Degree Students Visit to Priddis Greens G&CC

On Tuesday, September 27^th, the third year degree students of Olds College had the pleasure of touring Priddis Greens Golf and Country Club. The course is located near the town of Priddis, Alberta, southwest of Calgary. It was the first course in Alberta to join the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program. It has recently played host to the CN Canadian Women’s Open in 2009.

This field trip was a part of the class Environmental Management for Golf Courses. Our tour focused on how the turf care department at Priddis has been practicing environmental management and the challenges they have had to overcome. Course superintendent, James Beebe, led the tour along with his assistant superintendents Chad Armitage, Chris Prodahl, Lance Morris, and Mike Mackinnon.

Our outing began on the course where we toured the back nine of the Raven golf course. There James shared some of the difficulties they had faced during the summer, and a few of the tools they use in their day-to-day maintenance. We discussed several other areas including water management, low-maintenance areas, Audubon certification, and chemical usage. The tour then moved into the shop area to see their equipment bay and chemical storage shed. It ended with a meeting in the Priddis lunch room where they explained some of the unique ways they approached course setup using the EZ Locator program to set pin locations and their staff management.

Thanks go to James Beebe and to the staff of Priddis Greens for hosting us. It was an excellent chance to see the successful application of environmental management in the golf environment.

Photos courtesy of Andrew Leggett and David Smith

David Smith

Display Case

click photo to enlarge

The Olds College Turf Club display case in the Land Science Center on campus has been in need of a renovation for quite a few years. Starting at the end of the last school year, Andrew Leggett and I began to develop a plan to redo it. In collaboration with the program coordinator Dave Moroz, we constructed a cross section of a USGA specification green. This included the clay subgrade, trenched in drain tile, 4” of a gravel drainage blanket, 2” choker or intermediate layer, and 12” of rootzone mix, with an artificial turf on the surface. The Flag with the new Turf Club logo was supplied by Brett Young & Standard Golf. The plan is for current and future members of the Turf Club to continually bring golf balls with their course logo to be placed on permanent display. 

Cam Champion

Degree Students Visit to Banff Springs GC

September 20, 2011 the third year degree program students were welcomed by Bob Burrows and his wonderful crew of Fairmont Banff Springs. Bob talked about the history of the golf course and how they have become Audubon certified and continued to re certify themselves every two years since 1999. Bob and his staff walked us around the course and showed us the beautiful layout and pointed out some of the challenges they have had to deal with in terms of wildlife and the difficult growing conditions being in the shadow of the mountains. He also spoke about how he had cut back on the amount of naturalized area to speed up pace of play. The reason why they had to cut back on the amount of naturalized areas was because they had too many forced carries and this was interfering with the resort play.

Thanks to Bob and the staff of Fairmont Banff Springs for a wonderful and memorable trip to the area.

Photos taken by Andrew Krek.

Cody Inkster