Golf
Seamus Moriarty’s dream of working abroad was realised when he
contacted Mike O’Keeffe about the Ohio State
University’s International Exchange Programme. Placed into Lake Merced Golf Club, he soon found out that shorts and sunscreen were not the order of the day in this particular part of California
California Dreamin’
On such a foggy day! A
fter spending nearly six years in Adare Manor, which included two Irish Opens and two JP McManus Pro Ams, the time had come to move on. So, I sent an email to
Mike O’Keeffe at The Ohio State University International Exchange Programme explaining my story. From the very beginning, Mike was great in explaining how much would be expected of me if I took part on the programme, and that this would be the biggest test of my career thus far. After some planning, and a short conversation with my new Superintendent, Zach Ohsann, my host golf course was confirmed as Lake Merced Golf Club in the San Francisco Bay Area. I arrived in San Francisco at the end of May 2011. The golf club is located in Daly City, which is about ten miles south of downtown San Francisco. Zach had taken over here at the helm from the previous super at the beginning of April. Realising that the previous super had just retired after forty-six years of service, I was pleased to hear of Zach’s immediate plans to change more than a few things, both agronomically and non- agronomically.
Seamus Moriarty
“We maintain a stimp reading of 11.5 to 12 feet on a daily basis, regardless of weather”
24 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
During my first few days here, I began to familiarise myself with the course and the crew. The course itself was originally designed by Dr Alistair McKenzie and has gone through a few design changes since then; by Rees Jones in 1996 and a greens renovation in 2010. Lake Merced is a beautiful golf course set amongst some of the most magnificent pine sand Monterey Cypress trees one could imagine. The crew consists of twenty, each of them bringing with them their own unique culture and ethnicity. As you can imagine, the canteen in the morning is an interesting place to be with such diversity and different languages filling the air. Immediately, Zach and I set about setting our goals for the remaining six months of the year, the most important of these being an aeration programme, whereby light, but frequent applications of sand topdressings are performed on the greens, approaches and tees. With the USGA Girls’ Junior
Championship scheduled for July 2012, it was imperative that we implement an intense topdressing programme to all surfaces. Hollow tine or solid tine aeration is to be kept at a minimum, so topdressing with our double screened USGA specification sand will help us dilute the thatch layer that is accumulating beneath the turf, and also keep surfaces as firm as possible. We follow a similar aeration programme with our tees and approaches, with minimal disruption to play being key. Some of the most important things I have learned from Zach already are to always have a plan A and a plan B, record everything and, most importantly, take pictures of everything!
The weather here in Daly City is pretty amazing. When I was packing a bag to come from Killarney to Northern California, I anticipated many necessities, such as shorts, t-shirts, and plenty of sunscreen. Well, I soon discovered that sunshine certainly is not the norm here! During the summer months of July and August, the fog sits out in the bay and, when it gets pushed in by the warm sea air, the area becomes submerged in fog. This fog may persist for days, even weeks at a time. Quite often I find myself having to change into dry clothes at lunch time for the remainder of the day. It’s amazing! This mild, damp weather obviously
increases disease pressure. It’s not unusual to apply fungicides on a bi- weekly basis. Another project under my
responsibility was to become familiar with the pesticide products, and to create a rotation system so that no strains of pathogen become resistant to any fungicide. At this moment in time, we have a rotation with ten different fungicides.
I have learned many things during my term at the club regarding the expectations of playing conditions in America. The most significant is the quality of the putting surfaces. At first, the expectations seemed unreasonable; maintaining a stimp reading of 11.5 to 12 feet on a daily basis, regardless of weather.
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