PREPARING THE HOME OF GOLF

摘要

In July 2015, The Open Championship returns to The Home of Golf and will be played across The Old Course at St Andrews. A St Andrews Open is always a special occasion and this year promises to be no exception.Preparations for The Open begin shortly after the departure of the last Championship, which was last at St Andrews in 2010. Since then, there have been some architectural changes to The Old Course and these have been implemented expertly by the greenstaff, with architectural input commissioned by The R&A from Martin Hawtree. These changes were carried out over the past three to four seasons with the most significant change involving the softening of contours to the I Ith green. This work was carried outto ensure hole locations can be more widely used across the surface and allow a challenging top left pin position tobe accommodated for The Open. The rootzone used was carefully matched with the existing material on the greens and the turf was simply lifted and re-laid to retain consistency with the remaining section of the green. Careful aftercare involving regular topdressing, rolling and hydrojecting has been implemented to aid turf establishment and consistency across the surface.