Talking Turf: With some risk comes a reward
Head Greenkeeper, Chris Ball from Hillside Golf Club had been waiting for four years to spray away the Pearlwort on his greens. However, due to hosting competitions, he had limited time to do so. According to Chris: "It was time to take a risk" as he sprayed his greens twice in quick succession. The results will shock you.
Chris told us a little bit more about why he hadn't been able to get rid of the Pearlwort: "We had been waiting to spray the greens for about four years due to tournaments at the course. I think the first time I thought about spraying and overseeding was during the British Master's back in 2019. We had come off the back of a drought the year before, it meant we had done a lot of overseeding and work on the greens." He expanded on his point: "We then had the European competitions coming to the course, we learnt a lot from Eddie Adams and the European Agronomy Team when they visited. Last year we had the Kazoo Classic and then this summer just past we had the Amateur Championship. The tournaments have restricted the amount of time we have had to do a full spray and overseed project on the greens."
"The European Tour and the R&A are always a bit fearful of spraying a product so close to tournaments, particularly tournaments which are back-to-back. We did treat it in the winter of 2021, and it did have some success. But you always need that second application to finish it off. Unfortunately, we never had the timeslot to do that second spray".
According to Chris the Pearlwort had been here to stay and needed sorting: "It has always been on the greens here. It has been on my radar for quite some time. I came back to the club about five years ago after going somewhere else and the Pearlwort was still prominent on the greens." He continued: "Golfers never really notice the Pearlwort because it just looks like grass, so throughout the tournaments that we have done no one ever said anything about it, but us as greenkeepers we see it clear as day and I have wanted to get rid of it for a long time".
Chris had one reason for taking the risk with his green and that was time: "Here at Hillside it isn't cheap for people to come and play at the course. We did communicate with the members that there would be some yellowing here and there on the greens for a few weeks. I suppose I wanted the quickest possible solution of killing the Pearlwort but also not hampering people coming to play golf. That is the reason why I decided to spray the greens twice in two weeks. The rain also didn't help with the first application so I thought it would need another one anyway. Normally, the agronomists advise you to leave six weeks before you are overseed after spraying. Another risk we took was doing this sooner than we should have done."
It was then all about trial and error from that point, he explains: "We actually only focused on a few greens at the start because if it didn't work, we didn't want 18 greens ruined. So, when it worked on the 13th green and came out looking really good, we then worked our way around the other greens doing the same process. Thankfully, it worked and came out really nicely."
Chris does warn that he wouldn't recommend taking this kind of risk to every club: "We are very lucky here because we do have the resources and the budget to try the risky out-of-the-box ideas and if it goes wrong, we will be able to rectify it. However, I think for other clubs I wouldn't recommend doing what we did."