GOLF
Getting Personal Matt Booth -
manners don’t cost anything, especially when you’re naked in hotel corridors
Who are you? Matt Booth, Head Greenkeeper at Wakefield Golf Club.
Family status. Married to Alison with two boys (not so little) Joe and Jack and my dog Ziggy (the naughtiest Boston terrier around).
Who’s your hero and why? My mum, for working three jobs so we didn’t miss out on anything.
What’s been the highlight of your grounds career so far? Becoming head greenkeeper and proving that I can do it at more than one golf course.
If your younger self saw you now, what would they think? You haven’t done bad.
Which famous people wind you up? Most of them.
What job would you love, other than your own? A PE teacher, but I didn’t have much dedication at school.
What was the most embarrassing moment in your life? I have a tendency to sleepwalk. I once found myself naked in the corridor of a hotel and had to ask the receptionist to let me back in my room.
Brexit or remain? Brexit.
What is your favourite film? Any gangster movie - preferably with Robert de Niro or Martin Scorsese directing.
What scares you? Something happening to my family or, running out of cider on a Friday night.
What would your autobiography be called … and who would play you in the film? More than just a grass cutter. Jason Statham.
What is your favourite sport? Rugby league or football.
What would you cast into room 101? Jeremy Corbyn.
Which historical time and place would you like to visit? Brooklyn (NY) in the 1920’s.
24 PC December/January 2020
Do you have a lifetime ambition? Being mortgage free.
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? My uncle Sean - who passed away before I could really get to know him, Neil Young and Audrey Hepburn.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? Manners don’t cost anything.
What’s your favourite piece of trivia? Elvis never performed a single encore, so when he left, he wasn’t coming back. Hence the phrase ‘Elvis has left the building’.
What’s your favourite smell? Sex panther (Anchorman).
Which three albums would you take to a desert island? Neil Young - Harvest, Marvin Gaye - What’s going on and Van Morrison - Astral Weeks.
What’s the daftest work-related question you have ever been asked? Are the greens so wet because of the wetting agent?
What’s your favourite piece of kit? Toro ProCore 648.
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Conscientious, irritable and loyal.
What is the single most useful thing you could tell a 16-year-old groundsperson/greenkeeper? Take in as much as you can from the older hands, go on as much training you can and don’t take to heart what members say to you.
What talent would you like to have? To play the guitar.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? A life sentence should mean a life sentence.
At work with the Agrimetal leaf and debris blower
itself. We do strive to keep them on the greens where possible. Winter-wise, we will place two holes, one in a normal position and the other on the perimeter cut. We call it the winter hole rather than frost hole so as not to confuse the golfers.” Grass coverage on the greens consists of sixty percent annual meadow grass and forty percent bent, with a little Yorkshire Fog in places. “We overseed every year with a bentgrass seed mix and try to encourage as much as that through as we can. It’s a matter of trying to keep a percentage of bentgrass in the greens, so they don’t go more in favour of the meadow grass. I’m not one of those who believes that poa is all evil; we must work with it.”
“To try and put the
greens back to finer grasses would see our budgets go up massively and our maintenance schedule increase. We have done a lot of work to try and refine the meadow grass and, if you look at it now, you would think it was a fine grass species. Obviously, the seed heads are an issue, but we use Primo Maxx to stop it reproducing as quickly as it wants to. As well as this, we will go out every fortnight and verti-cut using our Greentek Thatch-Away units, varying that between two and three millimetres depending on what we are trying to do. We recently invested in a set of sarrel rollers so we can just open the top up a little. This is followed by topdressing with a quarter
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