’ve got a better cover coming into the spring.
“We don’t seem to lose grass cover and have too much of a problem with a lack of growth. Actually, it works the other way. We’ve got some bad grass in the greens. We’ve got Yorkshire Fog and, during the winter, that thins out and we can keep speeds up just as easily.”
That summer feel pervades everything James’s team will do. Mats are avoided if possible. With a fairway renovation to remove unwanted grass types having been done and grown back in time for Christmas, players might have to drop in the rough in three or four roped off areas. That’s it.
So, what is there to do as the season approaches? James explained: “We focus on colour and, if we are coming out of a harsh winter, we’ll spray some iron. It’s more – turf grass-wise – about using preventative fungicides to make sure that at the start of the winter and the back-end of the autumn we don’t get any disease that will lead to scarring. Otherwise, we’d be on the back foot all winter and chasing our tails. That’s a big thing. This winter there was a big focus on deep aeration and sanding. I don’t layer the sand on, it’s little and often. I am very pro-aeration and topdressing throughout the season as well.”
Royal Cinque Ports
Two Opens, in 1909 and 1920, have been held on this Kent links, which got its name from Deal’s membership of an ancient group of trading towns granted special privileges by English kings.
Founded in 1892, the championship course is regarded as one of the finest of its type and continues to stage the largest true amateur tournament in the world – the Halford Hewitt Public Schools Championship. Sixty-four schools currently take part.
Royal Cinque Ports’ two opens were won by JH Taylor and George Duncan.
James Bledge moved to Royal Liverpool in 2022 and oversaw the hosting of The 152nd Open in July 2023.
Author
