Tagged with: Ryder cup
Posts (14)
The Celtic Manor
Phil Carradice
The Ryder Cup of 2010 has been over for some months now, the cup safely tucked away in the trophy cabinet of the R&A - at least for the next two years. Thousands of golf fans defied the rain and mud to descend on the Celtic Manor in October. There is no doubt that it was a fantastic oc...
Welsh-American place names
Phil Carradice
A census taken in 2008 revealed that there were approximately 1.98 million Americans with a surname that had Welsh origins. The star-spangled banner Many of these, incidentally, were African Americans. There are hundreds of black Americans with names like Evans, Jones and Thomas and thes...
By train to Wales - and the Ryder Cup
Phil Carradice
Many people travelling to watch this year's Ryder Cup golf matches between the USA and Europe will be coming to Wales for the very first time. Many will be arriving by train and for many that journey will begin at Bristol Temple Meads railway station. Statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ...
By car to Wales - and the Ryder Cup
Phil Carradice
Over the next few days hundreds of visitors, American mainly but possibly European as well, will be flying into Heathrow Airport and then heading west to watch this year's Ryder Cup golf matches at the Celtic Manor. Many of them won't give the scenery even a second glance as they hurry towards t...
The oldest golf clubs in Wales
Phil Carradice
As most of us know, this October sees the European golf team take on America as the Ryder Cup comes to the Celtic Manor outside Newport, Wales. Hopefully lots of visitors from "over the pond" will be coming to the country, possibly for the first time, and as well as watching golf they might al...
Ryder Cup Heritage Exhibition comes to the Celtic Manor
BBC Wales History
An exhibition illustrating the rich history of the Ryder Cup golf tournament is to go on display at the Celtic Manor resort from 27 September to 3 October. Ryder Cup Heritage Exhibition at National Museum Cardiff The Ryder Cup Heritage Exhibition is currently on show at the National Muse...
Is golf missing a birdie?
Martin Aaron
With Ryder Cup fever approaching, I thought I'd look for a nature angle on this year's tournament and golf courses in particular. Traditionally, golf courses don't have a particularly good reputation for being wildlife friendly - mainly due to the amount of pesticides and water used to keep the greens looking pristine. It's ironic when you consider the sport's environmentally friendly origins when men in Scotland wandered around hitting pebbles with sticks. Five hundred years or so later and British golfers had rapidly fallen in love with America's green and sterile courses and wanted the same back home. But perfect greens come with a hefty environmental price tag. You'd be forgiven for thinking that acres of green grass would be good for the environment but without wild plants to attract the insects and the birds and mammals to eat them - they simply become green deserts. Then of course there's the construction of the courses themselves - digging up habitats to create all the twists and turns of the course as well as all the bunkers and water hazards. Even the 'water hazards' can become devoid of life - becoming contaminated with pesticides after periods of heavy rain. Besides the pest control, golf courses consume a staggering amount of water. A Unesco World Water Development report found that an 18-hole golf course can use as much as 2.3 million litres of water every day! Which isn't an easy statistic to swallow in our current world climate. BBC Panorama recently covered the state of 'Britain's disappearing wildlife'. In that programme, Pavan Sukhdev from the UN Environment Programme stated that businesses in the future are going to have to re-think the way they operate and become far more environmentally aware; if we're to avoid paying higher food and water prices. But it's not all doom and gloom as some golf courses are now turning their backs on this unsustainable method of land management. Conservation groups such as the RSPB actually believe that golf courses can become wildlife sanctuaries for struggling bird populations such as skylarks, woodlarks and corn buntings. So, golf courses can actually be good for wildlife - especially coastal courses which have an array of different habitats and species. A golfer about to tee-off Roughly 140,000 hectares of out-of-bounds areas exist on UK golf courses which could be used as wildlife highways to create natural corridors between rural and urban habitats - something the Wildlife Trusts are already doing via their Living Landscape initiative. New Malton Golf Club is an 18-hole course in Hertfordshire, which claims to have been chemical-free for a year, and is planning to apply to the Soil Association for organic certification. The course's out-of-bounds areas are currently home to woodpeckers, kestrels, owls, pheasants, hares, rabbits and stoats and the owners also plan to graze animals and grow fruit on the land. Many golf courses in the UK also overlap into SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest). The Royal St David's Course in Gwynedd is one such site and lies within the Morfa Harlech SSSI - designated for its coastal and fixed dune grassland and diversity of wildlife. The course has a careful programme of land management and over the years has trialled many different techniques for grass cutting and managing it's rough areas. The Royal St David's Course. Image courtesy of Visit Wales Parts of the course wind their way through sand hills and species-rich dune plain grasslands. Dune areas are often left untouched apart from the occasional scrub or tree removal whilst grassy areas are trimmed to various sizes throughout the year to suit both wildlife and golfers alike. The out-of bounds areas provide excellent habitat for skylark, meadow pipit, brown hare, amphibians and rodent species which in turn provide food for kestrels and owls. Meanwhile bare sections of the course provide ideal basking habitat for rare sand lizards. So, the Ryder Cup course has a lot to live up to; as the eyes of the world focus in on Wales for three days this October. Jim McKenzie, Director of Golf Courses and Estates Management at The Celtic Manor Resort, said: "The Twenty Ten course was built in harmony with its environment and with the close consideration for protected species like otters, toads and dormice." The third hole on the Twenty Ten course. Image courtesy of the Celtic Manor Resort "Since its conversion from intensive farmland, many indigenous grasses, plants and wildlife have returned to the land upon which the course is built". "All the golf courses feature 100 per cent self-sustained irrigation with rain water taken from these lakes and a specially constructed reservoir". "We are committed to continually improving our own management to ensure care for the environment continues to be a feature of The Celtic Manor Resort's staging of The 2010 Ryder Cup." There is also a lot of work under way to look at how the event's carbon footprint can be effectively managed by identifying the main greenhouse gas generating activities and looking at ways of reducing them. So, it would appear that golf courses can be both good and bad for the environment, depending on how they are managed. Golf courses are ultimately designed for human enjoyment but if managed correctly - taking into account: nature conservation, the landscape, cultural heritage, water useage, turf grass management, waste and energy consumption - they can provide vital habitat for wildlife of all shapes and sizes. Ryder Cup - Green drive Flickr - Wildlife on golf courses Royal and Ancient - Golf course management BBC Countryfile on golf course closure
Dame Shirley Bassey to headline Ryder Cup concert
James McLaren
Dame Shirley Bassey has been announced as the headline act for the Welcome To Wales Ryder Cup concert at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. The concert, to be held on 29 September, will be the first time the Welsh diva will have performed in her native country for five years. She will be ...
Newport Transporter Bridge
Phil Carradice
The transporter bridge in Newport is an iconic symbol, the one structure that any visitor to the town has to see. It is one of only three such bridges in Britain, one of only eight in the whole world.
Lostprophets headline eclectic Ryder Cup bill
James McLaren
Lostprophets, Katherine Jenkins, Only Men Aloud and Shaheen Jafargholi are all part of an... 'eclectic' line-up to celebrate the coming of the Ryder Cup to Wales this year. The Welcome to Wales event, staged at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on 29 September, will also feature the two Ryder Cup ...
