Treading water!

 

Hi All,

 

What a couple of weeks this has been! The recent weather has presented an unprecedented challenge. The deluge of rain over the past couple of months has left the course battling a relentless assault of water.

With a staggering 297mm of rain in just 36 days, including 32 days of rain, meaning no drying time and it now only taking a couple of millimetres to push the water table up and over the top making the course unplayable. The club faces one of the wettest periods on record, not the start to the winter any of us wanted but I must thank you all for your patience and understanding during this period as the team have been working to combat this but sometimes we just can’t beat Mother Nature.

 

Storms

That’s already three storms with two very high winded (Ciaran at night and Babet slowly moving over) and one that came through very quickly (Debi).

The sad news on the horizon is that Decembers have always been a month when the course doesn’t actually get any drier. The last five years have shown the ET rate for these months doesn’t get above 20mm lost and rainfall in all those years including after last year’s big freeze are dramatically higher than 20mm. Shorter days and less light are to blame.

Interestingly the data is showing us that Decembers are getting consistently warmer with 1990’s having only three days a month above 10 degrees, the 2000’s 6 days above 10 degrees and now the 2020’s are averaging 19 days above ten degrees. So the odds of the white Christmas are getting lower year on year (watch now I’ve said that it will happen).

Anyway back to the course, this new weather is having an effect on the course and the industry. With warmer, wet days comes disease pressure and the team need to be doing lots of work to reduce this pressure, especially with the withdrawal of some of the chemistries. We are also seeing bigger rainfall figures and rainfall rates (the speed that rain falls from the sky and hits the ground) we collect that data too.

 

The Greens

The greens have taken the rainfall extremely well to date considering the difference from just three years ago. Nearly 300mm of rain would have seen these being unplayable for days after the high levels of rain but the investment made in the rope and pipe drainage has meant in just a few dry hours the greens are becoming playable and even cut-able (I think I’ve made that word up) after eight hours of dry conditions.

The greens are also being treated with a bio stimulant blend of liquid oxygen and with penetrant wetting agent technology. This treatment not only oxygenates the greens but also facilitates the movement of water through the profile along with the team running the Air2g2 machine which blow compressed air into the soil profile to break up the compaction in the soil to aid the water movement to the drain within the green and also gives the soils some much needed air when its being pushing out of it with the relentless rainfall.  

 

Verti draining fairways 

Safety and damage

The team have implemented different strategies to aid the turf and to help maintain the course through these periods.

You will hopefully have noticed we have placed black mats in areas. These mats act as shields, safeguarding the turf from the players, reducing the chances of slipping and preventing potential damage.

You will have also noticed we have been leaving drainage repairs open (bottom of 3^rd and 15^th for example), allowing for continuous inspections. There is a long-term plan in place to install new drain lines into these areas, using the open areas as inspection chambers. This can only be done when the area around the opening has dried out enough for us to get machinery into it, as we look to improve our water management for the future.

We have also started to verti drain the surfaces to move water off the surface, aid drainage and allow air to the roots of the fairways in attempt to make these areas more playable too.

 

 

To ensure the safety of golfers and further protect the course the team increased the roped-off areas around the course. This placement not only prevents potential accidents but also reduces damage caused by continued foot traffic during these challenging weather conditions.

 

I’ve been asked why are team still out on machines but with the level of leaves falling and for us to be able to present the course and just do the basics to keep it open we do need machinery, however this is always the last resort and if we can walk around doing tasks we will. When machinery is out most of this is kept to the greenkeeping track around the course and not following the same walkways that golfers take. Greenkeeping machinery around the tracks isn’t the same as 140 golfer walking the same pinch points over and over again, day after day and we stay away from the play areas as best we can.

 

We have also placed out the winter mats on all the Par’3 and some of the tees that are struggling in the dark wet environments 4^th, 5^th and 17^th.

The winter rules state- “Where present tee mats comprise the teeing area, when starting a hole from a tee mat the player must stand and play a ball from the mat. Penalty breach for the local rule: Match play- loss of hole, Stroke play -two strokes”   

 

We have left the white tee markers out like we have done for the last few years as we try to make it to December. This is mainly due to ‘Yellow’ teeing areas being so small that they cannot cope with the level of play in the winter months, so by spreading the wear around now until December means these are likely to be in a fit state when we get into the depths of winter but it also gives the white tees the opportunity to recover for the new season ahead. Just make sure you check what tees the competitions are being played from before you go out!   

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Rainfall Records:

The statistics speak volumes about the severity of this year's rainfall. October saw 169mm of rain, followed by another 128mm in November up until the 14th. Year-to-date, Stoneham Golf Club has endured a staggering 970mm of rainfall, significantly surpassing the previous year's 846mm. What's alarming is the consistent rise in the yearly average, now standing at 889mm, showcasing a clear trend of increasing precipitation over the years with the data prior to 2017 averaging at 709mm.

 

I hope this blog has given you an insight to what’s been going on around the course to try and get us through this current wave of weather. We have so much work we would like to get done but for now our attention is on getting the course open, battling leaves and re building the bunkers daily after another deluge. It just feels like we are treading water…literally!

 

See you soon

 

Matt

 

 

Wet wet wet

 Hi All,

I thought I’d do a little blog update to look at the effects of the recent weather has had on the course.

Since the 12th October we have experienced a rollercoaster of weather patterns, from heavy rainfall, weather warnings to some bursts of sunshine. We have registered over 130mm of rain and counting as I write this blog. All of this  following a wet summer with 252mm since July.

The amount of consistent rain has had a significant impact on the soils moisture levels and in turn the course. 

Bunkers needing time to drain down

The first week of this weather rollercoaster brought heavy rainfall to the South of England. This deluge resulted in saturated soils, making them destabilise the surfaces. To counter this we applied wetting agents to the surfaces to make the water penetrate further into the profile  and to help dry off the surfaces. 

You would have also noticed we then brought the winter traffic management out earlier than we ever have before by roping off all the aprons and wet areas around the course in an attempt to keep play going. 

 

Wet soils and high wind impacted the Oak on the 12th

 

The rain continued to fall at extremely high levels and consistently every day giving us no drying time, causing completely saturated soils and water logging with even the sand based courses in the area like Hayling and Corhampton flooding.

Now with the lower evaporation rates, high water table and less daylight hours. The daylight hours actually has a huge impact, more than people would realise by the end of November it be less the eight hours of daylight compared to the summers over 16 hours. The reduction of daylight has a big impact on evaporation and our ability to dry down quicker and became playable again. Even 24 hours without rain would make a huge difference but we are not even close to this or forecast it yet. 

The impact of this can make surfaces less safe and can cause significant damage at the start of winter. Damage that won’t recover and will only get worse if we don’t manage it. 

 

 

Trolley Ban

Bringing in a Trolley ban sometimes is our only way to reduce the impact and long term damage while trying to keep the course Open. We also have to look at the safety of you our members. 

I have received a lot of emails from members asking us to bring one in. Simply because our “Please make every effort to carry your bag” is just being ignored by those that don’t believe they need to help protect their course. 

When we say this, it’s our last attempt to let the players make that decision. For them to honestly look in the mirror and think… “do I really need a trolley, could I not use a pencil bag with half a set of clubs in it?” 

Doing this would dramatically reduce the damage on the course, it would be open more and those that really, really need a trolley due to ill health could still use it. 

Unfortunately this was not being applied and left us with the only option being to bring in a trolley ban as a last resort. 

I can promise you that as soon as the weather improves and the course starts to dry out this will be reversed. We do not want to impact people’s enjoyment, we just need to get through these waves of bad weather during the winter months to enable us to keep the course playable and safe. 

Course closures 

It’s inevitable with this much rainfall, high water table, lower evaporation and lack drying time that the course will become flooded, unstable and unplayable. We will have to make decisions to close the course on safety and damage grounds. This is always the last option but we have a long winter ahead and we need to keep the course in a good enough condition to withstand the rest of the winter. The cost of repairing the damage and lack of growth to aid this must also be taken into account. Again I can promise you this is something we really don’t want to do. We do have the option of the range now, where you can meet friends and play courses from all over the world including Stoneham on Trackman if you want to meet up, hit balls and play a game and have a drink on these really wet winter days. Speak to the Proshop and they help set this up. 

New seedlings coming up on Aprons

The Silver Lining - Growth Benefits:

It's not all bad news, though. The rain has also provided some benefits for the turf.

The moisture has stimulated some grass growth, resulting in some recovery in areas and aiding the new seedlings on the aprons. 

However, this growth can lead to the need for more mowing and maintenance which cannot be achieved during this amount of rainfall. Sometimes it’s better to leave it and turn our attentions other areas rather than causing damage as we go through this wet period. So apologies if some areas are a little longer than normal. Even getting machines out to maintain the course is very difficult in prolonged wet periods like this. 

Conclusion:

Our weather in the past two weeks has certainly had its ups and downs. While the heavy rain caused soil saturation and challenges for us and other sports including football, rugby, horse racing and golf.. 

The impacts of such weather remind us of the importance of good soil management and the resilience required to maintain turf.  

It has highlighted areas we need to improve drainage on. You may have noticed repairs on-going around the course on the likes of 18th and the 3rd, these drains had been hit during the irrigation installation as we thought along with more areas we are still looking at. The team have been using cameras to follow drains and find the points of impact from the mole ploughs. We have fixed or left areas open for us to monitor during this wet period. More on this in the next blog). 

 

Irrigation through the drainage on the 3rd (the trouble with no as laid plans of drainage)

 

As the weather continues to be unpredictable on this island of ours, golfers and greenkeepers we have to adapt and ensure the safety and best possible playing conditions for all.

Remember it’s not just us that are being impacted it’s a lot of sports. It’s simply just turf and too much water! 

See you soon and let’s hope for some dry days.

Matt 

No Pain, No Gain

 

Hi All,

 

Looking Back

Just writing to update you all on what’s been happening on the course and to look at some of the challenges we are tackling at the moment.

As the season comes to an end, we can look back with pride on how our members represented the club at all levels and in our own competitions.

This has been ‘another’ tough year from the course side of things but I think the team have done a fantastic job of dealing with everything that’s been thrown at us.

The season started off tremendously wet then it promised to be a good spring but that quickly transitioned into a hot May and June and a real worry about water and how much we would need kicked in. It still amazes me how quickly things can change.

In just a couple of weeks the evaporation increases dramatically as temperatures rise and day light hours increase.

Now as we head into Autumn these rolls reverse as the day light hours draw in, the temperatures drop, meaning moisture levels increase and the risk of turf diseases (and our own flus and colds) increase. This when the water tables start to rise. Some areas in Scotland have unbelievable amounts of rain since the 12^th September with this weekend hitting a new level of rainfall with Loch Lomond recording 100mm of rain in one day. That’s over a month’s worth of rain.

Washout after 35mm of rain 

Thankfully we haven’t had that and our wet summer from July seems good in comparison. We experienced 35mm in one night and due to this being in the summer and all of the above aiding our investments in the bunker drainage, the tarmacked pathways and the greens drainage we managed to get the course open and set up for a 9.30 shotgun, including cutting and rolling greens. A remarkable achievement on clay soils.

A team effort to restore the bunkers

Maintenance Works

In the last two days we have been hit with some very heavy rain. This has meant a change of plan for the planned hollow coring works. Every time we aerate we have to consider many factors, with rain being the main one in autumn, it’s welcomed in the summer following the works but not during the process as we had this week. We had planned to hollow core as I mentioned in our ‘Maintenance Plans’ that came out back in August. The plan was to hollow core tine on the 12^th and 13^th of October but following forecast and to try and reduce the amount of water getting into the profile we switched this process to a scarification. In a hope that we could still hit some of the targeted thatch without too much water penetrating the soils. We have carried out aeration works on these back in August so they have had some de-compaction and air but sometime we just have to make a change in the plan due to weather.  

Scarifying Aprons

It’s worth remembering we use contractors to help us with process at this time of year in attempt to be done quicker and with the correct machinery that we don’t own or currently have space to house. Originally we were due to hollow core Aprons, surround, tees and Fairways. A huge undertaking but due recent budget cuts we had to negotiate with the contractor to reduce the work down to just tees, aprons and surrounds.

Then with a week to go 25mm of rain appeared on the forecast. Hence why we made the change. Unfortunately this hit us during the night between the works and has left some of the aprons and tees wetter than we want as the water has penetrated the thatch layer but it is still better than it would have been with a hollow cored and will hopefully dry out with the wind and a couple of days without the rain.

Damage

The amount of thatch removed during the scarifying works was quite remarkable and great for our long term goal of firming up our main playing surfaces and I believe this is something that we have to do more of. There has been some areas of damage. Weak areas have ripped up and are being divoted to aid recovery. Please be patient with this. It’s a bit of no pain, no gain. These are the same areas that are keeping the aprons soft or not allowing us to tighten the cut to make them even better.   

The Pain :-(

The weak areas could be being caused by Chafer grub or Leather jacket damage or lack of root development due to Fairy ring and drought stress.  

Tournaments

The Tournaments have come and gone including Club Championships, England Golf, Pro Am, The Club Champs, The R&A Coronation Cup, Stoneham Trophy and Masters, Clutch Tour and many, many more. A special thanks to North Hants and Ogbourne downs golf clubs who sent greenkeeping volunteers in to help with the Clutch Tour.

Divot repair following Tournaments

Challenges

1.      Silver Moss- One of our challenges in the last few months has been Silver Moss. We have discussed this issue on the blog before. The Silver moss has encroached on to the drain lines, especially the 2^nd, 5th, 12^th, 17th, short game area. The Silver moss takes over on a thinning swards like our drain lines in the heat of summer or on pitch marks.

Silver Moss can be seen at the surface of the cores

This has been an issue we have been battling with for a couple of years on and off and have been talking this through with our Agronomist but we have carried out some trial work this year which we have had good results with and we have planned this into next summer’s strategy.

2.      Machinery- In 2016 we invested heavily into our machinery fleet as the equipment at the time was old and unsafe. The club have been investing into the machinery fleet ever since but as some of our core older machines are coming to the end of their life we are experiencing more and more break downs and machines not available to use. Some of these repairs are now taking months to repair due to part shortages with the knock on effect from Covid and Brexit.

The impact of machinery not working, breaking down or not working properly does impact the course we are capable of delivering. Even with a magic wand replacements are now taking between 12-18 months for delivery. The cost of borrowing money at the moment is also high with the market when looking at bigger deals. The price of the parts has doubled and buying second hand would only mean replacing them with machines in a similar situation to ours. The club are still investing in new and hire machinery to help but with purchases also increasing nearly 200% our speed of replacement has reduced because of costs.

Please be patient if you catch a member of staff or see a machine broken down on the course. There are reasons why things maybe taking a bit longer than normal.

 Conclusion

Looking back over the season I feel proud with how each and every one of the team have performed. We have welcomed two new faces with Matthew Strutt Donnelly and Freddy Banks fitting in perfectly.

Both Mark Blake and James Ferris have completed their Diploma in Sports Turf Management Level 3 and Harry Horn getting Distinction for both his written and practical exams for his Diploma in Sports Turf Level 2. Levi Pethick was awarded a place on FTMI (Future Turf Manager Initiative) from BIGGA. Open support, Tournament supporting, Course walks, Seminars, Webinars and lots of training within the team.

The clubhouse team with Shah at the helm and Ian in the Pro shop have all been fantastic to work with. The MC and Captains committee have been very busy looking at how to improve the business and the golf side with a focus on sustainability are something to be proud of.

Coming up drainage works and repairing damaged drain on the 3^rd and 18^th along with other areas will be on our agenda, the yearly battle with leaves will start and aiding recovery from the works talked about in the blog plus some renovations of bunkers and turfing weak areas are all on the horizon.

I do hope you found this blog interesting and you can see lots of work is being done.

Thank you for your patience with the latest scarifying works. Sometimes we have to break and egg to make an omelette! 

See you soon 

Matt  

 

 

The Open - Working a major

 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.   

The 151^st Open Championship was my first Open, I hadn’t even managed to get to one as a spectator before. I’ve been to Ryder Cups, European Tour events,  I’ve visited some of the biggest and best courses in the world and have worked at 14 x Vovlo/BMW Tournaments at Wentworth, The Dunhill Cup at Kingsbarns,  8 x USGA Final Open Qualifying events, Final Open Qualifying events and hosted Regional Open Qualifying events but I’d never been to the Open. The oldest major and the one that I remember most growing up watching Faldo and Seve playing in.

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.

Royal Liverpool required us to be on site for ten days and following some training and an exam via the R&A before we could even set foot on site, passes and badges were done and we travelled up on the 15^th July. I travelled with Graeme Roberts (Course Manager at Hayling) and Tom Brearley (Deputy CM at Parkstone). Both FTMI class of 2013. Graeme would be my roommate for the ten days, someone I’ve known for many years as his father was Course Manager at Hankley Common and is a good friend of mine.

 

Day 1

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.

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.

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 18^th and then go in hole order. The reason is similar to us cutting the 18^th green first due to the proximity of the 18^th and 1^st 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. 

Fairway cutting 

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.

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.

After the Sunday set up we were asked to be ready on each green with a squeegee due to the high levels of rain coming in. Luckily I was given the 17^thhole so I managed to stand inside the ropes with the TV crews and watch as each group would come through with no chance of rain forming on the “Little Eye” as its named 17^th (15^th for members).

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.

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 18^th 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 151^st 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.

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

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