Covering 155 acres of heathland on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, Ganton Golf Club is an immaculately manicured course that, over the years, has seen it play host to the Ryder Cup, the Curtis Cup and the Walker Cup and next year will see it with the Home Internationals amongst other prestigious tournaments. And Head Greenkeeper Phil Baldock’s 14 years of dedication at the helm is paying dividends, at times perhaps a little too well! ‘If anything our organic matter levels are too high, with growth too lush in places, especially outside of the fairways’

It was this upset in the equilibrium that led Phil to start experimenting with the Amazone Groundkeeper GHD 150. ‘Although we bought the GHD purely as a scarifying tool, I didn’t realise that what I had really bought was another 9 machines all at the same time as well! In fact Amazone should just drop the ‘one’ off the end of their name and replace in with ‘ing’, it really is that Amazing’. For cutting the fringes of the fairways, Ganton have been using a mower that spreads the cuttings sideways out of the semi-rough onto the fringes of the rough. After cutting two widths of that each time, the volume of grass spread across into the rough has pushed nutrient levels up, to the point we couldn’t cope with the resulting growth’ Phil went on the explain ‘So progressively we have been working on both the semi’s and the rough using the GHD 150 to top off and thin out this excessive growth. The resulting material is then taken away to be composted and, over the last couple of seasons, has created a phenomenal amount of high-grade organic material, albeit compost too rich to be used as a top dressing on its own. To buy this stuff in would cost us £35 - 40 / tonne!’

This cut grass is bolstered in both bulk and nutrient value by everything else the GHD is used to collect. After Verti-draining, the 1” diameter cores are picked up with the Groundkeeper and taken away to be added to the pile. The Exact-Cut flail horizontal rotor smashes up a proportion of the cores and evenly distributes the soil, the rest lifted up into the hopper to be carted away.

When scarifying, the front castor wheels are replaced with a full-width front roller. To make sure the Ground-keeper works as evenly as possible, this front roller, working in combination with the rear roller, aids the contour following ability thus preventing any scalping on the undulations. With just a couple of pins, the castor wheels can be slipped back on for mowing.

The previous machine was awkward to set up and use, but not so with the Groundkeeper. ‘Any of the staff will jump on it and take it out for the day without a murmur. The scope of operation, the robust construction and simplicity of set-up all go a long way to making it a popular choice to use’ comments Phil and on the subject of maintenance ‘The machine has only had one set of blades and a drive belt in all those hours of operation, things don’t get any more economical than that to run’

And after scarifying and collecting, or mowing and collecting, what are the other duties on the roster? ‘Being a heathland course, we aren’t short of pine trees here and we found out, by mistake really, that a few pine needles don’t stand in its way’ explains Phil ‘We were looking at putting a ride through waist-high nettles in amongst some pines some time ago. With an underlay of 6” of pine needles, as well as the top growth, we weren’t sure what to expect but the GHD 150 sailed through, swallowing the lot in its path without blinking, it mulched it all up and then we dumped it out of the hi-lift hopper into a trailer and took it away. Since then we have used it to cope with every other area of excessive growth that a conventional flail or triple can’t cope with as well as cleaning up the divots on the practice ground’.

And just to put the icing on the cake? ‘It even sorts out the gravel on the car park, and when it comes to autumn time, leaf collection is now so straight forward with the mulched leaves forming a valuable addition to the compost heap’

Phil Baldock gives his overall verdict of the Amazone Groundkeeper GHD 150 at Ganton Golf Club ‘To coin a phrase, it really does do what it says on the tin. We have improved areas of the course so much with it and over the coming years it will form the basis of all our rough management, used for both the semi and longer stuff. So much so that we may have to buy another one to cope with the work load.’ Endorsements that don’t come any stronger than that.