It’s 40 shades of brown at Rosslare’s golf links

The drought is taking its toll at Rosslare Golf Club where the fairways and rough areas currently resemble the Sahara Desert as officials concentrate on keeping available water supplies for the greens and tees.

An aerial photograph of the seaside golf links, taken by hotelier Bill Kelly, shows large sections of scorched earth with small green areas in between, resulting from the continuing heatwave and lack of rain. ‘We’re watering the greens but the rest of the course is very brown’, said Jamie O’Sullivan, PGA professional at the club, which is trying to strike a balance in the extended dry spell between conserving water and preserving the playing greens. ‘It makes playing tricky because the ball travels faster on hard ground. That’s what you get on a true links’, said Jamie.

Rosslare has a natural well to feed a sprinkler system for watering the greens, according to president Bob Quilty. ‘ The ground is very brown at the moment. We are concentrating on the greens and tees. We don’t have enough water for the whole course’, he said.‘We are a links course, it’s beside the sea and it’s supposed to get drier in the summer but we haven’t really seen that in the last few years because of the poor summers we’ve had’, said the club president.