Regular Open Final Qualifying venue West Lancashire GC has switched from powered mowers to set of Leda fairway gang mowers supplied by Lloyds of Letchworth.

West Lancashire hosts final qualifying when the Open is held at three courses, Royal Liverpool, Royal Birkdale and Royal Lytham. Course manager John Muir said: “I was looking to upgrade our mowing equipment and felt that the self-propelled models available were almost overdeveloped for our purpose. With that came increased costs, maintenance requirements and demands on staff time.”

“There was a time, many years ago, when links greenkeepers used gang mowers as a matter of course. Things changed and they became less fashionable. Although the performance of powered mowers is not in doubt, gang mowers have also come a long way since those days. I decided that they warranted another look, particularly in view of current economic constraints.”

Muir approached Clive Nottingham of Lloyds who listened to his concerns on height control and clip rates, width and blade requirements, and produced a set of Leda quintuple gang mowers with nine blade cylinders providing a clip rate of 50.6 clips per metre and an infinitely variable height adjustor.

“We raised the height of cut by 2mm compared with our previous mowers to accommodate the undulations over the wider working width, with no detrimental effect to the fairways and links,” said Muir. “I actually believe this set of gang mowers performs better than previous methods. But it’s not just about performance, it’s the whole package. Overall we have got a much more economic deal without compromising on results.”