C ( 05 February 2025 ) Ladybank Golf Club ,
GREENKEEPING
Ladybank golf club commit to Ventrac
olchester , Essex
C ( 05 February 2025 ) Ladybank Golf Club ,
situated in wooded heathland 10 miles west of St Andrews in Fife , is the latest prestigious Scottish golf club to purchase Ventrac equipment to assist in the maintenance of their challenging heathland championship course .
Designed by Old Tom Morris , Ladybank is a rare course ; although situated in Fife , it ’ s not one of the famous links courses that dots the coast . It measures almost 6,800 yards from the championship tees , making great use of its heathland terrain and has changed little over the years . It requires the golfer to display real precision to hit the small and contoured greens .
Grant Frogley is the Course Manager and is responsible for a team of 8 full-time greenkeepers , who maintain this beautiful and challenging course . During the winter of 2021-22 , the club purchased an ex-demo Ventrac 4500 all-terrain compact tractor and two attachments to help maintain the course .
“ I ’ m one of the many converts to the Ventrac compact tractor and attachments ,” he said . “ We had two rough mowers when I came in , each one for different areas of the course . We ’ re a relatively flat site in terms of elevation , but we do have quite a lot of subtle movement with some extreme hollows and bumps . The rough mowers weren ’ t the best at following contours , so we found ourselves doing a lot more hand work .
“ I ’ d seen the Ventrac at a demonstration at Gwest and knew it would be the perfect piece of kit here ; a versatile machine that could do more than one task . We got it in on demo and sure enough it flew round , coped with every contour out there , without a problem .
“ We ’ ve got the Contour deck and the Tough Cut deck . We use the Tough deck a lot during
26 GroundskeepingJournal . co . uk | March / April 2025