Golf GETTING Personal...
Brian Innes Mckendrick - anything with an ‘F’ in it is pleasurable - let’s just leave it there, shall we!
Who are you? Brian Innes Mckendrick, Head Greenkeeper at Craigielaw Golf Club - not too tall, not too short, but stuck in the middle somewhere. Been greenkeeping now for twenty- five years, the last two as Head at Craigielaw.
Family status? Married to a woman I drive round the bend at times. And two grown up boys.
Who’s your hero and why? I don’t have heroes as such, just experiences from a wide variety of family and friends and those I have worked with. The trick is to take the best out of it all and use it to the best of your ability and experience. If this is bad, learn from it and use it as part of life’s lessons and, if good, cherish it and pass it down the line.
What would you change about yourself? Being only 5’ 6”, this impacts on my B-M-I {body mass index} a bit, so a couple more inches and I wouldn’t be overweight or be on a DIET.
What’s your guilty pleasure? Anything with an F in it - mainly ‘FOOD’, that’s why I’m on that DIET.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Being given this opportunity to lead a great squad of lads. I am fortunate to work alongside people who understand the direction we are going in and put up with me.
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? My mum, I miss the laughs; my wife’s dad, as I never got the chance to know him, and Kevin Bridges because, being Scottish, I get the humour.
If you could be anyone for a day, who would it be and why? A senior, for if it was raining I’d put my feet up, relax and have a coffee.
Do you have any bad habits? My missus says I have loads of bad ones and I have never achieved any brownie points yet. Good ones are so far apart, I can’t remember any.
Do you go to bed worrying about the next day’s workload? Not exactly, but I will wake up in the morning planning changes if anyone calls in sick or not able to make it in.
What are you reading at the moment? Pitchcare magazine, of course.
What are your pet peeves? The list is slowly growing, especially when you’re in this position. The days are gone when I would see something I’d like to change and couldn’t. Now I have a bit of artistic licence, but within reason.
If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be? In a Chop bar (restaurant) in Accra, Ghana.
What’s the best and worst part of your job? On those occasions when getting soaked, frozen, covered in mud, and with cold feet, leads to a sense of satisfaction. The worst is forgetting to dry my gear!
Do you have a lifetime ambition? To try and reach the light at the end of the tunnel and not move the goal posts - also to achieve some of those brownie points.
Favourite record, and why? Simon & Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson; great movie, great song.
Who would you choose to spend a romantic evening with? Mi daw (my love) with a bowl of
22 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016
tilapia+tomato, onion chilli sauce with sardine, Kenqui with a spot of Shito - it’s the dog’s nuts, but it’s not the dog’s nuts, if you know what I mean. If not, Naga Munchetty would be a close second. She’s easy on the eye and has a great smile.
If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? Take a cake in; the lads would kill me if I didn’t!
If you were to describe yourself as a musical instrument, what would you be and why? A one man band, because I could make as much noise as possible without offending the instruments that I couldn’t play, which would be all of them.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? I wouldn’t do that too often, you’ll go blind.
What’s your favourite smell? Peanut butter soup; it’s the best ever.
What do you do in your spare time? What’s that?
What’s the daftest work related question you have ever been asked? Not a question, as such, but a comment: An apprentice who did work for us cut a fairway left to right instead of right to left - it happens - though his reasoning made our day let alone that year. “Sorry for that, I got my hands mixed up. I thought my right was my left and my left was my right, then I remembered what hand I wrote with and, by then, it was to late.” Some things you just can’t make up.
What’s your favourite piece of kit? The other five in the squad.
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Patient, caring, supportive - my wife’s words, not mine.
What talent would you like to have? To speak Twi fluently. It’s my wife’s first language, so I would know if she was talking about me.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? Don’t moan about the roped of areas on the course and the G.U.R signs if your own course is shut!
and we also get support from Rainbird’s Kneale Diamond.
We don’t currently employ a workshop technician. Being a small team of just six, we do what we can, otherwise it is outsourced to Thomas Sherriff & Co Ltd, the local John Deere dealer in Haddington, five miles away.
Where does presentation rank?
I have this notice in the shed: “If you can’t give 120%, perfection will just have to do”. Presentation is paramount, as are good work practices.
Simply hand cutting greens puts them on a different planet where presentation is concerned. We came up with various cutting methods which I find suit the course for various occasions, from traditional links style fairways to variations in the angle of cut; whichever style we choose is also reflected on the tees.
How would you describe the soil profile generally and what additional problems does that bring?
Other than the greens and tees, the general profile is a soil loam, interspersed with areas of high clay content and sandy loams on the coastal side of the course.
The greens were built to USGA specification. The odd one is sheltered, as is the whole of the academy course, so those greens are irrigated less to reduce high moisture build-up and, on occasion, cored with 12mm tines rather than our standard 8mm tines. Elsewhere, good, basic turf maintenance procedures prevail.
We do have some small issues with shade and airflow, but this is dealt with mainly by trimming and thinning out dense shrub areas and tree branches and, as said before, good turf maintenance practices seem to do the trick.
An irrigation system was installed during construction, as was the drainage system. In the past, we suffered badly from flooding in certain areas, so additional drainage was installed on high risk fairways, and a pumping station was fitted on the lower end of the course to divert excess water, plus the fairways are now verti-drained annually with 18mm tines.
We also cut down into wet areas around the course, using a simple patcher, to break through clay locked areas down into the porous strata and fill to ground level with gravel. Simple, but very effective.
Do you use temporary greens?
When revetting greenside bunkers, we will, on occasion, put the flag on the approach, especially on the par 3s. Also, the odd green is susceptible to hard frost so occasionally, but very rarely, we will place those flags on the approach.
Tell us about your weekly/monthly maintenance regimes?
Height of cut on the greens ranges from 4mm in summer to 8mm in winter. John Deere 2500E triples or John Deere 220 pedestrian
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