TOURNAMENTS
Pride of the west
The 2016 ISPS Handa Perth International was something of a trip down
memory lane for course superintendent Trevor Strachan.
Above: The course maintenance crew headed by Trevor Strachan (centre, kneeling) again had Lake Karrinyup Country Club in immaculate condition for the 2016 ISPS Handa Perth International
PHOTO: SMP IMAGES
Below: A change to a February timeslot helped to attract the tournament’s strongest field since its inception in 2012
I
f there is one course superintendent in Australia who knows how to prepare a golf course for tournaments it’s Trevor Strachan. Regarded as one of the industry’s preeminent turf managers, Strachan has played an influential role in many of the great tournaments held in Western Australia over the years. You can go back to his time at The Vines Resort, a course he constructed, when it hosted the string of Vines and Heineken Classics in the 1990s along with the Johnny Walker Classic which was held in 2003 at his current club Lake Karrinyup. Despite a hiatus following the demise of the Classics in the mid-2000s, since 2012 Strachan and his crew at Lake Karrinyup have been back in the tournament spotlight each year with the advent of the ISPS Handa Perth International. As with those earlier tournaments Strachan and his crew have never failed to deliver a quality product and ask any of the players or Tour officials what their lasting impressions of Karrinyup are, and it’s not only the layout but the superb conditioning. After being held in October for the 2012, 2013 and 2014 tournaments, in 2015 it was announced that the tournament was moving to a February timeslot. The principal reason for the change was
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AUSTRALIAN TURFGRASS MANAGEMENT 18.2
to attract a higher calibre field given that many of the leading European Tour players would be in either Malaysia or the Middle East the week before. Indeed, the field that lined up in 2016 was probably the strongest the $US1.75 million event has seen and it included World No. 21 Louis Oosthuizen who would ultimately go on to win by a stroke. For Strachan the switch to an end of summer timeslot took him back to the days when he prepared The Vines and Lake Karrinyup for the Classics. Hosting a tournament at the end of summer was certainly a far different prospect than hosting one in October and it was almost a mirror opposite in terms of managing the Penn G2 greens and Wintergreen couchgrass tees and fairways. “It was certainly a bit different to previous Perth Internationals, but possibly a little easier too,” says Strachan of the 2016 event. “It was almost a reverse. In October the bentgrass is always going to be in better condition, whereas with the couchgrass you are pushing it harder to get it up for a tournament coming out of the cooler months. This time it was the other way around; the couchgrass was always going to be in great condition due to the time of year, whereas we had to nurture the bentgrass a little bit more through the heat of summer. “We scarified and cored the fairways back in November and scarified the tees and couch collars back to dirt and they all came back beautifully. With just a bit of extra cutting in the lead-up to the tournament they presented extremely well. We were even lightly vertimowing tees a few weeks out from the tournament because we knew they’d bounce back quickly. So it was probably a little easier leading up to this year’s event. We didn’t seem to be on such strict timeframes as the course, the couch in particular, was already up and running and in a very good position.” Karrinyup’s greens were certainly put to the test over what was yet another typically hot and
WORDS: BRETT ROBINOSN. PHOTO: SMP IMAGES
TOURNAMENTS