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Home International SportsNotes Having gotten an opportunity to travel to South America recently for the International turfgrass research conference I took the opportunity to visit some golf courses in Lima, Peru and find out the problems they deal with on a regular basis. The first course I visited was Los Inkas GC in Santiago de Surco where Alejandro Young was the superintendent. I have previously reported on this visit. The second course I visited was Lima Golf Club which presented a very different landscape while still suffering from the same climatological conditions. In Lima Golf I met Jaim Sadovnic, an agricultural engineer who manages the course there. Jaim was equally accommodating and showed how it is to manage a course when surrounded by high rise buildings and 8 million people in the middle of a city.

He has to deal with grey or waste water which is actually cleaned on site. Jaim deals with a lack of air movement on the course and he also has problems with common bermudgrass. His philosophy was close to Alejandro's as he believed in having the course in the best possible condition every day and as he said himself he wants to be tournament prepared every day. The course was a lot less expansive and is tightened down a lot, the people who bought land around the course deal with broken windows but in buying the apartments they knew that this was the downside and so any damage caused by golf balls is their responsibility.

Jaim also has close to 1800 club members though only 400 of them are interested in golfing. He has a range of warm season grasses and is dominated by Bermuda and St Augustine grass there. In shaded conditions Poa had found its way in but Jaim had little concern for it as he produced a fine golf course under such stressful conditions. A few years ago their bermudagrass greens in the winter were 80% Poa; but with the use of Kerb the Poa annua is minimal.

Jaim has to get rid of all of his organic waste onsite and so has built up a fine pile of high quality compost which he uses for his roughs and fairways with great success. Jaim is very conservative with his equipment and he showed me a hand mower from 1982 made by Toro that was in perfect condition as he tries to reduce the need to constant replacement which is very difficult. He has a very detailed board which he uses to create a tough maintenance schedule and keep machines in the highest order with parts from overseas only. The other interesting point is that he has converted his greens against recommendations to Tifeagle and he has been very happy with the result so far compared to the older Tifgreen grasses.

He has produced another wonderful course under very difficult conditions as you can see by the pictures. Few chemicals are available for use on golf courses in Lima, but they survive with the use of considerable labor. For example, hand picking weeds is the primary means of weed control. Diseases are not a major problem, as well as insects. Grubs however can create problems during the warmer weather.

Posted by Jaim Sadovnic & Edward Nangle