Fairways and Greens
Charl Blaauw, our SUP
Where there is a dream, there is a vision, and where there is a vision there are plans to make the dream and vision a reality.
When I had the privilege to travel to Scotland, my goal was to see what Links courses are all about. We have a Links style course between the dunes, and this makes it so special to me. We have a lot more shrubs and fynbos than St Andrews (The home of golf) and the idea is not to imitate other courses, but the goal is rather to create pockets on the course that gives you more of a Links feel when you play. I love these wispy grasses that move in the wind, it almost gives you the feeling of an ocean of grass as it moves along with the rhythm of the wind, and that to me is unique to links courses.
We started putting up a nursery at the back of our maintenance building with the main purpose to propagate and grow veld grasses to transplant on the golf course. The vision and dream are now starting to become a reality as the first grasses are being planted on the course. We will mainly focus on the top sides of the bunkers to still allow the ball to roll into the bunkers. The aim is never to make the course more difficult, we are only trying to make the experience better and visually more pleasing.
The other reason for the grass is to help combat the loss of sand when we have strong winds, and as we all know, this is often. We have found that the loss of sand out of the bunkers with grasses growing around it is much less than the smooth-edged bunkers.
We hope you enjoy what you see out there and trust that in a couple of months from now you will see a clear difference on the course when the grasses have grown big and strong.
The holes we have done work on so far are 3rd, 5th, 6th. You will also notice that a lot of work was done on the 1st hole where the overgrown bush has been removed. These areas will also be planted up partially with the grass from the nursery over time.