St Andrews Links Blog

Drainage at The Castle – Part 2

Earlier this month we blogged about a wet winter and drainage operations at The CastleCourse. Catch up on Part 1 here.

To help make our new drainage lines more efficient and gather extra surface water from a large area we use a machine called a Sandslitter. This machine makes a channel about 10-20mm wide and to a depth of 200mm. As it cuts down into the turf it drops sand in behind it. This is done across drainage lines so it all links together.

The Sandslitter leaves very little mess on the surface and not only connects larger areas to drains but also improves the soil structure.

Watch a time-lapse of the Sandslitter in action on The Castle Course.

Another very effective use of sand is the topdressing of the fairways and semi-rough. This has been an operation carried out since The Castle Course opened in 2008 and the rewards of this are now starting to pay off. After periods of heavy rain, the fairways which have had more sand dry and firm up much quicker than the semi-roughs. So our intention is to increase inputs of topdressing in the semi-roughs and walkways to help improve these surfaces to react more like the fairways after rain. You can see about 40-50mm of topdressing that’s accumulated on the fairways in the photo below.

Hopefully the golfing season will be a dry one as we’ve had our share of the rain through the winter months already.

Words by Jon Wood, Course Manager – The Castle Course