Sports Turf Solutions in South East Asia Brad Burgess, Managing Director/ Owner at Sports Turf Solutions (STS) leads a dedicated team of highly trained staff, providing a range of turf associated services for the South East Asian golf industry. Over many years, Mr Burgess has grown his business with a focus on new and improved zoysia turf varieties. These zoysia’s are pioneering the way golf courses in the South East Asian region operate and maintain their beautiful courses. Lawn Solutions Australia recently caught up with Mr Burgess to hear more about the history of his involvement within the turf industry and the successes that STS has achieved in the region.
48 / STS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA
STS Background by Brad Burgess I went to Irian Jaya (now West Papua), Indonesia in 1995 as a 23 year old to take over a turf farm built by fellow Aussie, Simon Edmonds (now working for HG Turf), to plant and grow in a golf course for Freeport McMoran, the world’s largest gold and copper mine. The golf course was designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw for a region that receives annual rainfall exceeding ten metres per year. There were three pallets of Sunrise Zoysia grass seeds specified by Coore and Crenshaw in a warehouse there when I arrived, but no one could get the Sunrise Zoysia seed to germinate. Because of this, I threw it out thinking it was spoiled. Turf variety 419 Bermuda was chosen as the new variety for the course, but it
unfortunately performed miserably. I found a local grass growing throughout the villages and Cargo Port where we often went fishing and decided to put it into trials. This grass outperformed the 419 with flying colours. So, we proceeded to convert the 419 to the local grass which turned out to be a Zoysia variety. I left the course in 1999, with Dr Brett Morris continuing the transformation of Klub Golf Rimba Irian. Fast forward 12 years and I am sitting in a conference in Thailand listening to Dr Milt Engelke talk about all these new varieties of Zoysia that he and the late Jack Murray had been breeding for 20 years. I took Dr Engelke out for lunch and he was sceptical about allowing the licensing rights for anyone in Asia due to potential piracy issues. My partner Ning and I jumped on a plane and
