Photos: brett robinson
breaking new ground
Assistant superintendent Greg Jager sets the pins ahead of the second round
Nathan Nunn rolls the 12th green at RACV Royal Pines following the second round. The 328 couchgrass greens were cut with triplexes at 3mm ahead of each round and rolled in the afternoon
January-February 2014
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about it being short and I think we ended up getting the balance right. “Along with the new tees, which were basically sand constructions that we levelled and solid turfed, we made some modifications to the fairways by bringing them in about 5m each side and grew out the roughs. The fairways came up a treat after we scarified them back in September. “One of the things we really targeted was the firmness of the greens. We took out a couple of dustings and because they are reasonably flat we increased the rolling and brushing. We used a couple of sets of Fatboy wire brushes on our triplex greens mowers, something I picked up from Andrew Smith at Yamba Golf Club. They’re something you see more in use on bowling greens, but the way they were able to rip a lot of the dead matter out of the greens was impressive. “We started using them about two and a half weeks before the tournament and would go out every second day for about 10 days. We started at 2mm and wound them down until we got the desired result. If you have got flat greens that are very grainy, you can rip into them with these heads and get the thatch and grain out. The way the greens looked and rolled was so much better and the feedback from the players was very positive.”
For all the success that the 2013 Australian PGA Championship generated at its new home, it will be over the next two years when RACV Royal Pines will be put through the ultimate test, with Coombes set to be front and centre of that scrutiny when the tournament returns this December. No sooner than the Ladies Masters finishes in the first week of February, the excavators will move in to embark on RACV’s $5 million redevelopment of the course which was revealed at the same time as the PGA’s announcement that the tournament was shifting to the Gold Coast. To be staged over the next two years, starting with the front nine this year, every hole on the course will be remodelled. Former professional golfer turned respected golf course architect Graham Marsh and his team have been charged with revitalising the resort course to give it a championship calibre look and feel and just before Christmas the final design was signed off on. Although having been involved in countless remodelling jobs over the years, Marsh admits his company has never been involved with such a unique project as the one about to unfold at Royal Pines. Before a bucket has even ripped out the first sod, an immense amount of planning has gone into the redevelopment due to the very specific challenges which confront it. The two most striking aspects are the extremely short time-frame to get the holes constructed and back into play before the tournament and the also the fact that because of this narrow window all the new playing surfaces will be solid turfed. While small sections on a few fairways will be kept, more than 85 per cent of the fairways will be remodelled and laid with fresh Wintergeen couchgrass sod, with the new greens to be laid with rolls of TifEagle ultradwarf couchgrass. Twin View Turf north of Brisbane is growing the TifEagle stock, while Turf Force has the fairway paddocks under production at its farm in the Gold Coast hinterland.