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 being appointed head greenkeepers at Rinkven Golf Club, Timothy Bruneel and Simon Vercammen have been steering the choice of grass, together with GreenMix and Erik Dolstra, turfgrass specialist at DLF grass seed company, towards sustainable quality.

Rinkven Golf Club was founded in Schilde in 1981 and today includes two full-fledged 18-hole courses. The South Course is the older of the two courses, located mainly on woodland and fenland and characterized 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 since 2018 can call itself, among other things, host club of the European Tour and since 2022 also hosts the Soudal Open. Notable 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.

Take 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. Certainly for the greens and roughs we are now looking at more drought-tolerant varieties."

This proved especially 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 Masterline ostrich grasses from DLF. 

We deliberately didn't do that with white ostrich grass - while it has the advantage of aggressive growth, it also has virtually the same water and nutrient requirements as street grass, meanwhile. Instead, we used ordinary ostrich grass, particularly the Arrowtown and Cleek varieties. 

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 to work in the greens with red slew."

Sheep grass

For the roughs, Simon and Timothy are mainly looking toward 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. It's just that the roughs here were hugely over-fertilized in recent years, far too much nitrogen was used and there was simply too much material. Our first challenge was to remove the excess English ryegrass and scorch the soil. Then we were able to overseed with Masterline Roughmaster. In this way, we have reestablished a consistent grass population and our golfers don't have to spend agonizing amounts of time looking for their ball."

Also for the tees and fairways, Timothy and Simon, using TeeMaster and GolfMaster respectively, have since switched to DLF's Masterline. "In one year, 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 won't see the real impact for several years. Which doesn't mean we won't stay involved. In fact, that's the beauty of DLF: we know that both we and the club are helped at lightning speed with any question or problem. In a profession so dependent on weather conditions and where expectations are so high, that fast service is an absolute must."