Grass Clippings
Rain, rain go away … come again another day
In sports management, the weather forecast raises more questions than simply that of wondering if one should ‘take an umbrella out with me today?’. The question is more likely to be ‘how will the weather effect 392,115 m2 of SW15, aka Roehampton Club’.
As well as the other hats that one has to wear during the course of a single day the Meteorological Hat comes out more than several times a day, especially during winter. Understanding weather cycles and what’s coming our way is a very important part of planning ahead. It is also the case that rainfall isn’t all about the quantity that falls out of the sky, but we also have to consider the rate of rainfall per hour. Understanding that rain doesn’t fall at a universal standard rate is a key factor to identifying that rain is a powerful force in its own right and as seen in the last week’s news reports, it can be a destructive element which rivals any other natural force of nature.
Rain showers are recognized to have three main classifications, a moderate shower is gauged as being greater than 2mm, but less than 10mm per hour. While a heavy shower will be greater than 10mm per hour, but less than 50mm per hour. Your probably have guessed that a violent shower is anything greater than 50mm per hour.
Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed a series of unrelenting storms roll in one after another. Colleagues in the business have recorded rates per hour, in the range from 80mm to 182mm which is obviously over the violent storm classification. Rainfall of this nature overwhelms a golf course such as ours which was built from the indigenous soil at a very different time when golf was viewed as a summer sport.
The percolation rate of such a soil is low, naturally, but when the ground is already saturated, this is further compromised, with flooding inevitable as we get used to the transforming state of our weather. Slipping away are the days when the seasons were predicable, and you could peg the time of the year by the weather and the calendar date, come spring, summer and autumn.
Records, such as highest temperature or rainfall events are being broken on such a frequent basis that they have lost the impact they would have had in the past.
In a recent trade article, the head of the R&A (Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) agronomy section has called for golf clubs to prepare for change. There is growing concern that weather events are shifting at a faster pace than traditional parkland courses in the UK can withstand with the predicted cycle of drought and flooding in the near future.
The R&A are also concerned that golf maintenance will not be sustainable, in its current form, in the short- and long-term future. For example, bunkers, are cited as reflecting the type of issues being experienced in clubs up and down the country. The costs of preserving these are now at all-time high, with maintenance costs of bunkers, level pegging with the expense of managing some club’s greens.
Greens maintenance has always been the greatest expense, in terms of the amount of high maintenance activities involved with preparing the area. With sand in great demand and short supply and the cost of transportation (i.e. fuel costs) spiralling in the last year, this has been a big hit for many clubs to take. Given the weather conditions also, rainstorms will cause more contamination to the sand, the constant rising costs of more frequent renovations is leading to Clubs reevaluating the need for the number of bunkers that they feel they will need in the future.
The R&A are supporting this shift in thinking as an example where a rational approach is needed in the name of sustainability. Even golf design practices are giving more consideration for the environment and the resources that are required to maintain their conceptual ideas for course designs. In the past century, the golden era for golf design, golf courses were extrinsically sustainable due to the fact that methods of management were not based around the combustion engine. Maintenance practices were more basic and in truth, standards were not as high as they now have evolved to become. Particularly in golf, since the time when the sport found a global audience in the tele-visual age, the zenith for manicured courses exploded on to home screens with the popularity of the colour television.
This development created the conditions where the industry advanced products that assisted in improving maintenance standards in every facet of the game. But like most of the developed world, it has been an industry built around the oil industry. Not only in the creation of petrol or diesel machinery but the fertilizer and crop science products are all derivates of the same industry -petrochemicals. Natural resources which have been taken for granted are going to become scarcer in the future. Even at the moment, some raw materials that have been used for generations in fertilizer blends utilized in turf are now being substituted because of the rarity of the source items.
The machinery companies are now offering alternatives in most cases, to use electric vehicles in the fleet. Like the motor trade, we are now being weaned off oil and the replacement is the battery. Governments are taking more notice of sport and the amenity horticulture market, and it is likely that sector will be a soft target for legislation which will limit the type of turf care chemicals which will be able to use. This will have consequences in the future, which will mean we will need to face new challenges.
With the R&A calling for golf to change, other industry bodies will also join this cause, which will amplify then need to demonstrate that the industry is sustainable. In a changing world, we will have to adapt to survive on so many levels. When you buy a new car do you invest in an electric model? When you renovate your home, do you invest in ground source heat pumps and solar panels? When you join a club, does it have a track record in sustainability? Perhaps these are the types of questions which will be the modus operandi for everyone if not now, very soon. Roehampton Club is thinking about what part it needs to play as we battle the elements and plan for the future.
Peter Bradburn, Course and Grounds Director