United Kingdom
April 25, 2016
The clifftop setting of Nefyn & District Golf Club appears to hover precariously above the sea – a remote and beautiful location, where a round of golf has been likened to playing atop the upper deck of an aircraft carrier. This unique, natural landscape has seen the club regularly listed as one of the best golf courses in the UK and Ireland.
Perhaps that’s why Course Manager, Pat Mcateer has been with the club for over 30 years. He joined as a barman at the golf club at the age of 18—presumably so he could head straight to the course for a round of his favourite sport after work. After becoming captain of the scratch team and a junior organiser at the club, it was only a matter of time before he moved into the greenkeeping industry.
While acting as Head Greenkeeper, Pat studied at Cheshire College of Agriculture on block release before moving up to Course Manager, where he remains to this day. He was the first secretary for BIGGA in North Wales and today sits on the Welsh Golfing Union as greenkeeping advisor.
The club itself began life in 1907 and has developed over the years from 18 holes to 27. From its sky-high position, the mountains of Ireland can be viewed, just 59 miles away. But such a staggering location comes with its own unique challenges, and in 2014, Pat was to see his biggest yet.
Pat said: “The sea is our biggest attraction but also the thing that creates the most challenges. At the end of last year, we experienced one of the worst catastrophes the course has ever seen. The Point at Nefyn was lashed by 100mph winds and exceedingly high tides.
Catastrophic storm damage
“The westerly storm contaminated the whole golf course with salt water. The sea literally came right over the headland, as well as numerous other parts of our coastal terrain. The result was devastation. The seawater deflocculated the salt structure and all the grass died.
Our plan of action was to wash everything down as much as we could. We aerated and washed the salt water with clear, irrigated water to put the soil back into a negative charge—to try and flush the contamination away. We also had to reconstruct some areas of the course due to the scale of the damage.”
The effect was so overwhelming, the course had to be closed down for the entire 2014 golfing season, during which Pat spoke to Barenbrug Sales Manager, Matt Williams to discuss renovations.
Pad said: “We used Barenbrug’s BAR TRIO to overseed the deflocculated areas. After putting negative charges into the ground we had to overseed with a cultivar that can withstand more than just excessive salt laden spray and winds—to generate new sward covers. We were dealing with extreme salt toxicity.”
Superior salt tolerance
Matt Williams said: “BAR TRIO is a distinctive blend of three cultivars of slender creeping red fescue, each of which offer exceptional characteristics in their own right but when combined offer still further powerful and enhanced performance for links and coastal courses.”
Pat and his team have been relying heavily on Barenbrug’s fescue cultivars for the last seven years – particularly on the fairways. He said: “The fescues in Barenbrug products really are exceptionally salt tolerant and work well even in this extreme terrain. We see consistently excellent results on our teas and fairways when late summer overseeding with Barenbrug BAR TRIO. While some might see this is an unusual choice, we see very good germination rates and a regular overseeding programme has never let us down yet. The grass can be close mown and gives us a nice, clean cut.”
We have terrific take up at the tail end of summer when ground swell temperatures are adequate for best germination – then they have the winter to mature. Because we don’t get any irrigation on the fairways the grass seed gets the winter rain to keep the turf going through to spring.
Excellent drought tolerance
That’s another benefit of using fescues. Once we come through a very dry period, the fairways regain their colour very quickly and with the lightning speed root development of BAR TRIO, the grass regenerates rapidly after the summer months—again, a saving grace with no irrigation.”
Matt Williams visits Pat—who has been offered captaincy of the club in 2017—and his team three to four times a year to discuss the needs of the course. Their comments are then fedback into Barenbrug’s research and development programme. In this way Barenbrug is continually redeveloping its products to stay one step ahead of greenkeepers needs. Pat said: “We always go with quality of the result which at the moment is second to nothing and the service from Barenbrug itself works very well for us.”
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