Moor Hall Golf Club in the West Midlands has become one of the first in the UK to put Toro’s new GreensPro 1200 greens roller through its paces.

Course manager Wayne Ganning included the machine in his replacement Toro fleet package after the Sports Turf Research Institute (STRI) recommended greens ironing to help improve the smoothness and trueness of the Sutton Coldfield course’s greens.

Ganning said: “There’s a real buzz about irons in the industry at the moment and STRI recommended we try one to push our greens even smoother and truer. We didn’t get a great deal of use out of the iron last summer because of all the rain, but when we did use it the results confirm that smoothness and trueness improved. Also surface performance achieved near-tournament levels with a significant increase in green speed by two feet, which STRI confirmed in a test. The committee and players also started to notice the difference towards the back end of the summer, so we’re looking forward to getting the full benefit this summer. It’s much better than the vibrating rollers we used to use. We’re hoping it will help us cut back on mowing, too, which should help improve sward health.

A machine Wayne did get plenty of use out of during the washout summer was the SandPro 3040 bunker raker. “We bought a front plough as an optional extra and it pushed all the sand up despite the rain and really helped us to get the bunkers back into play more quickly after a downpour.”