David McGregor is a former intern of the Ohio State University
programme (see issue 12).
As part of the programme he worked on the US President’s golf green at the White House and was seconded to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, USA.
His commitment and dedication was rewarded when, in 2006, RTJ offered him a permanent position at the club.
Here he looks back at 2008 and gives a further insight into the work of the OSU programme
W
e have been pushing the boundaries with the quality of the course, continuing to keep it up to date with the modern
style required by today’s players and the ever advancing equipment technology. It is easy to quickly lose touch with the highest level of golf course design if we don’t keep up to date on the course. So, small, regular projects annually will keep us in the area of the industry we aim to be in.
Since opening in 1991 many changes have been made. The main design is still very much the same but a constant tweaking has kept this course at the highest level of golf. In recent years a new driving range and training facility have been built with plans to construct a new short game area with a par 3 course.
Last year we took a look at our
resources and decided that we could make a few changes out on the golf course with a view to lengthening it. This involved tightening fairways, with careful attention to the view of the fairway from each tee box, and building
five new tees.
Starting right at the beginning of 2008 we began by reshaping selected fairways. Whilst this sounds straightforward, it is not as simple as just recutting new fairway lines once the grass starts to grow at the beginning of the season. From the fairway to rough we have
three different turf species; fairway- Pencross Bentgrass, first cut rough (one mower width) ryegrass and rough, tall fescue. This meant that we had to move a lot of turf around. First we removed the bentgrass in the areas we were tightening. Whilst cutting the turf we had to be careful not to damage the first cut of rough as we were also going to be transplanting this.
At this stage we had the bentgrass edge cut so the shapes of the fairways were what we wanted. We then cut up the ryegrass along the old fairway edge so we were able to literally slide the turf across to the new fairway line. This is a long process. When curves and large bends are taken out of fairways a lot more good turf is left over, so this was used to replace contaminated areas
RTJ
Going to extraordinary lengths ...
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