29 TEE BOX Photo: Golf de Nimes-Campagne Golf de Campagne ‘reborn’ with elevated conditions The course at Golf de Campagne – a design by Léonard Morandi and Don Harradine near Nîmes in southern France – has been transformed following a renovation by Harradine Golf, agronomist Alejandro Reyes and materials specialist Alcimex. Over the years, soil on the course had become compacted, overworked and water hungry, making maintenance a “daily battle”, according to Vincent Pigeyre, greenkeeper at Campagne. “The soil simply wasn’t doing its job anymore,” he said. In 2022, the club appointed Peter Harradine, Don’s son, to oversee a reconstruction which “respected the spirit” of the course while preparing it for today’s and future requirements. “The club wanted to restore the playability and aesthetics of my father’s design,” said Harradine. “That objective was achieved by designing and specifying a sustainable approach which will withstand the ever-increasing hotter and drier summers. Returning to a course designed by my father wasn’t an act of nostalgia. It was about renovating it for the next 50 years.” Beyond agronomic performance, the project also reflects Campagne’s broader environmental commitment, with ongoing initiatives aimed at better protecting the site’s fauna and flora. Following the renovation, players have found the course’s surfaces to be more uniform and stable, and the roll of the ball to be more consistent. For the maintenance team, the course is more tolerant of climatic variations and less prone to disease, while water use has fallen by around 25 per cent. The club attributes much of this improvement to using Alcimex’s Alciturf Premium, a mineral material with high cation-exchange capacity and porosity. “In the first weeks after sowing, the soundness of that choice became evident: samples taken at five and nine weeks revealed unusually vigorous root growth,” said Pigeyre. “Six months later, roots had colonised the entire profile, and the greens retained their suppleness even under the August sun. Everything seems to function with less effort, as if the course itself had begun to breathe again.”
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