Summer Sports - Tennis
DIAMOND GEEZERS
EDDIE SEAWARD - GRASS COURT TENNIS
Interim Indoor Court Maintenance before this summer's major refurbishment
will be a period where the construction site is taken back over for marquees to be erected, which are used for public catering during the tournament itself. Obviously, this creates some major health and
Following the London 2012 Olympics Tennis competition, Eddie Seaward MBE retired from his role as Head Groundsman at the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
It was a position he had held since 1990, but he had worked in the industry for fifty-three years. He was awarded his MBE in 2008 for ‘services to the industry’, and who are we to argue with HRH?
On receiving his award, Eddie commented: “The MBE was a total surprise, just not something I was expecting. I received the letter, and it was my wife who recognised that it was from the Prime Minister’s office. I didn’t, it was a brown envelope and I thought it was probably from the Inland Revenue! It was a wonderful feeling. On the day, the Queen presented me with the medal, and she was absolutely phenomenal.”
Asked what he would do in his retirement he said; “it will be nice to go on holiday and do some travelling at a time when I want to. I’d like some time off, I’d like to have a rest.”
Amen to that, and thanks Eddie; a true gentleman.
76 I PC APRIL/MAY 2015
safety issues which we will have to work around and help find solutions to. To further challenge us, we are also having the six courts in our indoor tennis centre re-surfaced. These works will involve the removal of the whole court surface and sub-surface layers down to around one metre in depth, and then the courts being re-constructed from the bottom up. This on its own is a huge project but, with it scheduled to start less than two weeks after the Aegon Classic Birmingham is concluded, again we will have some huge challenges to overcome in order to ensure service continuity, and maintain the quality of our surfaces, as well as keeping people safe!
As we are sure most people would expect, planning for such a complex phase of works has been worked out long in advance and, like anything we do, we have tried to identify potential issues before they become problematic. However, only time will tell how well we have foreseen the future! Moving forward, we are now in the hands of
the weather Gods! With any luck, March will bring us more settled, dry and mild weather and, with that, an opportunity to start pressing ahead with our spring renovation programme on the grass courts. Some better weather would also afford us the chance to complete our renovation
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works on the American Clay courts, and allow us to start bringing the ornamental lawns up to speed.
Another aspect which indirectly effects
preparations for the Aegon Classic Birmingham is the recruitment of our temporary court covering team. This started in earnest at the end of January with a placement of an advert at our local University, looking to appoint between thirty and forty additional staff to work with the full time grounds team, primarily as court covering assistants. All of this recruitment is carried out in-house, meaning a lot of hours are spent advertising, processing applications, shortlisting, interviewing and appointing. Gone are the days when grounds staff just worked on the grass! With regards to the grass courts, as soon as
the weather allows, we will be looking to start verti-cutting on a regular basis, ideally once every seven to ten days. As we begin to thin the grass sward, we can then really get to grips with what we are dealing with. While moss invasion looks to have been a minor problem this year for us, if at all, we will look to fertilise with a high nitrogen fertiliser once the chances of frosts have passed, partly to knock back any moss we may have, but also to kick-start some strong spring growth. An obvious knock on effect of this is that mowing frequencies can then also increase. As and when conditions allow, we will also
being regular brushing of the courts. It is probably worth pointing out, at this point, that the majority of our grass court maintenance is
Planning for such a complex phase of works has been worked out long in advance and we have tried to identify potential issues before they become problematic. However, only time will tell how well we have foreseen the future!
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