NEWS photo Terry Peters

BENTLEY SLY examines pieces of grass from Northlands Golf Course’s first tee box. S! brings over 20 yaara'
~ experience to his current tak of buliding the new North Vancouver District public golf course.

Northland’ S turf

“THE WAY Bentley Sly
sees it, raising turf on a
golf green is just like rais-
ing a family.

vy “They both start off very
immature and new, and as they
reach maturity they begin to
S-carry. the. load. that’s expected
of them,” says North
«Vancouver District's designat-
‘ed turf guy.

2 §ly'’s . current formative

: “family”. — the district's

', Northlands Golf Course devel-

opment —~ has been under the
weather the past few months. -

Record-breaking rains in
April have made Sly's job of
nurturing his young brood as
challenging as any parent's
pre-pubescent plight, but his
20-plus years of experience
keep him philosophical.

“In this business you go
with the flow, you work with
nature, you don't try to fight
it,” says Sly, adding he learned
to be “part of the flow” from
his eight year experience reno-
vating and reconstructing the
Vernon Golf Club.

His current assignment is

are poh FOR nal a
“MONTHLY. SPECIALS

just the opposite of the hot, dry
Interior course: rainy and
damp. But Northlands’ forest
floor soil serves well as a sub-
grade base to establish a good
thick, dense turf, says Sly:
“Eventually, the two will
begin to work together and the

~ grass will work right into the

forest floor.”

Another problem: with
working in rainy weather is
that the possibility of run-off
increases, raising the unpleas-
ant prospect of siltation in
neighboring streams.

“So rather than ‘work,
shuts us down because that’s

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one of the sensitivities we're
committed to because we
don't want to create siltation.”
Sly says.

And while turf guys (and
gals) throughout the West are
dealing with similar wet con-
ditions, Sly has a new course
on his hands, Like a new

memiber of the family, a new -

course takes‘a few years —
three to five according to Sly
— to establish a solid footing
in the world.

But despite the wet weath-
er, Sly says the brief Fall open-

_ing of the front nine followed

by a scheduled Spring ‘97 full-
18 opening is still on track.

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