THE TEAM

The Royal Liverpool team comprises twelve full time greenkeepers, a fifty strong artisan group of members (his fairway divot party) and a small posse of six local school kids for weekend course set-up duties. Again, planning is key for this small army, and is no mean feat, but with Bledge’s O.C.D. for planning he modestly makes it look simple!

When The Open comes to town, the team will be bolstered by an additional forty-seven crew, all sourced from local clubs. Bledge was quick to add that he was particularly proud of the competition the club ran to give an opportunity to two greenkeepers who otherwise might not have been able to join the support team. “We did an apprentice competition via Twitter where I asked five greenkeeper-style questions. The two winners won an allexpenses paid opportunity to join our team for the tournament week.”

Royal Liverpool has a state-of-the-art Rainbird irrigation system, with heads covering all the major playing surfaces across the eighteen holes. Despite the water efficiencies the system already provides, the team nonetheless carried out an audit to investigate if there were any further efficiencies that could be made. They soon realised that by introducing a separate head next to each green head, they could save water if only collars required water (instead of setting the greens head to arc more and waste water). At the same time as this instillation was taking place, they took the opportunity to add a hand watering point next to the heads. “Hand watering is an additional water usage efficiency, and the closer hose points help reduce time and effort for the operator,” explained Bledge.

The irrigation audit also flagged up the wasteful outer lines of fairway heads. These 360° 700 or 900 series heads have systematically been ‘swapped out’ by 752 series part-circle