Meet the head greenkeeper: Ally Wyllie

By Alistair February 17, 2023 09:29

From Arbroath Golf Links in Scotland, Ally talks about his career, managing a golf course with a team of three people and the equipment he uses to keep his greens looking pristine.

How long have you been head greenkeeper at Arbroath and what has been your career path to this point?

I’m in my 26th year here now. I did my apprenticeship at Carnoustie when I was 16 and a job came up at Arbroath, and I’ve never left! I came in as a greenkeeper, and then became deputy head greenkeeper and I’ve been in charge for about nine years now. Greenkeeping took me by surprise in a way. When I started out as a YTS apprentice I didn’t even know Carnoustie had a golf course!

What’s your favourite aspect of the job and what are the biggest challenges you have faced?

I like it in winter when we’re doing more of the construction work. I like the creative bits of the job where we’re trying to change or redesign parts of the course and working with machines. If you wear the right clothes and keep moving, the cold is bearable!

The biggest challenges are probably staffing and budgets. There are only three greens staff here, myself and two others, and we have a small budget. Being compared to other courses with big teams and a budget of millions can be frustrating when our resources are so different.

What’s been the proudest achievement for you and your team at Arbroath so far?

We’ve hosted a few Scottish seniors’ and boys’ tournaments, which are always great. We also recently made it into the ‘Top 100 Courses’ in Scotland for the first time and, with a squad of three people, that is a big achievement.

The club has recently invested in a Tru Turf RB48 Greens Roller. Why did you decide on that model, what areas are you using it on and have you been pleased with the results so far?

It’s an affordable greens roller and, as I mentioned, we have a smaller budget. We’d heard very good things about it and when we had a demonstration and saw how easy it was to use and what a good job it did, straight away it was an easy decision. We had quite an old roller before, that was hard to steer, but the steering on the Tru Turf RB48 is very responsive. It’s also a bit wider than our old one, which will save a bit of time.

As soon as we started using it people were telling us the greens were a lot better, especially considering it’s wintertime. By summer we expect we’ll be able to keep the greens a little bit longer and roll more, rather than cutting every day, which will make a big difference to us.

What projects are you working on across the course over winter?

The biggest project will be revetting the bunkers, which is something we’ll be doing for the next five years at least. We’ve got 72 altogether and we plan to do most of them.

We also overseed the greens twice a year and we’re trying to get better grasses into them.

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