GREENSKEEPING
Ganton
goes
green with
Deere
ne of the world’s top
O
80 courses, Ganton
Golf Club in the Vale
of Pickering ranks
among the very best
of Britain’s inland courses. It has played
host to many amateur and professional
tournaments, including the Walker Cup
in 2003 – so joining Royal Birkdale, The
Honourable Company of Edinburgh
Golfers at Muirfield and Royal Lytham
& St Annes as one of only four venues
to have also staged the Curtis Cup and
Ryder Cup matches.
Ganton will also be hosting an England
v France International Match in May
this year, and is scheduled to host the
English Men’s Open Amateur Stroke
Play Championship for the Brabazon
Trophy and also the R&A Womens
and Girls Home Internationals in 2021.
The sandy, gently undulating site was
once a North Sea inlet, so it has all the
characteristics of both a links and a
heathland course. Another striking
feature is over 100 bunkers, some huge
in size.
Head greenkeeper Andrew West says he
has always had a vision of opening up
more areas of the course to give it more
of a links feel, and he is now beginning
to achieve this more effectively since
the club invested in a new set of John
Deere hybrid electric E-Cut mowers.
These were supplied by dealer F G
Adamson & Son on a five-year finance
lease deal with annual repayments from
John Deere Financial.
“We’ve got some very challenging
undulations here and around two
hectares of aprons and collars
altogether, which really can’t be
managed with triples,” Andrew explains.
“But with quite a low height of cut
required at 7mm on these areas during
the playing season, this was proving
difficult to achieve with our previous
five-gang mowers and we were always
struggling to hold the cuts.
“However, I always felt we could do this
job better and in a reasonable time
frame with the right machine, so we
spoke to our course consultant Gordon
Irvine and he really influenced our
thinking. Both he and the STRI’s head
of agronomy Alistair Beggs encouraged
us to consider following Royal Birkdale’s
example, noting improvements to the
course presentation and finish and
complimenting the contribution John
Deere’s 8000AE PrecisionCut fairway
mower had made there.”
Following an extensive review and
evaluation of the different manufacturers’
machines, the club opted for a John
Deere package deal from Adamsons and
the new hybrid mower fleet now includes
two 8000AEs as well as two 2500E triplex
and three 220E walk-behind greens
mowers. These were joined by a 4049R
compact tractor with front loader, two
HPX diesel and two TE electric Gator
utility vehicles, as well as a Charterhouse
Verti-Drain 7416 aerator and top dresser.
“The whole team was involved in the
process and John Deere scored the best
in our view,” says Andrew. “In addition
to all the course demonstrations that
Adamsons organised, we visited Royal
Birkdale and spoke to friends and other
contacts in the industry, to see what they
thought.
26 GroundskeepingJournal.co.uk | Summer 2020