Hi All,
Finally I’ve
had time to sit back and reflect following a busy period on the course with the
Stoneham Trophy, Maintenance Week, Reservoir Project and so much more since my
time at the Open. I’ve had a lot of people asking about the Open and I thank
you for the comments. So I thought before I carry on blogging about the course
and what we’ve been up too and the challenges we face, I thought I’d put it
into a blog.
This year Stoneham had three staff members at North Hants to help with Regional Open Qualifying. Levi Pethick, Mark Blake and James Ferris all enjoyed their time at the start of this year’s Open Championship.
The Story
Back in
2013 I was asked to be part of this new training initiative by BIGGA (the
greenkeeper association) called the FTMI (Future Turf Manager Initiative). This
is a training course for the management of golf clubs from the management side
including budgeting, team building, health and safety, policies and staff
training etc. It was felt that most of the training in the past had been based
on agronomy rather than the management and this was going to be a chance for
the top 20 up and coming people from within the industry to be part of every
year, free of charge. Applicants would win a place on this initiative. Luckily
enough our very own Levi Pethick has won a place on the year’s Class of 2023.
Graham Hastie also won a place on this back in 2018.
In 2013 I was
asked to go along one of the original Mentors. The mentors would work with the
training providers, guest speakers and then would work with small groups within
the class and make it industry relevant, share experiences and methods to help
the students. I was luckily enough to be involved for five years and I learnt loads
from the experience and from those other mentors and Students. The original
Class was excellent with most of them now all in Course Managers/ management
roles across the UK.
One of the
2013 class was James Bledge who at the time was the Deputy Course Manager at
Royal Cinque Ports in Kent. We became good friends following this and shortly
after FTMI James was promoted to Course Manager at RCP and stayed there for 9
years, during this time I went down and helped “Bledge’ as he’s known within
the industry at final Open qualifying events before he moved on to Royal
Liverpool just two years before the Open in the same role. After he was
appointed Bledge started putting a team together for the Open and invited me to
be part of it. Something I will always be grateful for. I thought I had missed
my chance to work at “major’ but in life you just never know what opportunities
are coming.
Once I had discussed this with my family, I spoke to the MC about the offer from Royal Liverpool and they gave me there full blessing to go and be part of something amazing and to learn new things that I could bring back to Stoneham. Lastly I needed the greenstaff to be on board and they were and I must say they done a fantastic job while I was away. The course was great and as normal a real team effort.
On arrival on day 1 we got all of belongings unpacked in our Bunkerbins, You may remember we had a couple of these in our over low car park for a couple of years during the Academy construction. These are very basic beds, some storage and a shower room. Like a container but they worked great. Royal Liverpool had about 26 of them put into the greenkeepers yard for bedrooms for the staff. This meant we were always on site and even when everyone had gone home we had Hoylake to ourselves, the empty grandstands and the empty course. That in itself was an amazing experience.
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| Health and Safety |
After
unpacking we had a team briefing from James Bledge and the R&A and a
welcome from the Captain of Royal Liverpool. After this we had a Health and
safety training session and then this was followed by a course walk. We walked
every hole looking at areas, discussing details, getting a feel for the course.
This was my first visit to Hoylake and although it plays differently to the
member course it flowed fantastically and I could understand the history of the
club and how important it’s been for golf and the Open Championship. It’s very much like the old course in places,
fairly flat with subtle undulations and then areas around the back 9 have huge
movement. The course conditioning was fantastic.
The
surfaces were some of the best I’ve ever seen! The members at Royal Liverpool
and any guests had been playing off mats for the entire winter and all season
in the run up to the Open and the Course was closed for two weeks prior to the
Open and a two days after the Open Championship. Areas around the greens where the
balls would gather had been roped off for no play, the roughs had been roped
off all winter so no one could take a trolley into them. The range had been
closed for months leading up it as this was the main tented village area and
around the course the building of infrastructure had started in the March daily
right up until the week before. The size of the ‘contractors compound’ who were
building the infrastructure, running the hospitality, running the media centre,
hard wiring in the internet and TV coverage across the course was huge. It was
like its own village on the outskirts of the course.
Everyone was given areas of the golf course for work. There was a greens team (eight), hole changing duo, a tees team (three), surrounds team (three) a fairway team (eight), which separated into a pathway team and fairways team due to the grass pathways being so big around the course, almost as big as the fairways and the bunker team (six). The rough only got once during the entire 10 days and this was only one band around the edge of the fairways and then the thick stuff. Along with the course teams you had the Mechanic team (five), Irrigation team (three), Range team (two) and then the R&A and ‘sweep team’. This was James Bledge his Deputy Paul and First Assistant Chris.
Then would walk each hole checking
with the R&A Agronomist who also had a team of R&A staff of five or six
who were stimping greens, clegging greens, moisture probing greens to give live
data and all the cutting of the greens was based on the readings. Their aim was
to get all greens on the course putting as close to the same speed to each
other as possible and I think they got it to within 4 inches which is
remarkable. This meant some greens were being triple cut and others having
their height of cut raised to and mown at a different height in the chase for
perfection.
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| Stimping greens in the links wind was a team effort |
I was part of the fairway team and would cut fairways every morning ahead of play. Our team briefing would start at 3.45am, then straight out cutting at 4am. We would normally finish around 6.30am on fairways and would start on the 18th and then go in hole order. The reason is similar to us cutting the 18th green first due to the proximity of the 18th and 1st tees. After this we would go back out on the course and flat rake all the sand scrapes and anything else that was being brought up during the course inspection ahead of play.
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| Fairway cutting |
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| Cutting coarse grasses off greens in the evening shift |
This involved cutting Marram grasses off the pathways and tees as this looked unsightly plus many other things. The entire team would be back at the yard around 9am and would go for breakfast. Then we could watch golf or being doing other smaller jobs around the greenkeeping yard, grab some lunch. After this is was either ‘Stop Oil’ duty to watch out and respond to the Stop Oil protesters or getting things prepped for the afternoon jobs. If we were lucky a quick siesta following the 3am alarm clock before meeting at 3pm again for briefing and the start of the afternoon shift which would finish between 9.30- 10pm. If it was raining we were needed to be ready to go back out with squeegees.
Wallasey
On two of the
practice days we got to go off site briefly for a course walk, presentation and
breakfast at nearby Wallasey Golf Club. Wallasey is a stunning links course
that overlooks Liverpool which is going through some seriously major changes.
The condition of the course was simply inspiring.
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| Wallasey |
The second
visit was to a ‘Clubhouse’ or home to Clayton, Devries & Pont golf course
architects. It was a great two hours with some of the world’s leading golf
course architects and leading historians before heading back to Hoylake just
two roads away.
Our evening
shifts mainly consisted of divotting fairways, picking up divots, trimming pop
ups, brushing off revet faces, bunker maintenance, cutting coarse grasses with
scissors from the greens. All greens were stimped and data taken in the
evenings which would result in some being cut again to keep the speed up. The
tees were only divoted twice in the ten days as they didn’t want them to smear
for TV when cutting the next morning.
On the
Wednesday afternoon briefing we were spoken to by Alastair Beggs, Head of
agronomy at The R&A, Grant Moir, Director of the R&A, James Bledge
(with his Parents, Wife, Children and dogs all attended the briefing) along
with the Chairman of Greens at Royal Liverpool who reminded us how important
how big the event was and how steeped in history it was and how we were all
about to play our part in this great championship. They also reminded us about
the 600 million viewers and 262,000 specators visiting that week. Nothing makes
the focus kick in more than the world’s best players, the media and 600 million
viewers!
As the
tournament started the data readings were fantastic, we even managed a couple
of days of sunshine to show the course off. Green speeds were between 10.4-10.9
all week with low winds meaning the speed could be increased from the normal
9.5-10 for links golf. The greens were so firm and clegged over 120gm which is
high as we aim ours at a maximum of 110gm and only during the summer dry spells
can we hit it. These were 120gms in the wet.
The bunkers were a big talking point but I didn’t think they were overly penal. We are talking about the best players in the world who hit the ball unlike any other. The ball speed and carry is off the charts, so missing a fairway or green should be punished for the best players in the world.
The big discussion was the fact the bunkers were level, no incline leaving a 90 degree angle with the revet face. Ours at Stoneham are between 25-35 degrees, we know this as each one was tested during the building of them.
After day
one the R&A made the decision to change the raking style slightly and to
move the sand on the faces up one revet turf so less than three inches but it
meant the ball released from the face slightly. After this the bunkers weren’t the
discussion point again and they worked better for all involved.
I loved this hole, with the stands all around the tee, the big stand next to the green and the spectators on the dune left of the green, amazing bunkers and runs offs all around and a sand scrape and the beach behind the infinity green. I got to watch the players play the entire hole from tee and putting out.
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| The view of the winning putt |
We had 36mm
of rain on that last day and I can tell you we were absolutely soaked but the
course didn’t have a puddle on it. I then got to walk up the fairway with Brian
Harman as he played into the 18th and hear the crowds. We were told
to stand just off the apron where the fairway would end near the green. In
front of us we watched the winning putt of the 151st Open. The presentation
of the most recognised trophy in golf all from the staff members view. Behind
us armed police, then the Marshalls and then the crowds. Once the last Putt
went in and the crowds cheered, there was a feeling of relief and pride amongst
the team. This truly was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am thankful for
all of those that made it possible for me to play a small part of golfing
history.
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| The Open Champion Brian Harman and James Bledge Links Manager Royal Liverpool GC |
For those interested,
Cookie Jar golf filmed a mini documentary about the Open and the greenkeepers:-https://youtu.be/IfrfULA6XEw?si=wAZq1LN__TUY_nJL
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| I was lucky enough to be given a flag from the course of my favorite hole |
I have so
many stories from the Open I could have gone on forever but I hope this gives
you an insight to some of the Open. I learnt a lot from this experience and got
to spend time with some of the best greenkeepers in UK from Royal Dornoch, St
Andrews, Southerness, Carnoustie, Muirfield, Lady Bank in the North to Royal
Cinque Ports, Royal St Georges in the East, Wallasey, Royal Birkdale on the
West, to Sunningdale, Parkstone, Hayling and most of all representing Stoneham in
the south.
See you
soon
Matt
