New man at the helm

/in /by

New man at the helm: The new Chair of the IOG is a man who is a believer in evolution not revolution and, such has been the strides taken by the Institute on the recent past, you can be sure that there wouldn’t be a need for any U turns or radical changes in approach under his stewardship. 

David Carpenter has been a member of the IOG Board for nine years and played a key part in the move of Saltex from Windsor Racecourse north to the NEC in Birmingham and he has seen levels of professionalism across the board increase during his time involved.

New man at the helm

“I certainly don’t think that I need to take anything by the scruff of the neck. I have every confidence in the rest of the Board and the Executive team and we have been working together as a group extremely well,” explained David, who can call on his vast and relevant experience from working for the Sports Council and the Lottery Fund.

“I’m not suddenly going to change direction unless there is good reason to do so.” That is not to say that David, who took over the reins from David Teasdale, is going to be passive. He is a deep thinker on the subject of groundsmanship and the issues that are inherent in an industry which rarely gets the credit it deserves.

“I am concerned about the lack of new people coming into the industry, both as volunteers and professionals and I’d certainly like to see more young people entering the profession.

I’d also like to see more women in grounds management and I’d like to see more black and ethnic minorities represented in our profession.

“Such is the lack of level of entry, we can’t afford to not have half the population as potential ground staff,” he said.

He is not overly concerned with the elite side of the industry in terms of surface quality, after all we have many of the finest grounds managers in the world. But at the community end of the industry which impacts most on the greatest number of people there are real issues that must be addressed.

GanTIP has already conclusively identified that natural pitches are not in good condition at community level but already Jason and his team have tackled and improved nearly
4,000 community football pitches. They are doing a great job.

“I do see a scenario where community facilities could actually get worse before they get better. Local authorities are not recruiting and we have to find other routes into the profession. A lot of the volunteers we do have are older people and they are not going to be around forever and we need new younger people to work alongside and eventually take over,”

“We also know that with a little more investment there is an opportunity to make significant improvement.”

On education and professional development David has some interesting views.

“It strikes me that grounds management is where sports coaching was 20 years ago. Then there was no structured pathway for coaching and coaching appointments were very random, particularly outside of perhaps football and cricket.

“The status of the coach was really quite low. As a result of a more structured approach and clear pathways that status is much higher and coaches now receive much more respect. I think that is possible for grounds management if we are able improve the pathway quite significantly.”

One of the ways in which this could be achieved is an education process for operations managers, such as Contract Managers, Bursars and Arena Managers, who are ultimately responsible for grounds management.

“I think this process will take much longer than my time as Chair but it is a very important aspect and one which requires significant input. It is ridiculous that so many sports rely on good surfaces yet groundsmen and women don’t have the same parallel standing as those carrying out other functions within the organisation.”

He does have another interesting idea, which he stresses is his own and not IOG policy.

“I’d like to see education for the volunteer side of the industry available on a free of charge basis. Obviously that would require sponsorship support and we would have to go to the respective sports councils or sport governing bodies to agree volunteer programmes but I do think it is something worth exploring.”

David is also well aware of the change to the role of many groundsmen and women at that elite end.

“Groudscare managers now have to be so flexible. Not only have they to prepare surfaces which are scrutinised on TV and often criticised by players, past and present – when often it is as a result of bad play not bad surfaces – and then have to move seamlessly into preparing a stadium for an arena concert.

“They are working incredibly long hours, late into the night, and sometimes overnight to ensure that concerns booked by the commercial department are a success. I don’t think there is enough recognition for how much effort goes into it all.”

David was appointed to the Board as an independent member nine years ago after he had carried out some consultancy work for the IOG’s Chief Executive Geoff Webb in 2005.

“I also did a study in 2007 in which I called groundsmanship the hidden profession. I was basically saying that there was great work being done and some really good people involved but that they didn’t really have any profile at all.

“In 2010 Geoff asked me to join the Board and I have been really pleased that I accepted his offer because it has been quite an eventful time over the last eight or nine years and the organisation has made really good progress.”

Much of that progress can be seen with the success of the move of Saltex to the NEC in Birmingham, a move that David was involved heavily.

“We agonised about it for quite a long time to be frank but we knew that Windsor was staring to fail and that the status quo was not going to work. We had to shake it up and do something, and we’ve had a successful four years so far.

“The key is for us to keep the Show fresh and innovative, introduce new things and new thinking and we will try to keep it going for strength to strength. Fortunately, we have some good thinkers around the table and people who feed in good ideas and Geoff himself is very good on that front.”

David was elected Chair at the IOG’s AGM in September and firmly believes that progress will be made.

“I feel that I am taking over at quite a good time with regard to where we’ve managed to get to but we must lift the bar higher. We must push forward. For example, we have just appointed an agency to work with us with the aim of lifting the profile of the industry. Their work will not be launched until next spring but we are working very hard behind the scenes with the agency and I see this as the next stage of our challenge.”

Life is full of challenges but if you have a carpenter at the heart of things you can be sure of stability and a well-constructed future.

Machinery at the touch of a button

/in /by

Machinery at the touch of a button: We live in an age where we can carry out any amount of business from a laptop, tablet, even a phone. Where once we had to engage the services of an advisor or expert we can now do what we need do from the comfort of our own sofa, or from the layby of a busy road. 

Our fine industry has long been regarded as traditional – loving the personal touch of a sales rep we’ve know for years and the strangely comforting pleasure derived from kicking a tyre or two – but it is not adverse to dabbling with the modern age.

Machinery at the touch of a button

Thanks to a new company we too have the option to purchase high quality used machinery by the touch of a button.

Grass Plant has been set up by Martin Guy, a sports and amenity turf industry entrepreneur of over 30 years standing, to enable machinery dealers to offer their used machinery to end users and potential customers in a similar manner to that of Auto Trader, in the domestic vehicle market.

“Grass Plant has come about following my work with another of my companies – Martin Guy Developments. I’ve operated and owned golf courses for many years so contracting has been a big part of the business,” said Martin.

“With contracting comes a lot of equipment and at any one time we can be holding in in excess of £1.5 million worth of machinery because of the nature of work that we do.”

Having such a stock of machinery means that Martin spends a lot of time with machinery sales people and he began to realise that as an end user, and someone who buys and sells himself he saw the benefits of an on-line trading platform for used machinery.

“Grass Plant was formed as a company four years ago with this concept in mind but the website to enable it to work didn’t come to fruition until the start of this year. I wanted to make sure that the website was completely correct and fit for purpose but now it is set, it is evolving and moving and people are beginning to subscribe to it.”

The business model does work on a subscription basis. If a dealer has a number of machines to sell he will be given a flat rate for them to be advertised on the site and the dealer can put whatever they like onto the site and remove or refresh at will.

“The end user then can see what is available and have a choice of what machine they are looking for. There might be a three old version of the machine with a lot of hours on the clock they want of a five year old version with fewer, so the potential customer can see what is their best fit,” explained Martin, adding that 99% of his current clients are main machinery dealers.

“They are selling new and buying it back and need an outlet for what comes back in. It’s not uncommon for a mainline dealer to be sitting on £1 million worth of used stock.”

With the current uncertainty in the economy well maintained used machinery is particularly attractive while the concept of machinery packages being leased to clubs ensures that there is a ready supply of machines, well maintained, after three or five years which the dealer then has to move on.

Martin, through Martin Guy Developments, currently maintains six golf courses, 23 football pitches and five cricket grounds so the company is also a first hand end user of an array of machinery.

“As Grass Plant develops we are going to start reviewing equipment as well. We will be giving full warts and all trials so potential purchasers can see what us, an a contractor, feels about the machine,” revealed Martin.

With everything now in place and the website tried and tested, Saltex will be the opportunity for Grass Plant to raise general awareness within the industry.

“Our on-line digital figures are going up and up, doubling and trebling month on month and our social media profile is growing to. Saltex will be important to us, as will BTME while January, February and March are the key months for machinery purchase.”

Our industry may well be traditional but thanks to Grass Plant it does not stop us from enjoying the benefits of the 21st century!

Thunderbirds are go!

/in /by

Thunderbirds are go!: Ask Darren Baldwin about some of the technical innovation contained within the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and his answer brings a smile to the face of many of a certain age.

“It’s very much Thunderbirds stuff, if I’m honest,” explained the man who has seen it all during his 23 years as Head of Playing Surfaces and Estates at the club.

Thunderbirds are go!

Those of us who can remember the booming countdown voice of the Thunderbirds narrator not to mention the wobbly puppetry, will immediately know where he is coming from. Floors sliding open to release International Rescue vehicles from the Tracy Island headquarters, each piloted by a member of the Tracy family.

I’m not sure if Darren sees himself as any one member of the cast, but given what he has to deal with in terms of the above and below the pitch technology, he could quite easily stand in for Brains, but minus the big glasses!

To replace the Tarkett PlayMaster surface, which Spurs play their matches on, with the artificial Turf Nation pitch for the NFL matches, which will be regular features at the 62,062 capacity stadium, the natural pitch is split into sections, slides out and parked in what is otherwise a car park under the stadium, where the LED grow lights, fans and irrigation ensures it thrives in its unfamiliar temporary environment.

The NFL pitch is therefore revealed to create a perfect theatre for a sport which is becoming increasingly popular on this side of the pond.

The NFL pitch is six feet lower than its natural turf brother, meaning those in the first few rows of the stadium can see the play over the plethora of six foot five tight ends and line backers, coaches, physios etc who spend so much of their time on the touchline.

Thunderbirds are go!

That is just an example of what goes on at what must be currently the most talked about stadium in the world of sport, never mind the UK.

Talking to Darren, as we stood level with the halfway line, mid-way up one of the fabulous and imposing stands, you can feel the pride and sense of achievement which he, along with everyone involved in Spurs, feels.

The initial vision for a replacement for the old White Hart Lane, with its capacity of 36,284, came with the arrival of the new Chairman, Daniel Levy, way back in 2001.

“He had a vision that we needed to improve facilities, both for the fans and the players, so he looked at everything from the stadium to the training ground. We also needed to increase capacity to be in the 60,000 plus bracket alongside other top European clubs,” recalled Darren.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have been here that long so I have also lived that dream from day one, following it through to where we are today.”

It’s fair to say that any vision, no matter how “Blue Sky” would not have come close to living up to reality of what the stadium eventually became.

“It started out as a 60,000 seater bowl and progressed with options and revised visions before it became a multitude of different challenges to overcome. The word that was never to be used in any environment whether that be in the Board Room or on the construction site was ‘No’. What was always said was ‘How can we make it happen?’.”

With Darren’s focus on the playing surfaces, that positive approach was never tested more than the day when a Concert Consultant explained that to put on a full scale concert he would need the venue for 10 days, meaning that Darren’s pitch would have to be parked up under the stadium for all that time. At that time even the best case scenario was that a pitch could only survive under those circumstances for a maximum of three days.

Thunderbirds are go!

“After picking me up off the floor we went back to work to find a way of parking the pitch for 10 days and now, having done extensive testing, and thanks to our friends at SGL lighting, we can park the pitch in the Pitch Pocket for 14 to 15 days,” explained Darren, who worked closely with Julian Franklin, Head of Horticulture and Controlled Environments, at Rothamsted Research, on maintaining turf in the dark.

As a man who grew up looking after turf, being heavily involved in the concrete and steel of a major stadium meant that Darren was well out of his comfort zone.

“To be honest, I’d be in some of the meetings looking at plans and talking to senior engineers and all I’d want to know is what button to push to make it work. It was mind blowing science.

But it has given me a great insight into what goes on in an engineer’s world, as well as the groundsman’s world. It was also important that they knew and understood what we wanted from a turf maintenance perspective and how we wanted things to work.”

The air systems, vacuum systems, undersoil heating were all areas in which Darren could make sure what he and his team would be working with over the next few seasons was the best it could be and that any potential issues were ironed out before they had a chance to become a problem.

“What we have with the natural pitch is a series of trays containing 500mm of pitch build suspended three feet off the ground. We did a lot of vibration testing because what we couldn’t have was a situation where we had seven or eight players jump at a corner, all land at the same time and have the pitch vibrate. We’d be known as the Wobbly Pitch!”

The work done with SGL has been equally state-of-the-art and seen grow lighting taken to a new level at the stadium.

“A lot of design went into the wheeled rigs and, based on the experiences we had with lighting rigs we worked on the things which we felt could be improved. For example, lugging cables back and forward and having cables lying or suspended above the grass. Our system now has about five metres of cable which connects to the main power supply on the perimeter wall and that’s it. No part of the six trusses we have touch the grass – they span the width of the playing surface and operate on tracks to move up and down the pitch. We wanted the option to raise them so we could work underneath the lights while we also wanted the ability to irrigate from above them.

“In the past we’d have occasions when the lights were operating, and the irrigation has come on. Sodium bulbs don’t like the eight bar pressure of a sprinkler hitting them and they tend to shatter. So now we have an irrigation system built into the top of the trusses,” said Darren, of the trusses which are stored under the pitch when not in use.

Truly Thunderbirds indeed! Darren also ensured that the stadium had sufficient space for the machinery and equipment required to maintain the pitch.

Thunderbirds are go!

“With the new stadium we had one chance to be the kid in the sweet shop and get what we wanted and although there wasn’t a bottomless pit of money, by any stretch, we did look at what we wanted and have the machinery to carry out the job. We’ve got a mix between electric and petrol mowers – ATT on electric and Dennis Premiers for the petrol. We use the electric ones most of the week and the petrol for the last cut before a game to get the defining pattern, with that little more weight, for the finish.

“We also have storage space for the SGL lights, the fans and the mists, which we needed last summer when when it was 42 degrees pitch side. It was absolutely scorching and rye grass doesn’t like it that hot.”

The desire, and “can do” attitude at Spurs, does come with a downside, however, and that came in delays and a mind-boggling final bill for the stadium – it is probably currently the most expensive stadium in the world – a reported figure in excess of an eyewatering £1 billion is not denied.

“It took three and a half years to build and we ended up eight months late on our target date. That was frustrating for everyone, none more so than those of us at the sharp end. But it was important that we got it right.”

During that period the team played their home games at Wembley, so the team didn’t have the rush or routine of match day preparation.

“I worked at Wembley on match days for the first year and also sent two guys to Wembley full time to work with the maintenance team there. It was a bit different for Karl (Stanley) and his team as they were having to deal with us as well as the international teams.”

The big day came on April 3rd with the first match – against Crystal Palace.

“I’ve been asked many times about my emotions on that first match day, and indeed, the whole project and I say ‘Give me an emotion – I’ve had it’. Excitement, nervousness, stress, worry, lack of sleep. I’ve had them all.”

On that first matchday, with the opening ceremony and the fireworks, it was a fabulous launch to the new Spurs era but Darren remembers one particular element of the day.

“We had a hail storm an hour before kick-off and the whole pitch was white – on April 3rd! I told the guys that we were going to need blowers and snow brushes, but we didn’t know where they were stored,” smiled Darren, as he recalled the bizarre situation.

As we stood in the most modernistic stadium in the world it was a good time to find out what brought Darren, a two-time Groundsman of the Year, to the industry in the first place.

Thunderbirds are go!

“I started out as a three year-old on my dad’s lap ‘steering’ a Land Rover and trailing three sets of gang mowers at Buckhurst Hill Football Club in the mid 70s. About 10 years’ later, like most groundsmen at some stage or another, my dad got the hump when the team started training in the goal area. He threw down the keys and walked off. I picked them up and, at the age of 13, carried on looking after the pitch from then on.

“In October 1988 Steve Braddock gave me the chance to do three weeks’ work experience at Arsenal and he then took me on full time in 1990. I owe everything to Steve and I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. He gave me six great years before I got the phone call and asked if I’d be interested in coming here – one of the less publicised transfers between the two north London clubs!”

Without wishing to make him sound like a reality show contestant, it has been a “journey” for Darren and one which he has embraced since he arrived in 1996.

“Back then the club had just opened the training ground at Chigwell and it was regarded as a state-of-the-art training ground although there was no lights or running water in the grounds maintenance facility. Now we have our fantastic new training ground at Enfield with aspirations to expand it to take on Tottenham Hotspur Women, who have turned full time professional this season.

“What really scares me, given how far we have come in 23 years, is what the industry will look like in 23 years from now.”

Who knows what life will be like for ground staff, or anyone else for that matter, in 2042. Safe to say Thunderbirds will remain a fond memory for a diminishing few.

Watch Scott’s interview with Darren on the Turf Matters YouTube channel

A Heart To Hart With David

/in /by

A Heart To Hart With David: Turf Matters spoke exclusively with David Hart, Managing Director of Kubota UK and covered everything from demo lorries, structural changes, Brexit and calamatics…

When David Hart took over as Managing Director of Kubota UK just over a year ago there were two things at the top of his “To Do” list. One he wanted to get his feet under his new desk and two he wanted to make sure he got to know his new charge inside out.

A Heart To Hart With David

“I probably looked under every stone I possibly could, and spoke with everyone, so that I could get to know all aspects of the business,” said David who had previously enjoyed a stellar 28 year career at John Deere.

“It’s been a good year. It’s a cliché but a change is as good as a rest and while it is an industry which I know well there are elements of the Kubota business which have been new to me,” said David, referring to the engine and construction side of the Kubota business.

It was just in the summer of last year that David took up his new role but already he has a new job title to add to that of Managing Director – the impressive sounding Vice President for Business Transformation for Europe.

“It’s not a promotion. It’s an addition,” he explained.

“It’s on top of what I was already doing. Until a couple of years ago each country operated in a different manner.

Here in the UK we did certain things in a certain way; Germany did the same; France the same; Poland the same and so on. My new role is to bring some common structures in and processes to those different sales and marketing units.”

Having carried out structural changes in his pre-Kubota days it is a role ideally suited to him, as is steering his new staff through the changes which are inherent in a business which has grown from a staff of 88 ten years ago, based out of the headquarters at Thame in Oxfordshire. to over 140 now.

Asked about any significant changes which he has implemented since he joined David points to something which, in addition to its primary aim, has eased congestion on the UK’s motorway network as well as reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

“We’ve changed how we managed our demo operation. We used to have three articulated lorries which the demonstrators drove to their destinations. I thought we could used our time better and have those guys focusing on the demonstration rather than driving the trucks. So the trucks have gone giving us a £600,000 saving.

That’s among a few things which I have streamlined since I got here.”

Another area where David has aided the environment is in a significant reduction in his own airmiles.

“The nice thing for me is that I do less travelling because for 28 years I spent 26 weeks on the year travelling and taking around 52 flights a year,” explained David, who has only been to Kubota’s worldwide headquarters in Osaka, Japan, once since he took up his new role.

“We’ve had two of our senior management over to visit us and we showed them how we operated the business here in the UK but I think the nice thing is if our Japanese bosses are comfortable with what is going on they leave you to it.”

Looking forward David is concerned with how Brexit is going to impact upon the various areas in the Kubota business portfolio.

“My biggest concern is that, with or without a deal, it isn’t going to be good. We have already seen the construction market go soft because there has been no houses built in the last three months. Groundcare has also gone soft but that is partly because last year’s dry summer meant that dealers were left with a lot of stock.

“I’d say that one of the biggestconcerns is that we are no clearer today about what will happen than we were two and a half years ago. Let’s hope that the pessimists are wrong and the optimists are right and it’s just a blimp or turns out to be something like the Millennium Bug,” said David, in a pragmatic rather than negative tone.

Another area which has been impacted by Brexit uncertainty is recruitment.

“People keeping their powder dry at the moment. If they get the offer of a lifetime they might jump ship but otherwise they are going to stay were they are until they know what the future holds. We have got seven or eight vacancies at the moment and some of them we’ve had for more than a year.”

From the customer’s perspective they can look forward to a bolstering of some of the groundcare product with some additional lines in the near future.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a bit more product offering. Not of a big scale but complementary to what we already do. We have a few irons in the fire.”

Kubota have dipped their toe in the automomous mowing, with a product range currently available in France and on its way to these shores while calamatics is another area that will be becoming more prevalent in the next few years.

“Remote diagnostics mean that we are able to connect to customers equipment and make repairs or updates from a central point which means we will be able to react to customers’ needs much more quickly become even more efficient as a company.”

David has got much further down that original “To Do” list than even he had hoped and it augers well for not just the next 12 months but many more after that.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

/in /by

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…: Scott MacCallum catches up with Royal Portrush Course Manager, Graeme Beatt, following the magnificent return of the Open Championship to the island of Ireland.

Graeme Beatt arrived home from work and poured himself a gin and tonic before settling into a chair to reflect on the events of the previous, days, weeks and months. It’s not often that you have been charged with preparing a golf course for the biggest event on the planet, and, in the case of Royal Portrush Golf Club, it was the first time in 68 years that an Open Championship had come to call.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

Graeme smiled as he thought about the great work of his own greenkeeping team, always going that little bit beyond; how the volunteers, who had given up their time, unpaid, to contribute towards a stupendous Open venue; and how the entire club, town and island of Ireland had embraced the occasion.

The fact that the event had produced a local hero winner – if not exactly the one who had been expected to lift the Claret Jug – made the whole occasion so much more of a fairy tale.

Like most well written stories, however, the week and the lead up, had produced so many twists and turns that by the time that drink was poured Graeme was worn out.

“I had been invited to a drinks’ reception with the winner by the Championship Committee but after the trophy presentation on the 18th green I’d gone back to thank our own staff and the volunteers. I then went to lock up the sheds, got into my pick-up and drove back through the course. It was a struggle as it was still full of spectators.

“When I got to the gate I spotte my wife, Katriona, and our kids, Charlotte and Emily, walking home in the pouring rain so I picked them up. By then the plan of returning for a formal reception wasn’t too appealing so I poured a drink before we went to friends for a little while and then bed.”

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

Who could blame him? The hours he and his team were clocking up by Championship week, never mind the months leading up to it, would have had anyone tasked with implementing the Working Hours Directive applying for overtime just to log all the infractions.

“I was arriving at the course at 3.30am for a 4am start and we weren’t getting back home until half ten or a quarter to eleven at night. It was an amazing experience but at the same time we were absolutely shattered,” revealed Graeme.

All the work paid off. The course looked incredible and played superbly with weather conditions testing the players in a manner that is always hoped. The fact that Shane Lowry is a links specialist play, and, if not one of Ireland’s Major winner club members before he arrived, was regarded as a top class player. The course did identify a true champion and a true local hero.

To the question “On a scale of one to ten how happy were you with the course on the Monday of the Championship?” Graeme pondered for a moment and then said: “I’d say eight and a half.”

Top Course Managers are never satisfied, hence the missing point and a half, but Graeme had a vision of how he had wanted his Open course.

“I had a picture in my head of how I wanted the course to look, and that was to be a little bit browned off. We would have needed a few weeks of dry weather to be able to do that. The course was stunning but quite green and that wasn’t down to fertiliser, it was purely the rainfall and the warm weather. Everything greened up and stayed like that for the entire Championship.

“I was pleased with the condition of the course. I was pleased with the turf. Pleased with everything had come up and how the course played. It was just the colour really. As the Championship went on it just continued to rain and we had to do more and more to get green speed, which was the opposite if what we thought we would be doing,” said Graeme, who had to deal with 35 mil of rain in an hour just the Wednesday before Championship week. That is excessive even by Portrush standards.

“It absolutely bucketed down and we were shovelling bunker sand back and pumping water out of bunkers at eight o’clock at night. We’d been working on the bunkers for weeks taking sand out of them and reshaping them. We’d got them just right so it was really frustrating. It’s unusual to have washouts in bunkers here, but hey…”

Graeme was working closely with Alistair Beggs, Richard Windows and Adam Newton throughout the Championship, as part of the testing programme which aids course consistency.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

“I was out with Alistair every morning while the other guys, helped by two R&A Scholars, were doing the testing. They would radio green speeds to us after a single cut and we’d decide between ourselves and Grant Moir (the R&A’s Director of Rules) if we should do another cut. It worked really well as it gave us an idea of how much extra speed you’d get from another cut, how much the green speed would drop off in the evening and how much they would drop off again by the following morning.

“The weather being the way it was meant that we were doing quite a bit of cutting – the greens were being triple cut,” revealed Graeme, keeping his staff of 60 – 54 greenkeepers  plus six part-timers who filled divots – busy for the entire week.

The aforementioned bunkers also required more than their fair share of TLC.

“The bunkers were highlighted in the years leading up to the Open as a potential issue. Our bunker sand is our own and it tends to become a bit soft when dry. Even though we were getting rain we were out in the evenings to water them down with hoses just to ensure that they were firm enough and that the ball wouldn’t plug.

“The other thing was the shape of our bunkers. The fairways are designed so that the ball rolls into the bunkers and we didn’t want the ball to roll into the sand and not stop short, so we were fly mowing every day – some of them were being done morning and night. Bit of a difference to the normal once a week!”

Graeme has been Course Manager at the club since 2014, taking over from the retiring Joe Findlay, having been Course Manager at County Sligo prior to that but he is actually from Fife. He was originally from Scotscraig, near St Andrews, and attended the rival school to your Editor, albeit Graeme was quite a number of years later!

He worked at Scotscraig Golf Club before going to the still under construction Kingsbarns. He then spent time at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, in Australia before returning to Kingbarns in 2005 before moving to Ireland the following year.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

“I was a member at Scotscraig, which was an Open qualifier, and I had to take a young Justin Rose around the course when he was attempting to qualify in 1995. I had lunch with him and his family and I did think about saying to him here but felt that he would have so many people saying ‘Remember me?’ to him, that I decided not to in the end.”

While the Open hadn’t been confirmed during the interview process Graeme met with R&A officials as part of his selection, so was aware that the return of the Open was imminent and has been grateful to have had five years to get to grips with the course itself and the enormity of what an Open Championship brings.

The build up to this year’s Championship was more intense than any recent Open, partly due to that great gap between Northern Irish Opens and partly due to the wonderful “Dream Team” of Irish golfers produced over the last few years.

Three time Major winner, Padraig Harrington; Darren Clarke, 2011 Open Champion and Royal Portrush member (Darren struck the first shot of the Championship); Graeme McDowall, 2010 US Open Champion and another homer towner, whose brother is on the Royal Portrush greenkeeping staff, and four time Major winner and pre-Championship favourite, Rory McIlroy, who had broken the Royal Portrush course record as a 17-year-old.

So much expectation was riding on Rory’s slim shoulders that the pressure when he stood on the 1st tee was immense so perhaps it wasn’t too unexpected that his tee shot wasn’t his best. That coupled with the course’s ability to maximise any error, resulted in an opening quadruple bogey eight. That, added to a double bogey at the 16th and a triple bogey at the last, holed his chances below the waterline, and while he heroically shot a second round 65, a 14 shot improvement on his first, he missed the final two rounds by a solitary shot.

Was Graeme aware of what was happening to Rory on the first day?

Aware! He was very nearly part of the action.

“When Rory hit his first tee shot out of bounds it actually went over our heads. I’d nipped down to see him tee off and I was standing left of the fairway with my wife and kids.

Local Heroes For An Event That Produced A Local Hero…

We heard the thud of the ball as it hit the spectator and then his second tee shot landed right beside where we were. We watched him play his fourth into the rough beside the green and just groaned. You could see Rory’s nerves and if he’d played his first round the way he played his second he’d have been a factor.”

As for the other huge fans’ favourite, Tiger Woods? He too missed the cut, much to the dismay of the giant galleries.

The disappointment of losing the two biggest names, turned to elation on the Saturday, however, when Shane Lowry produced a spectacular third round 63 to give himself a handsome lead going into Sunday.

“Shane played north of Ireland golf for years and knows the course like the back of his hand. He can play in any conditions and is a links golfer with all the shots,” said Graeme.

With no-one able to mount a serious challenge on the final day Shane enjoyed a triumphant march around the links, cheered to the rafters from all corners, before holing out for a six shot victory.

One of Graeme’s most memorable moments was standing with the presentation party on the 18th green, but watching his team form a guard of honour for Shane as he marched out to collect the Claret Jug.

“I was so proud of our staff. They had done such an amazing job and pulled it out of the bag. A lot of them were local guys who had played and worked here all their lives and it was just great for everyone.”

While he was at home enjoying that celebratory gin and tonic, the team was at nearby Rathmore Golf Club, Graeme McDowall’s home club, where there was a full blown party underway and an opportunity for the everyone to let their hair down.

For Graeme, though, his work was done and he could think back with satisfaction about what had been achieved and how, after a wait of 62 years, Royal Portrush was very much back on the map and, more importantly, the Open rota.