From Green to Fairway: Whole-Course Aeration at Leynir Golf Club in Iceland
At Leynir Golf Club, also known as Akranes, Head Greenkeeper Einar Gestur Jónasson works with a course that tells the story of golf in Iceland. Parts of it were shaped decades ago by volunteers. Some greens sit on heavy native soil, others on beach sand and others on older construction methods that would raise eyebrows on newer builds. It is a beautiful course, but also an honest one: the ground shows its history. For Einar, that history is not something to hide. It is the starting point for improvement.
That’s the story of Icelandic golf courses. Volunteers and whatever they had. You can almost say it’s a sustainability story.
Head Greenkeeper Einar Gestur Jónasson
40 minutes from Reykjavik, Leynir Golf Club was founded more than 60 years ago as a modest nine-hole course. It has grown as the game of golf itself has in Iceland. Like many of the country’s older courses, it was built largely through the efforts of volunteers. Around 25 years ago, the course expanded to 18 holes. As different parts were added and changed, different construction styles came with them.
A spirit of continual growth still runs through Leynir today. The club has grown quickly in recent years, reflecting the wider golf boom in Iceland, but Einar’s approach remains practical and clear-eyed. He joined the club ahead of his first full season five years ago. At the time, the maintenance set-up was simple. We had just mowers. No sprayer, no tractors or aerators or anything. We could only mow, Einar explains.
Why Leynir Chose the Verti-Drain 7316
Before buying any aerator, Leynir would occasionally bring in pedestrian aerators for the greens. The results were positive, but the work largely stopped at the putting surfaces. Einar wanted an aeration programme that could reach further. The Verti-Drain 7316 offered a way to work not only on greens and tees, but also on the fairways that had become one of the club’s biggest priorities.
Einar: That’s the reason why we chose this one. We were thinking, should we buy something smaller that would be faster just for the greens? But we thought, no, we need something that we can also do the fairways with, because the fairways really need some aeration.
You can do everything you need to do. It does the job.
That decision reflects a reality many greenkeepers know well. Every machine has to justify its place. Einar was not looking for something that would spend most of its time parked in the shed. He wanted a machine that could contribute across the course and help the team make progress wherever the need was greatest.
Using the Verti-Drain 7316 on Compacted Fairways
Leynir sits on old farmland with heavy, wet soil. Water often struggled to move through the profile as intended. In some areas, moisture would sit near the surface while deeper layers remained tight and compacted.
The team tackled this with the Verti-Drain 7316, using the largest solid tines available. They targeted decades of compaction beneath the fairway, breaking through the hardpan that had built up over time. The goal was simple: create channels for air, water and nutrients, and allow roots to move deeper in the profile. Fairway aeration on this scale is still not common in Iceland, but he felt the course would not move forward without it.
Soon after receiving the Verti-Drain 7316 in October 2024, the team started on one of the course’s worst fairways.
It was demanding work, but by the following growing season Einar could already see that the ground was beginning to respond. More grass was appearing, the surface was drying more evenly and the fairway was starting to behave less like a sealed lid and more like living turf again.
Einar: I was surprised how much it actually did do.
Just as importantly, the results strengthened Einar’s belief that aeration deserved a larger role in the club’s maintenance programme.
That does not mean the work is quick. Einar is open about that too. Fairway aeration at Leynir can be slow, especially when done thoroughly. Yet it gives his team something more valuable at this stage: the ability to aerate the entire course, from greens to fairways. It allows them to start making progress across the whole course instead of solving one surface while leaving another untouched.
Einar: I don’t want to say I’m the first one doing it but I don’t think many other courses do it like this.
From Greens to Fairways
While fairway aeration has become the headline story, the versatility of the Verti-Drain 7316 remains one of its greatest strengths.
Leynir is far from a uniform golf course. Einar describes four distinct generations of greens, each reflecting a different stage in the club’s history.
Push-up soil greens: The oldest greens are built from local soil. These greens retain moisture easily and are highly susceptible to compaction. Heavy aeration is essential to keep them performing.
Beach sand greens: Constructed using locally available beach sand, these greens present the opposite challenge. Water moves quickly through the profile, roots struggle to establish without organic material and the turf requires careful management to thrive. Einar: It’s just too clean. There’s nothing there, no life.
Rocks and mixed material greens: Some older greens were built using whatever material was available, leaving coarse gravel and stones hidden just beneath the surface. Changing a hole location can mean striking stone only a few inches below the turf, meaning every maintenance operation has to be carefully planned.
Modern sand-based profile greens: Built as Leynir expanded to 18 holes around 25 years ago, these greens have become Einar’s benchmark for future renovations. Einar: The greens are performing really, really well. We can do whatever we want to. We can aerate them, they’re not too heavy and the grass is just doing good there.
Managing such variety requires flexibility.
Last autumn, the team used the Verti-Drain 7316 on greens with 8 mm tines and found that the surfaces continued to perform well afterwards. This season, Einar plans to trial 5 mm tines as another tool within the programme.
The experience reinforced the thinking behind the original purchase. The Verti-Drain 7316 allows Leynir to build one aeration programme across the entire course with a single machine. For a growing club that continues to expand its maintenance capabilities year by year, that versatility has real value.
Einar: You can do everything you need to do. It does the job.
Looking Ahead
Leynir is already planning its next chapter: a programme of renovation on some of its older playing surfaces. The first major project will focus on the 18th hole, rebuilding from tee to green using modern construction methods and improved profiles designed to better withstand Iceland’s challenging conditions. Aeration will continue to play an important role in those plans.
Einar: We will always work on the heavy soil and the fairways. We can’t, in this land we have here, ever stop it. We just need to do more.
That long-term thinking has also sparked Einar’s interest in sand injection technologies. Having seen what the Verti-Drain 7316 can achieve by opening the profile, he is increasingly interested in how sand injection could further improve drainage and soil structure in the future.
For now, though, the focus remains on building strong foundations. The Verti-Drain 7316 has given Leynir the ability to bring aeration to every corner of the course, from greens and tees to the fairways that underpin everyday play.
For Einar, that capability is what matters most. The machine has not changed the identity of Leynir Golf Club. Instead, it has helped the team unlock more of the potential that was already there, one fairway, one green and one season at a time.
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