I arrived at TPC Sawgrass on Sunday the 8th of May after a long 19 hours of flying and was once again amazed at the scale of operations for The Players championship. The stands, tents and marquee's has taken four months to be erected and after a weather friendly spring the course is in great condition.
With the tournament starting on Thursday all preparations and procedure's for the course needs to be in place to make sure the tournament runs successful. With more then 130 people being part of the agronomy team , nothing less then perfection is expected.
Monday through Wednesday are practice rounds for the pro's and for us the agronomy team the time to prepare the course for the weekends tournament. This entail the following:
Morning 4:30 am - 10 am. Cut all fairways, tees, greens, semi rough, rough, surrounds, approaches, driving range. For the first time ever we are hand raking the bunkers for the tournament, for those who don't know there are bunkers in excess of 250 m long. Divots gets done togethers with cleaning the course from litter and pine cones , blowing of all clippings, cut of new holes, moving tee markers, rolling greens, watering of the course etc...
Afternoon 4:00 pm - 8:30 pm. WE DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN !
Greens get checked twice a day for moisture and compaction to make sure the don't burn or dry out but still maintaining tournament speeds and standards.
The agronomy team gets split in half for front 9 hole and back 9. This video shows the team leaving the maintenance yard for the front 9 holes afternoon shift.
Keep checking back for more updates on behind the scenes of the 2011 Players championship.
Hi Willie
ReplyDeleteLooks amazing- what sort of grass do they have on the greens and what sort of speed will they be able to get them to during the tournament? What height are you cutting them at? is the 17th green as small as it looks?
Regards
Jason