Perched on the Welsh coastline, Abersoch Golf Club has always lived at the mercy of the elements. Managing those ever-changing conditions for the last 37 years is Head Greenkeeper Arthur Evans who, in recent years, has found a combination of the right grass seed mixture and expert advice has transformed the condition and resilience of the 18-hole course – that combination being Johnsons J Sustain Fairway from DLF.
Expanded from a nine-hole course up to 18 in 1988, Abersoch offers its members a traditional links golf experience. The challenge of managing surfaces in such an exposed location without fairway irrigation is one relished by Evans and a team of just three, made easier with the help and advice of trusted industry contacts – one of whom is DLF’s Stuart Yarwood. “I knew Stuart when he was greenkeeping and when he joined DLF, he came in to pay us a visit. Quite quickly the conversation moved beyond just products and into practical agronomic support,” Evans explains.
For years, the club had struggled with ryegrass and fescue mixtures that germinated well but failed to retain coverage when drought conditions arrived. In an attempt to encourage the naturally occurring sheeps and hard fescue and bolster this with other hardwearing, resilient and top-ranking fescue cultivars, Arthur and the team opted to sow J Sustain Fairway from the Johnsons Sports Seed range.
“It was evident very quickly that the J Sustain Fairway mixture was able to thrive in our sandy soil environment and within a few months from the first sowing, the club and the players noticed significant improvements in both coverage and sward density,” Evans continues. “Last year was our third year on this programme and, arguably, the most challenging with very prolonged, dry conditions. Thanks to the now established fescue populations, the fairways emerged relatively unscathed which also instils confidence that the course is in a much better position to survive these extremes in weather moving forwards.”
Designed to thrive under low-input management, J Sustain Fairway’s fine-turf fescue formulation delivers excellent playability, density and visual merit with reduced fertiliser, lower irrigation and less intensive maintenance. Introduced to the range in 2023, it performs particularly well on heathland and links courses and those exposed sites prone to environmental extremes.
Yarwood has been keeping a close eye on the progress, together with DLF’s Ben Morgan and the STRI agronomy team.
“Because we don’t have fairway irrigation, we only really get overseeding window every year in the autumn, which makes the performance of this mixture even more impressive,” Evans concludes. “The compliments we’ve received from the members are testament to the turnaround J Sustain Fairway has delivered.”