Winter projects are essential to elevating golf courses long-term, and there’s a lot going on this year writes Ganton course manager Simon Olver
A far drier off-season has brought with it the opportunity to get a lot of work done on the golf course. While growth continuing into November meant we made a slower start than we wanted, we’re now really cracking on.
It’s been inspiring to see so many projects being carried out at clubs up and down the country – and particularly back home in the North East. This is a tough place to work in the winter months, so it’s great to see teams putting in the graft to build a foundation for improvement in 2025 and beyond.
At Ganton, it’s a busy winter. Our largest construction projects have been three new tee boxes – with the biggest one on the 14th hole. It is now twice the size, and a new championship tee will increase the length of the hole by 10 yards. A sand waste area in front of the tee has also been created where we took material for the construction. We’ve also increased the size of the third and 18th tees. I’m proud that the irrigation has been delivered in-house for these. Not only has this saved us more than 50% of the potential cost, it has also continued the team’s professional development having undergone training earlier this year.
Elsewhere, we’ve begun to remove gravel paths across the course. In time, all of these will be replaced with irrigated turf walkways to improve visual appeal and the flow from green to tee throughout the round.
A smaller project, but an important one, has been the construction of tee boxes for our new measured green tee layout. These are becoming more common and this will be great for juniors, beginners and older golfers.
One of the biggest development areas has been our bunkers. The one pictured shows the scale of these tasks. Working with JW Naphthine Contracting, over four days we installed 365 sleepers around the perimeter of this vast fairway bunker on the 16th. We then added a metre of sand – some 700 tonnes – to improve its presentation and enhance the playability of the hole. While less penal than before, it is still a terrifying feature.
Meanwhile, revetted bunker faces have been rebuilt in key locations. This is an ongoing programme and, in time, we’ll be increasing the number of natural bunker shapes in our fairways – in line with our long-term plan – allowing us to increase the frequency of greenside bunker rebuilds.
Add in our ongoing management of the golf course – including our programme of rough cutting, scarifying and bailing as well as our tree and gorse management work which is essential for the health of these areas as well as playability – and it’s certainly busy.
By the time we reach March, we’ll also have completed our sand application programme – with 5-600 tonnes of top dressing applied to fairways, and sand injection carried out on the greens. There’s also all 115 bunkers to prepare for the season with top-ups and sand replacement where required.
There’s no rest this winter, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Let’s hope for some more dry conditions to get these projects completed and ready for when the growth kicks off and we’re onto mowing and presenting the golf course for spring competitions. It won’t be long until we’re teeing it up in the April medal!
