Old Course Open Maintenance


The Greenkeeper on the Old Course at St. Andrews, Gordon McKie, has been writing a wee Blog on the upkeep of the golf course prior to the Championship and his most recent entry concerns the re-building of the 17th Road hole bunker:

The warm weather continues, so the dry conditions are still with us! We have spent quite a bit of time this week handwatering various areas of the course including greens, tees and bunker tops to keep them hydrated during this dry spell. Automatic irrigation is still in use from time to time as I feel it is still too early to dry things out for the tournament, once we get a better forecast we shall be able to start drying things out for the Open week itself.


This week I have finalised all staff rotas and informed everybody of what tasks they will be carrying out through the week.


Big job this week was to re-build the Road Hole bunker - the bunker takes a lot of play and the face becomes very eroded with sand and the feeling was that it would not survive full practice sessions in a few weeks. On Tuesday morning four guys went down and removed the face and re-built the bunker in a day, which was great and I must say that it is looking in top condition now, we have been running a sprinkler at it through the day to keep moist and allow turf to knit together.





Course conditioning continues with regular mowing taking place on all areas, rolling of greens as I try to achieve 10’ plus on greens for next week when we will start to look at hole locations. All fairways were sprayed with wetting agent and seaweed to help retain moisture in the drying surface.


Today we brushed greens to pick up some lateral growing bentgrass and followed up with a cut and roll to smooth out and speed surfaces back up.


The 3rd green grandstand is complete and work has started on the 16th green/17th tee grandstand, which looks likely to finish over weekend.


All staff in over the weekend to continue the hard work and preparations.
Posted: 25/06/2010 15:27:18 by Gordon McKie


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