SPORTS PITCHES
Headland programme reaps rewards
and awards, for
HAMWORTHY
SPORTS CLUB
Tel: +44 (0)1223 491090
www.headlandamenity.com
N
The significant
improvement in the
condition of the multi-
sport facilities at Dorset’s
Hamworthy Sports Club
has largely been put down to a nutritional
regime suggested by Headland Amenity.
Such is the progression in uniformity and
quality achieved across the football, cricket
and golf surfaces that Head Groundsman
Gavin Fisher has been awarded Dorset FA
Groundsman of the Year and Dorset Cricket
Groundsman of the Year - for the second
season in a row!
Gavin has been at the club for six and a
half years and is solely in charge of the turf
maintenance - a busy site that’s home to
Hamworthy Cricket Club and Hamworthy
Recreation FC. “When I joined the
club, the feeding programme
I inherited clearly wasn’t
working” he explains. “The
golf greens in particular
were suffering from
disease, patchy
coverage and just a
general lack of growth.
While I had no previous
experience of Headland
or their products, their
38
Sportsturf specialist Alex Hawkes stopped
by and we got on straight away. He took
some soil samples and spent time going
through the product range to formulate
a programme that would be effective
site-wide.”
For Gavin, one of the biggest challenges
has been to create a programme to improve
surfaces, while sticking to a very tight
budget. “Alex fully understood that we
needed versatility from the products, that
could perform not only on different playing
surfaces, but adapt to weather conditions
and other environmental pressures.” Key
to the programme has been Headland’s
‘20/20/30’ Enhanced Plant Health strategy.
“We apply this tank-mix across both the
golf and cricket surfaces every month. It is
used in conjunction with various
analysis’ of Xtend® slow-
release fertiliser which we
can tweak as the seasons
change and TriCure
AD™ Granular on our
golf greens, to deliver
more uniform water
distribution, which has
helped us cope without
an automatic irrigation
system.”
GroundskeepingJournal.co.uk | Sept/Oct 2019