In order to achieve this, planning starts immediately after the completion of the 2025 course renovations.
As always when aggressively cultivating turf surfaces in a short timeframe in tough climatic conditions (highs of 40 and lows of 29 degrees celcius with high tropical humidity) you will always have some challenges with equipment and you will always be at the mercy of mother nature.
Luckily we have a great team at Nikanti and we were able to put together a great plan that accounted for any of the challenges we had faced in previous years with equipment breakdowns, turf surface recovery, weather, golfer expections, disease and many others.
The club allows us to close the course for 10 days in order to complete the required work and get the surfaces recovered enough for golf to resume play when they reopen after 10 days. The club also completes major maintenance work and renovation projects on the clubhouse during this time and also arranges a team appreciation day on the 10th day which involves lots of food, sporting activities and celebrations all day.
A lot of managers may be surprised a perhaps a little jealous that we get to close for 10 days in order to complete these practices, and we are definitely lucky we get the opportunity. This is not a members club though. It is a daily fee course that hosts mostly new and different golfers every day from around the world that expect the same high standard no matter what day they book to play.
We get this opportunity once per year to complete the work required, knowing we will not get another chance to close the course for maintenance or be able to complete any kind of noticably disruptive maintenance again for 12 months.
Nikanti has been testing soil organic matter concentrations in the greens via the #OM246 method since 2017, and it has been revolutionary in their approach to course maintenance.
Without this data, it would be a lot harder to produce the kind of consistent playing surfaces as efficiently as we have been able to here.
The soil organic matter concentration was within our target range of 6-8% in the top 2cm at the end of 2025, which put us in a great position for the scheduled April 2026 renovations. Knowing this meant that we did not need to aggressively aerate the greens with large diameter tines and instead, focus a lot more of our time on the surface, or top 5-10mm.
All of our planning and work over the past 12-months looked to be paying off.
As I am writing this, Nikanti is now successfully hosting day 2 of the 10 day BMW Golf Cup International event, 4 weeks after completing the course renovations process outlined below.
Below is a listed summary of the full program completed this year on all surfaces. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
2026 Course Renovation Process
Greens
- Vertical backtrack mow at -4mm in 2 directions
- Double cut at 2.8mm, backtrack
- Double Graden scarify at -5mm
- Double cut at 2.8mm, backtrack
- Topdress
- Aerate with 12mm solid tines at 1.5" x 2" spacing to 70mm deep
- Brush in the sand
- Aerate with 12mm solid tines at 1.5" x 2" spacing to 70mm deep (2nd pass)
- Brush in the sand
- Roll
- Soluble fertiliser (SOA + KNO3 + Urea) & wetting agent
- Irrigate
Tees
- Graden (scarify) at -10mm
- Mow at 5mm
- Heavy topdress (2 passes)
- Aerate with 16mm solid tines at 1.5" x 2" spacing to 70mm deep
- Brush in sand with Coco mat
- Heavy roll
- Fertilise with SOA 21-0-0
- Irrigate
Approaches
- Terra Rake
- Circle cut at 8mm
- Terra Rake (2nd pass)
- Triplex cut at 7mm
- Terra Rake (3rd pass)
- Triplex cut at 7mm
- Heavy topdress
- Aerate with 16mm coring tines at 2" x 2" spacing to 70mm deep
- Steel drag mat to break up cores when dry and move sand into aeration holes
- Blow organic debris off
- Heavy roll
- Fertilise with SOA 21-0-0
- Irrigate
Fairways
- Terra Rake
- Circle cut at 8mm
- Blow off debris
- Graden scarify at -20mm
- Steel drag mat to break up organic matter when dry
- Terra Rake (2nd pass))
- Double cut at 8mm
- Blow off debris
- Topdress
- Aerate with 16mm coring tines at 2” x 3” spacing
- Steel drag mat to break up cores when dry and move sand into aeration holes
- Blow organic debris off
- Heavy roll
- Fertilise with SOA 21-0-0
- Irrigate
Rough
- Mow from 30mm to 20mm
- Aerate with 16mm coring tines
- Fertilise with SOA 21-0-0
If you would like to discuss this year’s program, optimise your cultural practices, or better understand your organic matter performance through #OM246 analysis, please feel free to reach out.
