Rinkven Golf Club evolves into new grass population

Greenkeepers are tightrope walkers. After all, the grass on a golf club is heavily challenged, and for greenkeepers it is a constant balancing act between the health of the grass on the one hand and optimal playability on the other. When the golf club in question also hosts Belgium's biggest golf tournament, the stakes are even higher. Since their appointment as head greenkeepers at Golf Club Rinkven, Timothy Bruneel and Simon Vercammen, together with GreenMix and Erik Dolstra, turfgrass specialist at grass seed company DLF, have been steering the choice of grass very carefully towards sustainable quality.

Rinkven Golf Club was founded in Schilde in 1981 and today comprises two fully-fledged 18-hole courses. The South Course is the older of the two courses, located mainly on woodland and fenland and characterised by a wide variety of playing conditions. The North Course is newer and longer. Several national and international tournaments have already found their way to Rinkven in recent years, which has been able to call itself host club of the European Tour since 2018, among others, and has also hosted the Soudal Open since 2022. Striking side note: the Soudal Open is played partly on the South Course and partly on the North Course. 

A new balance on the greens

The challenges at Rinkven are not minus, Timothy and Simon admit. Besides the universal tightrope walk between game quality and health, their job requires, among other things, extra attention to quality and homogeneity on two ultimately yet different courses.

Add to that a rather limited water supply and you immediately understand why the greenkeepers first looked at the choice of grass with a magnifying glass when they took office. “It sounds a bit hypocritical to talk about drought this year,” Simon laughs, “but it is obviously one of our biggest concerns. Especially for the greens and roughs, we are now looking at more drought-tolerant varieties.”

This proved particularly challenging on the greens. “The stocking on the greens was very poor until recently, with as much as 70% of street grass and barely 30% of ostrich grass. Last year, we therefore overseeded them very intensively, with over 500 kg of DLF Masterline ostrich grasses. 

We deliberately did not do so with white ostrich grass - while it has the advantage of aggressive growth, it also has almost the same water and nutrient requirements as street grass, meanwhile. Instead, we used ordinary ostrich grass, especially the varieties Arrowtown and Cleek. 

Today, the ratio of grasses has already completely reversed and we can speak of 70% common ostrich grass and 30% street grass. This is a remarkably fast result and ensures that we are also better armed against dollar spot. Next year, by the way, in that context, we also want to try red-swinging in the greens.”

Sheep grass

For roughs, Simon and Timothy are mainly looking towards reed cane, hardwoods and sheep grass. Timothy: “In the future, sheep grass will become more and more important. We are trying to get that in much more now. Only in recent years, the roughs here were hugely over-fertilised, far too much nitrogen was used and there was simply too much material. Our first challenge was to remove the excess English ryegrass and shred the soil. Then we were able to overseed with Masterline Roughmaster. That way, we have reestablished a consistent grass population and our golfers don't have to spend agonising hours looking for their ball.”

For the tees and fairways too, Timothy and Simon, using TeeMaster and GolfMaster respectively, have since switched to DLF's Masterline. “One year on, the entire course was overseeded with DLF grass seeds,” concludes Dewi Merckx, account manager at supplier GreenMix. 

“The first results of this are already remarkable, but of course we will only see the real impact in a few years. Which doesn't mean we won't stay involved. For that is the beauty of DLF: we know that both we and the club are helped at lightning speed with every question or problem. In a profession that is so dependent on weather conditions and where expectations are so high, that fast service is an absolute must.”