A seven-year plan to return the 18-hole course to its original James Braid Parkland Course design is well underway at Drayton Park. The seven-strong maintenance team have had their work cut-out but are achieving great results.
Led by Course Manager, Dale Housden, the team’s challenge looks like it is already some eighteen months ahead of their completion schedule - mainly because of the excellent weather conditions this year. With a solid membership of some 500 and a very healthy visitor pool, Drayton Park Golf Club is receiving rave reviews over the quality of its greens.
Course Manager, Dale Housden commented, “I came her two years ago from Hollywood Golf Club, with the sole objective of reinventing the identity of Drayton Park to a high-class parkland course. We are making considerable headway. One of the main reasons for that progress is the investment we have made in quality equipment. We are using the Trimax Snake, the TruTurf 5011 Roller and almost the entire range of John Deere professional golf machinery. That includes the John Deere 7700A Fairway mower, the John Deere 2653 Surrounds Mower, three John Deere 2500Es and two John Deere 3038 Compacts. The perception is that these are expensive pieces of kit, but that’s not the case because they are very competitively priced and, in my experience, are giving us an excellent return on our investment.”
Coming from Hollywood, which is about twenty miles from Drayton and in another county, Dale had always used his local John Deere dealer Tallis Amos Group (TAG) based in Evesham for supplies of Trimax, TruTurf and John Deere machinery.
“Although there are other John Deere dealers in the area,” added Dale, “I decided to stay with TAG because their aftersales service and support is second-to-none. In fact, it’s exceptional. We cover all of our machines with John Deere’s PowerGard and TAG take care of all the maintenance and any repairs - which are few and far between. I have a great relationship with the TAG people, and their Turf & Commercial Service Manager, John Simpson and his team pull out all the stops to look after us.
Our greens are all managed to USGA standards, just the same as the internationally renowned championship courses around the world where many of them use John Deere machinery. We really like the tech control system which is common on all the John Deere golf machines and it makes it easy for our operators because the controls are all similar between the mowers.
At Drayton Park Golf Course, we are making a statement to our members and visitors, that we mean business in providing the ultimate course conditions and we can only do that with quality equipment, top-class Green-keepers and industry-leading back-up support from TAG. The feedback from our members and visitors is that the greens are in excellent shape, some claim they are some of the best in the area. So, this for me is a complete package that works. It allows us to get the best out of our machines which keeps me happy!”
