Course management with a tight budget and a small team at Llandrindod Wells Golf Club

At Llandrindod Wells Golf Club, Course Manager Ben Waters shares how his small team deals with challenges and keeps the course in top condition year-round by making smart use of key products.

Maintaining a golf course to high standards with limited staff and budget is no easy task. Course Manager Ben Waters explains how his team rise to the challenge in this Q&A.  

Do you find yourself prioritising certain areas due to the staff numbers?

Yes, it’s a juggling act each week. Obviously, greens are our first job each morning; we pride ourselves on having good greens all year round as they provide the major defence of the course at Llandrindod Wells. I try and let everything be as natural as possible here with as little inputs as I can - I am not one to chase colour. Golfers don’t care how green it is, they only focus on the number of putts they take. 

Greens and tees have to be carefully managed as we have no irrigation system. Fairways and rough are cut once a week, but we make no attempt to beat Mother Nature in these areas, as we simply don’t have the budget for it. They tend to burn off during drought periods, but the course has been here for 120 years, and we intend to let it be as natural as possible.

How does course management differ at Llandrindod Wells compared to your previous courses?

The biggest difference is the low staff numbers; we essentially have two and a half team members. It is difficult to continually produce the best possible surfaces when you have a small team, but we have standards to meet each week and work hard to achieve them. We don’t get many spare hours, and that is why we are utilising products more and more.

How do products help the team?

The use of wetting agents has been key for my team and course management. We don’t have an irrigation system here, so we water manually using a rain gun on a vacuum tanker. We only have one pond to draw water from, which harvests water through the winter and is used the following summer. This is solely for the greens; once it’s gone, it’s gone - there is no more at the moment. The drought of 2025 very nearly emptied the pond completely, so careful rationing is the only way. Good quality wetting agents have been instrumental in allowing me to maintain full coverage of the greens all year round. At 1,200 feet, it’s always windy on the golf course, causing more moisture loss through evapotranspiration. The use of wetting agents has helped to reduce plant stress during drought periods, while using less water.

We apply Attraxor from Agrovista Amenity and then we have about 18 to 20 days of consistent growth patterns and reduced clip rates on the greens. The members want the speed at 9 foot on the stimp meter for general play and 10 foot for championships, and the product certainly helps us to achieve that, with the poa annua seed heads now much smaller in my second year of applications.

Why did you start using more products?

Every year, we have a spring flush from the beginning of May to the end of June. I have struggled to keep a consistent green speed in previous years. We have a small number of staff, only two full-time and one part-time seasonal greenkeeper. There isn’t enough time to solely concentrate on greens without falling behind on maintaining the other areas of the golf course. Through the use of Attraxor, we have reduced the amount of time spent on greens practices such as verticutting, top-dressing and brushing, allowing the team to focus on other areas during the busy summer season.

Do the members at the golf course understand the style of course management?

We have a very understanding membership who appreciate the work that we do. They know that it is tough up here and the weather can be brutal, but we always put in 100% effort every day to get the course ready for play.

They appreciate that the weather dictates the course conditions, and with a small team on a limited budget, we can only achieve so much. They will always pitch in and lend a hand in times of need and are instrumental during renovation periods.

How do you conduct winter projects while managing a small team?

We have to juggle things a little. On a normal winter day, one of us will go round and do the greens that could be anything from brushing to cutting. The other one will be on a project by themselves for quite a few hours of the day.

We normally get to work together in the afternoons, but projects can take longer than usual to complete.

Have you tried to recruit more staff for the golf course? What challenges have you faced in doing so?

We are a small golf club with only 250 members. With rising costs, it’s difficult to budget for a third full-time greenkeeper. We are investigating new avenues of income to try to create another full-time position. We rely heavily on visitor income to maintain the golf course, which is why we try to make each round one to remember!

Do you think that the industry is facing a staffing issue at the moment, and that we need to accept that sometimes you might have to use products to manage?

Yes, I do believe there is a staffing issue within the industry at the moment for different reasons. Carefully selecting products that can help has been a big asset to me over the last eight years at Llandrindod Wells Golf Club.