Shaken... T
his year, golf ’s Open
Championship does its periodic migration south to Royal St George’s at Sandwich. The course is as stiff as any served up by St
Graham Royden
Neville Johnson sees that the ravages of winter hadn’t shaken preparations for golf's oldest ‘major’, but had stirred the desire for perfection
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Andrews et al and has a proud history of great Championships. It is a superb venue for playing and watching golf: a single course in 400 acres of space with natural undulations to challenge the golfer, and open vantage points for large numbers to see play unhindered. This year’s is the fourteenth Open to be held there since the first, back in 1894 when, incidentally, it was the first time it had been played outside of Scotland. Henry Cotton, Bobby Locke, Sandy Lyle and Greg Norman are among those to have triumphed here.
When I visited on a raw January day, July 14th seemed light years away, but definitely not to the greenkeeping staff. The stated objective of everyone at Royal St George’s, according to Club Secretary, Christopher Gabbey, is always to keep the course in championship condition, but this summer’s goings on are special, and you could feel it just walking out on to the windblown links.
Graham Royden, who has been a
greenkeeper at the south’s most famous links course since 1992, took over the reins in October. He had been deputy there for fourteen years and worked on the two previous Opens. Now, as acting head greenkeeper, he describes preparing a course fit for the best players in the world as an honour. He leads a team of twelve and, despite a difficult winter when three or four weeks were lost because of the snow and ice in December, preparatory work for this major has progressed well and things were back on schedule. A ten or twelve hour working day, six days a week, for all of them must have had something to do with this catching up.
The day I was there Graham was joined by his new assistant, Paul Larsen, who was anything but a stranger to Royal St George’s, returning to the course where he had spent a number of years as a greenkeeper before a spell as a head greenkeeper at a Dutch course. Club Secretary, Christopher Gabbey, describes the club’s new course management as well bonded and with years of local conditions experience.
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