INDUSTRY EQUIPMENT
Houghton Golf Club is deemed one of
South Africa’s premier golfing venues.
KEEPING THE
GREENS GREEN
Edited by Leon Louw | All photos by Smith Power Equipment
The Houghton Golf Club green-keeping team has standardised its fleet to Smith Power
Equipment-supplied Toro machines with great results.
C
ourse playability is what every
golfer wants. High-performing
greens, visual appeal and tee
positioning that accommodates
varying abilities, are among some of the
key considerations that every golfer puts
on their priority list. However, achieving
and maintaining those attributes is a full-
time job requiring agronomic expertise,
experience, and a well-trained crew.
Stuart Ross, superintendent at
Houghton Golf Course, brings all those
attributes and more to the Johannesburg-
based golf course. Boasting more than
24
OCTOBER 2019
15 years of experience as a greenkeeper,
Ross has amassed a lot of experience
in greenkeeping. He understands the
unique properties of various turf grasses
and how best to keep them in great
shape. He joined Houghton Golf Club
in 2006, a year before the famous club
underwent a holistic revamp, which gave
it a completely new face.
In 2007, Houghton Golf Club decided on
a radical makeover, which saw it becoming
one of only five Jack Nicklaus designed
signature courses in South Africa. The
makeover entailed pretty much a complete
redesign of the course, with new greens and
more. Another part of the revamp entailed
contouring the greens with subtle slopes,
therefore increasing difficulty of the course.
Today, Houghton Golf Club – with a
parkland layout course meandering through
mature pine and eucalyptus trees, and which
has played host to the SA open on no less
than eight occasions – is famous for its
immaculate conditions. These conditions are
a result of great attention to detail paid by
Ross and his staff through a process called
‘spring treatment’, performed – as the name
suggests – every spring.
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