Golf
GETTING Personal...
Martyn Savident - warm smell of colitas rising up through the air ... and cheese!
Who are you? Martyn Savident, Course Manager at La Grande Mare Hotel Golf & Country Club, Guernsey.
Family status? Married.
Who’s your hero and why? Seve Ballesteros, watching him got me interested the game.
What would you change about yourself? I would love to be healthier than I am.
What’s your guilty pleasure? Cheese and wine, hence my health.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Having both my sons in the industry.
What are your pet peeves? Daft questions from members; I think I’ve heard them all by now.
If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be? I’m not that fussed as long as it’s warm.
What’s the best part of your job? Setting up the course for summer comps.
… and the worst? Trying to set up the course for winter comps.
Do you have a lifetime ambition? To carry on living.
Favourite record, and why? Hotel California - warm smell of colitas. My teenage years were the seventies.
Who would you choose to spend a romantic evening with? Obviously my wife.
If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? Retire.
If you were to describe yourself as a musical instrument, what would you be and why? Bagpipes, not everyone’s favourite.
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler, Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke; I think that would be fun!
If you could be anyone for a day, who would it be and why? I have enough trouble dealing with my own life, that's enough for me.
28 I PC JUNE/JULY 2015
Do you have any bad habits? I tell it straight.
... or any good ones? I tell it straight!
Do you go to bed worrying about the next day’s workload? It wasn’t just cheese that got me in this state.
What are you reading at the moment? James B Beard’s Turf Management for Golf Courses - not reading, perusing.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? We play on grass, not colour.
What’s your favourite smell? A good roast.
What do you do in your spare time? I try to play golf although my handicap is now up in double figures.
What’s the daftest work related question you have ever been asked? Can you cut the fairway from the front of the tee?
What’s your favourite piece of kit? My Hunter Juno.
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Stubborn, impatient and proud.
What talent would you like to have? To predict the weather accurately.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? Poets day everyday.
have finally got them on the list of game that can be hunted on Guernsey and have started to control them a little.” “One of our members has permission to control any wildlife that starts to interfere with course presentation or condition. Rabbits are a familiar sight on the course and have not been too much of a problem over the years, with an outbreak of myxomatosis every now and then keeping them in check and, as everyone knows, rabbit tastes a lot like chicken!” “During early October, we
completely rebuilt the 6th green, which used to have a step across the middle that meant a lot of lost pin positions. It has now had the front portion raised by about 18 inches to make a more level putting surface, and the green has been extended right by about 8 metres.” “As the greens staff team had
‘shrunk’ somewhat at the time, I engaged a good friend of mine, Nick Russell, and his lads to help with this task. Nick is my local turf supplier, but he does not grow any greens quality turf. I was looking for a predominantly bent source and got what I
needed from Tillers Turf, who were brilliant. They lifted the turf on a Monday and had it on the ferry and delivered to my maintenance facility by Wednesday. Nick and his team had finished by 7.00pm, with headlights on the machines shining on the site. We used the new turf for the putting surface, whilst the turf stripped from the green was used on the perimeter and greens surround.” “I was so impressed with the
way Nick went about the task that, in recent weeks, he has helped me with a low area about 5m x 5m on one green, a small step that was too steep on another, and an area on the first fairway that was a bit thin over a concrete pipe and needed raising a few inches.” “We have our own turf
nursery and turf cutter (that I bought second hand from Nick) and would have done all this work in-house, as we normally do, but when I saw how little waste there was when Nick did it, it was a no brainer to get him back.”
“We have also been levelling
and extending tees and reshaping bunkers and, most
Maintenance regimes at La Grande Mare
GUERNSEY is situated within the Cherbourg peninsular and, as with the other islands, gets a slightly warmer climate than the UK. We still get storms off the Atlantic - if you cross the road to the beach and head due west the next land you would encounter would be the east coast of America - but we get very few frosts and our spring growth starts as early as mid February. By the end of March, we are cutting the greens daily, surrounds and approaches every other day and tees and fairways the same. This will continue until the end of October and we only reduce the number of cuts from November. We have two JD 2500 for the
greens, both fitted with groomers and rear roller brushes. We sometimes send two guys out to cut, or we may have one cut and the other follow with our Greentek vibe rollers fitted; it takes minutes to change from cutting units to rollers, so this is not a problem and can be done several times a week. This method speeds up the greens for competitions and club matches. Sometimes we will just roll, especially during the summer, I don’t think any handicap golfer
would be able to tell the difference.
One morning, as we were
getting the course set up for the LGM Open, one of the cutting cylinders was damaged by a metal spike off a golfer’s shoe. Not having time to set up the grinder, I decided to just vibe roll slowly, we were told our greens were the best they had been that year. It just goes to show, it is all about appearance. Getting our stripes right,
whether they are on greens, tees or fairways, is important to us. On our tees we use a JD7200, also with groomers, presentation is good. We stripe in various directions, not just down the fairways, and this machine is also used on surrounds and approaches, which gives a good definition from green to surround and approach and then to fairway height cut with a JD7800, again fitted with groomers and rear roller brushes; something that is needed on dewey mornings. We don’t do a lot of
maintenance to our fairways. If we get flooded, it is from run off from farmland and is normally nutrient rich, so feeding fairways is not needed, although we do
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156