Old Course preparation

Gordon Moir

What a delight it was to join the well-attended presentation by Gordon Moir and Gordon McKee on how they, over five years, proceeded to set up the Old course at St Andrews for the 2010 Open Championship.

Although they had 46mm of rain on the Wednesday night just prior to play, their preparations stood them in good stead. It was not the lovely brown, burnt-out course of 2000 but nevertheless, it gave us fine running golf rather than a game played, through the air, stop it dead, target-style that was so boringly conveyed on TV the week before from the immaculately prepared but damp Loch Lomond.

Some of the facts they gave were quite fascinating.

Old course preparation:

300 tons of top dressing on greens, surrounds and tees and another 300 tons on the fairways is scattered little and often. This dilutes the organic matter in the soil and promotes the fine grasses, while giving extra smoothness.

No fungicide has been used for 20 years, though there is a little trouble with Pearlwort on the 18th green on which they have used a selective herbicide.  They have used the Heritage product the past couple of years to try and eliminate/reduce fairy ring activicty.

- An average of only 35Kg per Hectare of Nitrogen is put on the greens plus some seaweed tonic.

- They vertidrain in the autumn and spring and sometimes use a Hydroject, as well as solid tining down to 3 inches during the season

- Regular overseeding with ‘slender creeping red fescues’ and ‘chewings fescues’ grass seeds from Barenbrug.

Gordon McKee

Old Course facts:

The smallest green on Old course is the 17th but it is still a mammoth 657 m2.

There is a grand total of 30,000 m2 of greens!

An extra 37 yards was added by installing a new back tee on the 17th, because in 2005 the long hitting pros were able to play pitches direct to the green and employ check when landing. Now, starting with 490 yards, they had to play short and run a  shot that feeds onto the green, bringing back the risk/reward strategic element to this iconic hole.

The most naturally wet green is the first and the dryest the ninth.

The pace of the greens was between 9’6″ and 10’6″  on the stimp-meter throughout the championship and, when play was temporarily suspended for high winds, the stimp reading was 9’6″.

A vital element is the firmness of greens.

A device called the Clegg hammer that measures soil strength and compaction has been used by the STRI (the agronomists’ professional body) over the last couple of years to measure the firmness across lots of courses  and they suggest that for links courses the ideal measurement is 95 to 120 gravities.

This equates to a properly hit shot from the fairway, with a 7-iron in calm conditions, bouncing once, checking on the second bounce, then releasing.

The firmness of the St Andrews greens was maintained within this range throughout the Open Championship.

(It is worth noting that Matt Pringle, the Senior Research Engineer with the USGA Technical department, has invented another firmness measuring tool called ‘trufirm ‘ that mimics the impact energy and momentum of a golf ball and yields a simulation of the failure mode of the turf on impact and gives electronic and GPS measurements.)

It is very comforting to see that the ‘home of golf’ is in good hands.

The professionalism of the greenkeeping teams at St Andrews is outstanding. It is an important aspect in supporting the return of The Open every five years, which FineGolf welcomes.