Golf Course Architecture - Issue 62: October 2020

TEE BOX NEWS EDI TOR : R I CHARD HUMPHREYS Prague course opens with focus on sustainability New Kyle Phillips layout enhances and creates forest, wetland, and habitat areas 16 A ll eighteen holes of the PGA National Czech Republic course – at the Oaks Prague residential village 15 miles south-east of the centre of the Czech capital – are now open for preview play with the official opening scheduled for the spring. “The course has been routed to flow through beautiful Czech countryside and take advantage of the different ‘rooms’ and view aspects that add memorability,” said golf course architect Kyle Phillips. “The opportunity was not only to create a world-class golf experience, but also to revive and restore the old Nebrenice Chateau and its surrounding landscape and forest areas. Where there were only open farm fields, the golf course design has provided hundreds of thousands of square metres of new nature, including bio corridors, native trees, shrubs and grasses.” The course has just 25.2 hectares of maintained turf. Golf course superintendent Jordan Fairweather, of club operator Troon International, has taken care of grow-in and said: “A drought-tolerant new variety of regenerating perennial ryegrass, blended with fescue, was used on fairways. There are two hectares of wild flower meadows and approximately 18 hectares of fescue which is not irrigated.”