A pesticide free golf course

Here’s a photo gallery and some commentary about the DP World Tour’s 2025 Danish Golf Championship, held at pesticide-free Furesø Golfklub

tournament fescue bentgrass pesticide dollar spot Denmark
Micah Woods
Last updated on 2025-08-22 2 min read

I’ve worked at more than 40 golf tournaments since 1997. The 2025 Danish Golf Championship stands out among all of those because of the course. It was held at Furesø Golfklub, which is notable for being a pesticide-free course.

That’s right. No fungicides are used. No plant growth regulators. No herbicides. And no insecticides. I’ve visited in winter, and I had a dinner at Furesø and a walk around a couple holes in July 2022. But I had never been there for a DP World Tour event—this was the first one at the club—had never measured the green conditions during tournament conditions, and was curious to see what the conditions would be like on a pesticide-free course.

The Furesø community owns the land. The community doesn’t want pesticides used, and the club embraces this challenge. They have been pesticide free for about 15 years, except for a brief interlude of three years from about 2017 to 2019 when one fungicide application and one herbicide application was allowed per annum. The course does 65,000 to 70,000 starts per year on its 27 holes, and has 10 greenkeeping staff led by course manager Thomas Pihl. The tournament was played on a composite course from the 27 holes on the property.

Click any of the photos below to open the annotated gallery with some selected images from the course, including the area with the most severe dollar spot damage on greens.

I used these balls to for stimpmeter and bobble tests during the tournament.
The greens were cut with Baroness walking mowers set to 4 mm (0.157 inches).
Approaches (or *forgreen* in Danish) were rolled along with the greens prior to the tournament to create a firm and smooth surface. And to help manage dollar spot.
The Furesø clubhouse is in a historic farmhouse and the maintenance area is in renovated barns.
We also enjoyed an assortment of delicious pastries.
Staff and volunteers had a beautiful setting for breakfast and dinner meals, along with an ample supply of Heineken 0.0.
This patch of bentgrass on the 14th green is free of dollar spot symptoms.
I inspected every green looking for dollar spot, and this patch of bentgrass on the 14th green was the area with the most concentrated damage.
The Furesø Golfklub maintenance staff and the tournament week volunteers gathered for a photo with flags on the 18th fairway after preparing the course for the final round.
There was plenty of dew and humidity in August, which creates an environment conducive to the dollar spot (*Clarireedia* spp.)
The fairways at Furesø Golfklub are unirrigated, and are not treated with pesticides. This is the sixth. The precipitation prior to the tournament allowed the fairways to remain green with only a few dry spots.
Fairways were cut in the afternoon and were dragged to remove dew in the mornings.
A view of the fescue-bent sixth green at 7x magnification on the final round of the championship.
Vixen 20 and 28 mm loupes on the third green at the start of the week.
The work began each day at 04:30 with a morning meeting and plenty of strong coffee.
Mowing the 8th green.
The ninth green getting an afternoon mow at 4 mm.
The sixth green getting a morning roll.
The ninth green and surrounds in the evening sunlight.
Course manager Thomas Pihl with champion Marco Penge.

For a look at the course through television cameras, and a look at some ball reaction (bounce) and roll, here’s the DP World Tour’s final round highlights video.


Thomas Pihl is the course manager (head superintendent) at Furesø Golfklub, and he is also part of the experience group that conducts the Tour de Fungus each year.

For more about this experience group and their efforts to find ways to improve turf conditions without pesticide use, see:

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