Golf
flooding in winter, as well the financial difficulties of living in Surrey on a low salary, left me wanting to make a lifestyle change. One of my lecturers at Merrist Wood was
Peter Bradburn, who had moved on to become Course Superintendent at Aphrodite Hills Golf Club in Cyprus and was looking to employ seasonal staff for the grow-in period in 2002. Fed up with the long, wet British winters I applied and got accepted. This was the job that changed my life. I stayed at Aphrodite Hills for a further
three and a half years, gaining crucial experience in correct maintenance techniques. In August 2005, a good friend of mine, Pablo Moran from Spain, whom I’d worked with at Aphrodite Hills, asked if I would like to join him at Golfpark Puntiro in Mallorca as a Deputy Head Greenkeeper for the grow-in project of a new Nicklaus Design golf course. I jumped at the opportunity of a managerial position on a Nicklaus grow-in project, and we each decided to devote a year of our lives to ensure that we delivered the course on time, to the required standard, ready for opening in September 2006.
We trained a completely inexperienced
team of local Spaniards to a good level and, importantly, I took Spanish language classes in order to improve my communication skills, as none of the staff spoke a word of English. Once the course opened, I then enjoyed a
very happy year and a half making good friends in the local ex-pat community, whilst improving my Spanish substantially. In the meantime, I was learning even more about the various native grasses, environmental difficulties and water management techniques needed in order to maintain the course to a good standard. By 2008, I felt I was now ready to manage
my own course and so, in March of that year, I applied for the Head Greenkeeper job at Minthis Hills Golf Club, Cyprus, just a few miles north east of Paphos. As the course was owned, at that time, by the Church of Cyprus, I was taken to the local Bishopric where I was interviewed by some of the town’s leading priests. I must have made a good enough impression because I was offered the job. Minthis Hills, formerly known as Tsada Golf Club, has had a complicated life and yet
it has hardly even reached adolescence. It was originally built ready for opening in 1994, using a Donald Steel design but constructed in-house by local contractors. It was the first grass golf course in Cyprus, but it was very badly built with extremely poor drainage and irrigation systems that caused flooding in winter and large, dead patches of grass in the summer. The course, then, was owned by the Church of Cyprus and built in a hilltop valley around an 11th century monastery. It is 550 metres above sea level and is very Cypriot in character, with numerous vineyards, olive, carob and walnut trees dotted around its parkland site. After years of flooding and drought, which
were severely damaging the playability of the course, as well as costing thousands of euros each year in reparations, it was decided an upgrade was necessary in order to try and increase membership and attract more tourism revenues. This time the architect, Tom MacKenzie of MacKenzie and Ebert Ltd, was brought in to plan the redesign. John Greasley Ltd was the construction company involved and Irrigation Control Ltd was contracted for the irrigation
PC APRIL/MAY 2014 I 11
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