Finishing up my last few days in Sweden meeting with the Green Section of the Swedish Golf Federation at Vesterby GK. This is a small club designed by Johan Benestam is entirely planted with fine leaf fescues.

Tee’s, fairways, greens and roughs mowed at different heights provided a stunning inland links golf experience. In contrast to other fescue surfaces I visited during my time abroad there were easily among the best.

The greens are mowed at about 0.200″ about three times per week and recieve less than 1 lb of N per 1000 for the entire year. Tee’s, fairways and foregreens are mowed 1x per week. Irrigation is just to keep the alive.

There are 4 staff working on the 18 hole course. The fescue surface was rolling at about 10.5-11 on the stimpmeter and is characterized by having a grass and sand surface as opposed to strictly grass as we find on our poa/bent surfaces.

One has to wonder how much longer we can “sustain” our bent poa surfaces and might want to consider a surface that could cost about 20% of what the average American golf course costs to manage.