An honest and open look at conditions on a pesticide-free golf course
Imagine managing turf without being able to use any pesticides. Then imagine a DP World Tour event gets scheduled at your course. Knowing that the conditions will be visible on television to a global audience, to tens of thousands of spectators on site, and that some of the world’s top golfers will be scrutinizing every bit of the surface underfoot and under the ball, you’d be a little nervous, wouldn’t you?
That very situation happened, and it all worked out with fine weather and great conditions for the 2025 Danish Golf Championship. For course manager Thomas Pihl, however, there was plenty of stress leading up to the event, but the conditions we saw didn’t happen by chance. There was a lot of careful management and basic greenkeeping that went into it.
In this video, I talked with Thomas about the challenges and his philosophy of management. I hope you’ll watch the whole video. He’s got all kinds of insights about products, shows clover, crow damage, velvet bentgrass, creeping bentgrass, a spectacular thatch [roof], with a very open look at how he’s learned to manage turf without pesticides.
If you can’t bring yourself to watch the video, or to watch it to the end, here’s how Thomas closes this particular discussion:
I don’t think we will see completely spotless. I don’t think that is necessary. We host the DP World Tour this week and we have dollar spot on some greens, some foregreen approaches, but we don’t hear any complaints from players regarding that. So we can still produce good quality greens and playing conditions even though we have a little bit of of disease. We have clover. We have a little bit of everything. But maybe zero of everything is maybe not the future in my opinion. Can be elsewhere, but I think for most clubs it doesn’t need to be that way.