Maintenance Update: Greens Hollow tining and Top Dressing
Essential Maintenance Notice on the PGA Baobab Course
This is a notice of planned works holotining and top dressing the greens across the Course. The works will commence on 1st April 2025.
In order to provide high quality putting surfaces we have essential works to complete, as part of our golf course maintenance programme. We are sorry for the inconvenience in the short term.
The greens will need between 14 to 21 days for full recovery from the work.
What does this mean for play?
There will be some disruption to play, though this work is an essential part of making our greens the best in Kenya.
We will be offering a 30% reduction in the Green Fees during the maintenance and the recovery time this April.
Please do not be frustrated as the surface will be harder to sink putts. In the long term this is a critical task in maintaining the greens, and will improve course conditions.
Following the green aeration work we anticipate our ‘green season’, with the heavy rain an important part of the process. This alongside the mowing schedule during recovery means that during the two to three weeks recovery you could find them to be both slower and bumpy.
After recovery the results will be maintained if not better greens.
The top dressing layer of sand is an essential part of the exercise. Please take a moment to clean your golf ball and the face of your putter prior to hitting the ball. Sand on either surface can cause you to miss a putt. Even a tap-in can be missed, so keep your ball and putter face clean.
What is Hollow tining?
The traffic on the course causes the ground to become compacted. This compaction affects drainage and the grass’s roots are prevented from absorbing oxygen as effectively.
Hollow tining allows the compacted turf to expand and air and moisture to be more easily absorbed through the physical removal of cores in the playing surface.
The holes are between 13-16mm in diameter and of varying depths. The cores are ejected, swept up and removed for reuse. When the hollow tining is completed, a smaller mass of soil will occupy the same area of green.
Punching holes in the green allows the turf to expand, receive more oxygen, and more easily absorb moisture.
Once the hollow tining is completed the team progress to top dressing.
What is Top dressing?
‘Top dressing’ is exactly as it sounds. This is the the process of putting a thin layer of sand on the greens. This aims to improve the quality of turf. We will top dress the greens after hollow tining them to complete this scheduled maintenance work.
This sand layer fills up some of the holes made whilst aerating the greens. This helps with drainage and the overall quality of the putting surface improves. This also accelerates the recovery from the hollow tining too.
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