Teven Valley Golf Course in northern New South Wales has received the Australian golf course industry’s highest environmental accolade at the 2024 National Turf Industry Awards held in Brisbane last week. In front of an audience of more than 320 at a gala dinner held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on 17 June, Teven Valley course superintendent Paul Gumbleton (pictured right) received the Australian Sports Turf Managers Association’s (ASTMA) Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award, sponsored by association Gold Partner Syngenta.

The National Turf Industry Awards dinner officially opened the 2024 Australian Sports Turf Management Conference which was held in Brisbane in conjunction with Golf Management Australia (17-20 June). The ASTMA Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award was one of seven awards handed out on the night which recognised the achievements and successes of Australia’s sports turf management professionals over the past 12 months.

The Claude Crockford award has been a staple of the ASTMA’s annual awards program since 1996 and recognises those superintendents and their teams for excellence in sustainability and environmental management. The award is named after legendary Royal Melbourne Golf Club superintendent Claude Crockford, who during his near 40-year tenure there championed the environment and managing the courses in harmony with it.

In winning the award, Teven Valley becomes the third NSW golf club to win it over the past decade, following the likes of Eastlake Golf Club (then superintendent Nathan Bradbury) in 2021 and Muirfield Golf Club (superintendent Peter Watts) in 2017. The Claude Crockford Award comes on the back of Gumbleton’s NSW Golf Course Superintendents Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award which he collected in 2022.

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS

The nine-hole Teven Valley Golf Course, located in the hinterland of the Northern Rivers of NSW just outside of Ballina, is without doubt one of the more unique golfing establishments in Australia. Residing across 11 hectares, it is a special parcel of land which boasts a golf course that continually demonstrates eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable practices which have helped to establish Gumbleton as a leader among his superintendent peers.

It was back in 2016 when Gumbleton left his job as superintendent of Monash Country Club in Sydney’s northern suburbs to chase a dream. In what has a highly ambitious project, Gumbleton, together with Teven Valley owner Curt Zuber, had a vision to transform a small, run-down, regional nine-hole layout into one of the most sustainable golf courses possible. Over a three-year period Gumbleton, together with industry stalwart and former Kingston Heath Golf Club assistant superintendent Bob Simmons, helped to renovate this special parcel of land into one of the most-talked about nine-hole courses in the country.

One of Gumbleton’s goals throughout the reconstruction was to ensure the conservation and management of the course environment to create a sustainable future, implementing and introducing a raft of environmentally sustainable practices and infrastructure along the way. Central to their work was protecting and enhancing the ecologically sensitive Maguires Creek which runs through the course and is home to a thriving ecosystem containing native turtles, platypus and numerous fish species.

The breadth of work as part of the redevelopment was substantial and included:

• Removal and replacement of all existing vegetation, including the existing nine fairways, greens, trees and gardens. This included the removal of tree weed species such as cadaghi gums and camphor laurel and construction of new gardens and replanting with local, indigenous rainforest species.
• Construction of nine new greens (grassed with TifEagle couchgrass) in accordance with USGA standards and design specifications from course architect Craig Parry;
• A new greens drainage system that ensured nitrogen did not run off into Maguires Creek (Gumbleton was the first to try this new system on greens).
• Construction of new fairway profiles with incorporated ecofriendly drainage system and computer-controlled irrigation system;
• Returfing the entire course (with the exception of greens) with ‘Sir Grange’ zoysia grass, a first in Australia. Sir Grange zoysia is a low-input turfgrass that has been bred to require less fertiliser, less mowing and less watering. Gumbleton has not fertilised the tees and fairways since they were planted which means that there is no nutrient runoff into the surrounding ecosystem. All turf sod was also laid by hand.
• Construction of three new bridges over Maguires Creek;

Since it’s opening in 2020, Teven Valley has continued to go from strength to strength and much of that is down to the environment that Gumbleton and his team have helped to create. It has received accolades industry-wide not just for its exemplary turf conditions but also the way that it has championed sustainable conservation and land management practices.

“The Teven project was a dream come true and it is a great honour to be bestowed this award,” Gumbleton noted during his award acceptance speech in Brisbane. There are so many people to thank, in particular Curt Zuber for buying the property and then entrusting myself and Bob (Simmons) to pull Craig Parry’s design together. Teven is a project all about sustainability. We are in a very sensitive environment and protecting it was something that was at the forefront of my mind throughout the whole reconstruction. When Lawn Solutions brought Sir Grange zoysia into the country in 2016, we could see its potential and we were looking for something different. To have the vision to put in that grass has paid dividends and there are areas of the course which haven’t been fed for four years and still provide a beautiful playing surface.”

Pictured: ASTMA Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award winner Paul Gumbleton (Teven Valley Golf Course). Photo above Paul is pictured with Paul Jackson from award sponsor Syngenta