Jim’s inheritance*
2020 is fifteen years on from when Jim Arthur, Europe’s leading golf agronomist, died.
Golfers should remember the debt we owe him.
Above all else, (and he advised over 550 golf clubs) he protected, as The R&A’s chief agronomist, The Open Championship venues with ‘running-golf’ grasses that give firm turf, when so many other courses in the 1980/90s were succumbing to ‘target-golf’ weed grasses that give soft turf.
Jim Arthur
Jim Arthur was never afraid to air his strong views and led the principled battle against the over-use of expensive fertiliser, pesticides and over-watering which encourages the weed annual meadow grass (Poa annua).
He fought against shaving greens down for speed, preferring to emphasise aeration and top dressing with originally a 70-30 sand/seaweed mix which went on to become a 80-20 sand/fensoil mix, giving a healthy soil biology with ‘humus’.
In his later years he had to fight more and more against the fashion for faster and faster greens. He knew if speed was achieved by lowering height of cut this would kill the fine grasses, which when established give trueness and speed all-year-round for the long-term.
Richard Arthur, a contributor to ‘Practical Greenkeeping’.
When I asked his son Richard for an anecdote he told me: “I asked dad why he wasn’t worried about being sued and never carried insurance or indemnity. I got a classic Jim Arthur reply, ‘Well son, if you are always right and never wrong, no one can ever sue you and I’m sick and tired of always being right.’”
This attitude was not always popular among some golf club officials of the status-seeking egotistical type, who were not keen for their well-meaning work to be criticised!
Practical Greenkeeping, published 1997, updated 2003. Available from The RandA online shop.
Nevertheless, thank goodness The R&A persuaded him towards the end of his life to put his thoughts on to paper and so they were able to publish in the late 1990s ‘Practical Greenkeeping’ which has subsequently become the bible of conservation greenkeeping.
Today his work is an essential part of the retro-trend that we have seen gather pace since the turn of the millennium, towards ‘running-golf’ and away from ‘target-golf’.
Gordon Irvine
Golfers, and all Green Committee members, who want to understand the simple dichotomies between the annual weed grass (Poa annua) and fine perennial grasses, between ‘running-golf ‘ and ‘target-golf’ and between conservation greenkeeping and chemical greenkeeping, should be encouraged to read this most enjoyable, humorous, important book, into which one can dip chapter by chapter.
Jim showed it is possible to re-balance a golf course’s surfaces towards fine grasses and improve performance, without disruption to members’ play as Gordon Irvine, (a member of FineGolf’s Advisory Panel who was Jim’s protege and heir) has re-proved in recent years at some of the finest courses in GB&I and Europe.
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