The greening of the greens - golf in Helsinki in December, anyone?

Vuosaari Golf re-opens, and the players come streaming back

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By Santtu Parkkonen
     
      It was supposed to be all over for another year. The season ended at the end of October, there were night frosts, and sub-zero daytime temperatures, too, and it snowed to a depth of several centimetres across the undulating fairways of Vuosaari Golf Course. The assistant greenkeeper Jani Mäntsälä and groundsman Raimo Nikula began the routine of preparing the mowers, rollers, golf-carts, mini-tractors, and other machines for their winter service and the long sleep in the garage.
      But then the thaw came, the unexpected happened and the mild weather stayed, the snow melted away, and revealed grass that almost begged to be played on again.
      On November 20th, the course re-opened. Members and green-fee players were delighted. By the end of the month nearly a thousand of them had taken their clubs out of storage and gone back out for a round or two.
     
For Mäntsälä and Nikula it meant a return to the business of keeping the fairways trimmed and the greens smooth.
      At 8 a.m. it is still dark. Mäntsälä drives a vibratory roller and topdresser, while Nikula follows astride a device that looks like a beetle that has spread its wings and which is used to spray pesticides and fungicides on the surface of the greens.
      On the way to the 1st green, the convoy meets the first player of the day arriving.
      When they get to the green, Mäntsälä removes the flag from its position, lays it down on the fringe, and goes over the surface of the green. It is still dark enough out there for him to need his driving lights on to see what he is doing.
     
There is no need for mowing at this stage of the year, as the grass is no longer growing to any real extent. "But it has been in amazingly good shape", says Mäntsälä.
      Next he cuts a new hole on the green and plugs the old one with the turf and soil cylinder taken from the new hole.
      "In principle, the pin placements should be changed every day. If you leave it for a couple of days, the grass surface gets flattened down too much and you immediately hear all about it from the members", says Mäntsälä.
      When the new hole has been cut, the plastic cup is inserted into the bottom of it. Mäntsälä carefully pushes it down so that the upper edge is an inch below the green surface. "You know, in the States they even paint the top inside surface of the hole in white. They've taken things that far", he comments.
      With the new hole in place and the old one tended to, Nikula spreads pesticide and fungicides on the green, and then the two men head off to the 2nd green and do it all again.
     
At Vuosaari, the greens have been sown with Greeping Bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera).
      In the summer months it will be cut back to a height of 2.5 to 3 millimetres. You will find a good deal more pile on most living-room carpets. "Not many species of grass will take such a close cut", says Nikula.
      On the fairways and tee-areas, the course has been sown with variants of Fescue ( Festuca), which is allowed to grow rather longer.
      Both species of grass are susceptible to drought and to fungal diseases. The onset of disease can start from something as apparently innocuous as a damp leaf stamped into the green surface.
     
The longer the day goes on and the light improves, the more golfers appear on the course.
      In the summer months, the place would be buzzing already, and groups would be impatiently waiting their turn to play shots. "There are a lot of people who come to play every single day of the week", reports Nikula.
      During high season, the first golfers show up at around 6 a.m. and the stream continues well into the long light evenings. All the same, the fairways and greens must be cut and tended to, and other course maintenance work has to go on daily.
      "The greenkeepers and other staff have right of way, naturally, but you always have to accommodate the players. You have to have a bit of an eye for when you can venture onto the greens. For some players, a hold-up of just five minutes can seem like an eternity", says Mäntsälä.
     
The mowers are usually out in the early mornings, when the course is quietest.
      "The fewer players you see, the better for everyone. They like the fact that the course has been looked after by the time they show up to play it", Mäntsälä continues.
      Vuosaari Golf has been built on landfill brought from construction sites in the Greater Helsinki area. Now the former waste ground is an undulating links-style course, with well-groomed fairways and narrow meandering gravel paths for trolleys and golf carts.
      To the east of the course a giant new cargo harbour is being built, and alongside it an industrial zone, while to the south there is a yacht marina and to the west residential developments. The sea is to the south, and there are magnificent sea views from the highest point on the course.
     
The proximity of the sea is both a help and a hindrance, at least for the players.
      On the one hand it is almost always windy or at least breezy, but then again the maritime influence makes things marginally warmer than further inland. "We can enjoy a long season here. We were among the first courses open in the spring, and we are among the last ones open now", explains Mäntsälä.
      The slightly remote location (even though we are still inside Helsinki city limits) means that the course is walked often by creatures on four legs as well as the two-legged golfers. "We get elk, hares, foxes, and cows", lists Nikula.
      Huh? Cows?
      "Yes, in early August we laid down some turf for replacement purposes around the machinery hall, and when it had been growing a week or so, artist Miina Äkkijyrkkä's herd of pedigree Finnish cattle were grazing there."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.12.2006
     
     
Note: You could still play golf in Vuosaari today, and the weather forecast suggests that Messrs Mäntsälä and Nikula will be occupied grooming the greens and fairways for a few more days yet. And others may have to do likewise. The strange, mild and damp conditions look to be with us for the duration, with temperatures down south above freezing all the way to the weekend. One of the oddest phenomena is that differences between daytime and night temperatures have been practically negligible - the temperature in the Greater Helsinki area has hovered around 5 to 8°C, almost regardless of the hour. The lack of night frosts also naturally means morning golfers do not have to wait for the greens to thaw out.
     
The latter half of November was exceptionally mild, with records set across the country in terms of the precipitous difference in temperature between the first fortnight of the month and the last two weeks. In Sodankylä in Lapland, for example, the average temperature for the first half of November was a chilly -12.4°C, while it was +0.3°C for the last two weeks. In Helsinki the gap was smaller, but still a record: -0.5°C and +5.9°C. Under normal circumstances, we could expect a fall of 5 degrees Celsius during the course of the month. The overall average temperature for November was around the normal level, but only because the beginning of the month was remarkably cold - explaining all that snow that we had and which is now nowhere to be seen, even in parts of Lapland!


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Small lakes fill up in unseasonably warm and rainy autumn (28.11.2006)
  Controversial sculptress Miina Äkkijyrkkä finally gets recognition (18.10.2002)

Links:
  Vuosaari Golf (in Finnish)
  Finnish Meteorological Institute: Forecast for Helsinki
  Miina Äkkijyrkkä

SANTTU PARKKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
santtu.parkkonen@hs.fi