St Andrews Links Blog

Old Course winter work commences

Now we are officially in low season that’s the signal for winter works to start in full at the Home of Golf. Recently we began full aeration of the fairways on the Old Course in advance of our annual operation to ‘plug out’ as many divot scars as possible over the next five weeks.

Aeration underway on the 12^th fairway 

After we have completed aerating we can start our annual fairway plugging programme. Why do we carry out this task? The Old Course receives a high volume of play over the course of a year, around 48,000 rounds, and with the rolling and undulating nature of the fairways we tend to experience divot damage in concentrated areas.

Divot damage 

The areas that need most attention are generally at the average driving distance or where shorter irons are played from as larger divots are taken.

The Plan

During November, greenstaff go about repairing the damage by way of plugging out as many divot scars as possible, removing a golf holes-worth from around the divot area and replacing it with a fresh plug of grass taken from our turf nursery.

New plug

By the time this project is complete in early December, we hope to have replaced in the region of 40,000 divot scars with fresh grass plugs! Some going by the guys involved, but a very worthwhile task.

Words by Gordon McKie, Course Manager ‑ Old Course