Advanced irrigation has helped Royal County Down Golf Club preserve its traditional links conditions .
The Toro Lynx LSM system was installed on both the Championship and Annesley courses of the Northern Ireland site, as were Infinity sprinklers on greens, approaches and surrounds, Flex B Series sprinklers on tees, T5 stainless steel riser sprinklers and 590GF rotors on walkways.
The club recognised the need to update its irrigation system to take advantage of modern technology and to precisely redefine areas to be irrigated.
The late ‘90s legacy irrigation featured a Toro CDS control system and had served the club well but to better support its needs and requirements, the design needed to be reviewed to include more accurate and precise water delivery via a new control system and sprinklers.

Water conservation focus
The design and system needed to be modernised in line with industry standards, with a strong focus on water conservation. The existing design featured a classic ‘90s double row fairway sprinkler layout, which also applied water to roughs and unmanaged areas where it was superfluous.
It did include polyethylene mainline pipework, however, which was still in sound working condition and could be retained and incorporated into the system revision, which would also have to integrate course developments.

Challenging conditions
The MJ Abbott team, led by Jim Price, had some significant tracing and location of services work to undertake as they planned installation schedules – vital in preventing disruption to the club and minimising impact on course operations.
Installation ran simultaneously on the Championship and Annesley courses, starting in October 2023 and completing on the Championship course in January 2024 and the Annesley course in early April 2024.
Winter 2023/24 proved to be the wettest and hardest in 25 years and the impact of the weather conditions the installation teams were subjected to cannot be overstated. The terrain of the links course, with narrow fairways threading through sand dunes and blends of mixed ground conditions including sand, stones and bedded shale, meant that the mole ploughing operations encountered were challenging to achieve the high level of finish demanded by the project.

Control and accuracy
Due to the extensive scope of the irrigation renovation, Adrian Mortram of design consultancy Adrian Mortram Associates completed a comprehensive scheme to ensure the exact location of the retained pipework, connection points and existing sprinklers were carefully surveyed and recorded.
The design specified a Toro Lynx LSM control system as well as Toro Infinity valve-in-head and Flex series sprinklers. Their capabilities and capacity gave links manager Eamonn Crawford the level of control and accuracy demanded to operate the new design optimally. The Lynx’s ability to control run times to +/- 1 second with high speed communication and diagnostics ensured the client had the flexibility and precision to irrigate effectively and selectively.
The technology allows the club to increase areas to be irrigated while using less water and fewer wetting agents. The watering cycle is accomplished within a shorter watering window giving much improved flexibility during peak demands of the course for summer play.
Water application rates can be tuned to the second and with revised sprinkler locations, water is only applied where required. Water wastage and excess power consumption have been eliminated and course conditions improved, the club reports.

Customer training and support was provided by all parties, MJ Abbott, Reesink and Toro. Toro NSN provides an ongoing 24/7 customer support service which covers any software related queries as well as a comprehensive hardware warranty for the control system and peripherals. Future Lynx software updates will be provided directly to the client via NSN as they are released.
“Having the best technology and resources available is essential to ensure we deliver our links maintenance programme effectively and efficiently and to the best of our capabilities,” said Eamonn. “There was never any doubt that Toro and Reesink were the partners for us in that respect.”
Reesink UK Ltd is the sole Toro distributor in the UK for golf and sportsfields equipment and irrigation products.