Freyberg Masters - Course Preparation and Ongoing Impacts

 Phew, we made it through the recent Freyberg Masters!

The flags representing all the provinces who took part in the Freyberg Masters

Hosting high profile New Zealand Golf events is a great experience and creates valuable exposure for a club. Having players from all parts of the country come and spend time at our venue and see what we can offer is an opportunity to have on display all facets of the operation from the Bar and Catering through to the Proshop. Feedback from the teams was incredibly positive with everyone enjoying their time at the Hamilton Golf Club.

Naturally, to have everything line up for such a specific time frame, there is a huge amount of work and pre planning that takes place behind the scenes. With this in mind, we felt it would be a good chance to share what went into the course preparation both before and during the tournament and what is required coming out the other side.

T minus 18 months

Once we learned that we would be hosting the Freyberg, it was very important that we considered the dates it would be played on and the duration of the event. Scheduled for Sunday November 1st (the official practice round) until Friday November the 6th we knew we would have to be preparing surfaces that would perform in peak condition for 6 days (8 counting Saturday before and after for play) and would need to so so at a time of year where we hadnt reached peak natural growth on our greens. Click on this link to learn more about our growth measurements

Working with this information, we treated the late winter and early spring period of 2019 as a trial run to experiment with our fertility programs and nutrient formulations. Normally, our browntop greens are the last surface to come fully out of winter compromised growth conditions. We looked at ways we could alter both the timing of and source of fertiliser applications to try and manipulate a better late winter response. This involved tinkering with organic fertilisers and avoiding certain sulphate based products for certain periods. We saw some very promising results which armed us with the confidence that we could achieve our desired goals for the same time period the following year.

T minus 6 months

Fast forward a year and we have just come through a drought and a disease pandemic induced lockdown ( See more about the Covid impact here). We have 5 holes worth of redevelopment to complete and hopefully get in play before the upcoming event. June, July and August were a flurry of construction and seeding. 

The newly rebuilt bunker on the 9th is nearly ready for sand in this picture

We had intentionally planned for our stage 2 development phase to only encompass 5 holes with recognition of the the tournament hosting taking place in the same year. Like I said, LOTS of long range thinking had to take place! All the seed was in the ground by the start of September giving us 8 weeks to manage the grow in while also completing all the other regular spring tasks and tournament specific prep work. We had to give special consideration to the timing of adding the sand to the new bunkers. It needed to be in as far ahead of being played as possible to let it settle yet we had to wait until the surrounding grass had established fully enough to prevent any errosion or possible contamination. 

T minus 2 months

Ordinarily, spring is a hectic time anyhow. Grass that has been under pressure from winter play and little growth starts to finally regain some vigour. With this comes the need to start fertiliser programs for greens, tees, fairways and surrounds. Also, herbicide applications can be made now as the growth of the desirable grasses is now sufficient to tolerate the stress of chemical applications.  Couple this with the need to perform renovation work involving hollow coring of tees and surrounds and the solid tining of greens combined with sanding. Normally, these operations are spread out through the entire spring and early summer as our resources permit. However, this time we had to complete them all within a compressed time frame ensuring that any disruptive work had time to recover fully before the tournament. 

T minus 3 weeks

Things started to ramp up as we assessed things like mowing heights and machine preperation. Key mowers used for greens and fairways were all professionally sharpened to ensure we would have them cutting at their optimum 

A couple of 4am starts were required to get our cutting units to the North Shore and into the capable hands of Murray at GTS for sharpening and setup

Finalised cutting heights had to be in place up to several weeks in advance to ensure the grass has adequate time to  adapt accordingly. The frequency with which areas were mown was increased from this time also. The goal was to have the surfaces peaking at the right time and not too soon or put unnecessary stress on the plant until the last possible minute. Careful management of fertiliser and watering also was also emphasised strongly from this point in order to avoid greens that may become puffy and prone to scalping. Our last application of sand to the greens also took place in this period.

T minus 1 week

For us, this is the busiest week of all. All the detail work such as bunker edging needs to be timed so that we have time to do it yet its close enough to the event so that it stays tidy. Mowing frequencies are now stepped up to the same level as what we will be doing during the tournament and final fertiliser and growth regulator applications were made. This all had to take place during a public holiday shortened week with Friday being disrupted by a corporate day as well! Also, during this time, one of our staff members and his partner welcomed a new baby boy, which quite rightly saw him spending this time with his new son and partner. Congratulations to Pat and Claire!

Show Time!

With 15 provinces playing, there was the requirement for a 7.30am tee off from the 1st and 10th tees every day. Matches were played in both morning and the afternoon which means the course is essentially unavailable for work until 4pm onwards. With the requirement for greens, to be cut and rolled each morning and bunkers raked, we needed to reach out and seek a helping hand.

Every morning from Sunday through to the Friday, a core group of 4 volunteer members took charge of raking all the bunkers by hand. Averaging about 1.5 hours for this to take place, that equates to 6 man hours per morning.

Daily bunker raking was carried out by a cast of club members organised by Hugh Kingham

With the 2 tee start at 7.30 and the need to cut and roll greens daily, we had 4 trained staff out with 2 on greensmowers and 2 on rollers from 5.30am. Another 1 to 2 staff were also tasked with blowing greens and taking moisture measurements. With our own staff down to 3 at this time, we were very fortunate to have our numbers bolstered by Harry and Jacob from Remuera Golf Club and Dylan from Takapuna Golf Club. Their assistance enabled us to complete the needed work to a very high standard with a nice relaxed timeframe meaning no one had to rush their tasks. All up, each morning this took about 3 hours which added up to 18 man hours.

The second green receiving a roll in the morning

Afternoons saw us mowing tees, surrounds, changing holes, cutting greens again and mowing alternating 9 holes of fairways. Any handwatering and other incidental jobs were also completed. With the same 6 people being back for another 4 - 5 hours, this is another 24 - 30 man hours a day.

All up, approximately 48 - 54 hours per day were spent directly on course preparation and were done so at hours that would not impact on play. It certainly made for some long days!

The clubhouse looks very impressive all lit up in the dark! Not many people would ever see it like that!

Post Tournament Period

After a long period of pushing the course and in particular the greens to their physiological limits, it is very important that allowances be made to reduce the stress. We were cutting the greens at 2.75mm twice a day and rolling heavily as well for over 10 days. Combined with up to 150 rounds of golf a day, thats a lot of pressure for the grass to endure. While we can hit these sort of targets for a short period of time, we have to be very conscious of the fact that 1, the grass doesn't really like it and 2, we still have the entire stressful summer period ahead of us.

These low cutting heights are only achieved with special thin baseplates which wear out and need replacing much sooner

Think of the grass like a person: you can push yourself for a given amount of time be it work or physical exertion but at the end, you need a rest. If you dont rest accordingly, you are likely to get sick or certainly wont be able to perform to your best potential for some time.

Taking this into account, in order to help our greens recover, we had to put them through a forced stage of de-stressing. For us, that involved stopping mowing for a few days to allow the grass to replenish its carbohydrate reserves and produce a bit more leaf area for photosynthesis and other biological processes. We also sanded and solid vertidrained to allow gas to escape and oxygen and water to better infiltrate the surface. The unfortunate effect of carrying out these processes are the playing surface, which were at a very high standard, quickly lost that level of conditioning and playability.  Understandably this may be disappointing to players but it cannot be emphasised enough the need for this recuperative program. Pushing beyond what the plant can reasonably endure would only create greater issues down the track and lead to compromised player experience for longer.

This also applies to people! Lots of extra hours and time have been devoted across the board to planning and execution of presenting the course. That effort needs to be acknowledged and, just like the grass, time to decompress and recover is also needed. Time off is being rostered in the upcoming weeks to help everyone unwind and preserve their physical and mental well being. 

One upside to late evenings is the great photo opportunities you get!

I would like to take this chance to thank our greenkeeping team of Craig, Pat and Ben who all went above and beyond in the lead up to ensure that we could produce a course worthy of such a high profile event. There is a huge amount of pride that these people take in their work and it really reflects in what is being produced. Also, to the volunteers lead by Hugh, the countless hours that were put in from lining bunkers and installing sand to clearing tree stumps and turfing, I hope the average club member understands what goes in to keeping the course where its at

Good Golfing!

Regards
The Maintenance Team

Hamilton Golf Club