Irrigation expert!
The Red, Gold and Silver courses are all much smaller and slightly easier for the novice golfer.
At the time of my internship they were
reconstructing the Silver course. Jim Mclean, the course architect, made some drastic changes to improve the quality of the course. In the southern USA, the turf cultivars are totally different to that of northern states, as the climate is completely different. Warm season grasses, such as Tiffeagle bermudagrass, are grown on the greens on the Blue Monster course as the climate is warm enough all year round. Every March, Doral’s Blue Monster course hosts the World Golf Championship. The top fifty ranked golfers in the world come and play the tournament and try to gain points for the Fedex cup. My internship was based at the Blue Monster course, working under the Course Superintendent,
Hole changing at Doral
Ronnie Rooks, as his second assistant. As soon as I began work here, I was in charge of changing the holes for the tournament, as well as helping with the extensive preparation that occurred. Other tasks involved irrigation responsibilities, fertility and plug relocations and running the crew during the preparation of the bunkers. It is imperative to place great importance on the plug relocation on Tiffeagle greens, due to the heavy grain, as the turf spreads through stolons and rhizomes. If a plug is placed in the wrong direction it will become visible. The grain on the plug has to match up with the surrounding grain. One of my earliest career highlights was changing the finishing holes on the back nine during the tournament. This particular tournament was when Tiger Woods was making his return to golf following knee surgery. Thankfully, I had months of
preparation to ensure that my hole changing was nothing less than 100%. It had to be so perfect that the PGA insisted I lay all of my hole changing tools out on a towel first, just in case I appeared on television! Despite the golf course being rather dry, due to a lack of seasonal spring showers, all the professionals were very happy with the way the course played.
In the spring of 2009, following completion of my OSU programme, I headed back to England to take up a new position, as a seasonal greenkeeper at Loch Lomond Golf Club in Scotland. This had been researched and arranged earlier, whilst still living and working in Florida and included a very interesting and sleepy 5.00am phone interview with Superintendent, David Cole! This was, yet again, another spectacular summer for me, as Loch Lomond hosted the Barclays Scottish
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