I can testify that Royal St George’s greenkeepers’ faces were taking a battering too as they rejuvenated the bunkers in a Force 8


but not stirred! STRI agronomist, Alistair Beggs, is


retained by the R&A to advise Royal St George’s regularly, and the 900-member club reckons its course is going to be in even better condition than it was for its last excellent Open in 2003, won by American, Ben Curtis. The fairways are expected to look and play better than ever. Lower cutting and ‘boxing off ’ is recommended these days, plus intensified sanding and brushing, methods which are paying off, says the club. The insistence, by the R&A, that Open fairways must now be cut in a single direction - presumably for television aesthetics - means that more men and more machines will be needed for mowing four or five weeks before the Championship and over the four days. The usual ‘light and dark’ cutting regime used on the course fairways has to be abandoned, though is a quicker operation and involves less man and machine power. Fairway mowing for a couple of months switches from a two- man job to a six-man job. Like it or not, Graham and the Royal St George’s greenkeeping team will have to follow the precedent set at St Andrews last year


of ‘all one colour’ as you look down the Open fairways. This summer, to accommodate the


R&A’s one way look, preferred equipment provider John Deere, care of Kent dealers Godfreys, will be boosting the firepower, and Royal St George’s will be engaging four more greenkeeping troops to handle the long-winded journeying backwards and forwards, tracking back via the rough. Royal St George’s ranks will have to be increased by up to ten greenkeepers for Open cutting duties over all, and there will, of course, be technical support manpower from John Deere and Hunter Grinders to see that these run unerringly smoothly.


In this, and other Open years, normal course work routines at Royal St George’s are brought forward by two months. Indicating how bad things had been this winter, snow mould put in a maiden appearance at the famous course. It had never been seen there before, but the exceptional conditions meant it put in an unwelcome, albeit minor, debut on the 4th green and first tee. Forewarned is very definitely


forearmed and Paul says the club’s own weather station, linked to its computerised RainBird irrigation system, plus regular checks with the Met. Office weather station at nearby Manston, give him a pretty accurate idea of what’s coming. There was a two or three day window of opportunity, as Graham calls it, after the late November cold spell and ahead of significant snow in early December. He used the forecast lull before the storm to apply additional preventative fungicide, Chipco Green, to all the greens and tees. The spraying did its job by and large, thank goodness. On a short winter’s day, however, fine tuning the green stuff was not top of the list. It was very much bunker time. Their faces take a real battering - those that are south facing faring the worse - and getting them in the best possible shape, literally, is a major priority. I can testify that Royal St George’s greenkeepers’ faces were taking a battering too as they rejuvenated the bunkers in a Force 8. It’s what links care is all about, and being wind-resistant goes with the territory. They will surely - and rightly - be ‘mentioned in dispatches’ in the


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