Returning from this year's RBC Canadian Open, I read and heard many stories about the exploits of the golfers who provided fans with an exciting tournament. For my money however, Shaugnnessy Golf Course has to be considered the the real winner of the event. The course was in amazing shape with postage stamp greens, narrow fairways and punishing deep, deep rough. While I really enjoyed watching the golfers deal with the course, the real treat for me was observing the grounds crew and the way they dealt with a tournament of this size and scope!
Shaughnessy is definitely an old school course with a long history and a lot of money. Originally founded in 1911 in Shaughnessy Heights, the club moved to its current location at the gates of Pacific Spirit Park near the mouth of the Fraser River, in 1960. It features towering trees, tiny greens, deep gaping bunkers and narrow fairways. For the Canadian Open the grounds crew allowed the rye grass rough to fill in and grow up until it was a uniform mat 4 inches deep, spongy and damp. This rough was certainly a hot topic amongst the golfers. Many felt it was punishing and too penal. Shots that strayed no more than a few feet from the fairway were swallowed up, leaving golfers with few options other than hacking out to the fairway as best they could. To score well players had to be consistently long and accurate, while maintaining a delicate touch around the greens.
Most spectators were watching the golfers, and I'll admit to enjoying getting up close to see the likes of John Daly, Ernie Els, Geoff Ogilvie and Luke Donald as they dealt with course conditions, but what really interested me was the way the course was maintained. After Wednesday's pro-am a small army of maintenance workers swarmed onto the course. A fleet of mowers groomed tee boxes and fairways as a line of workers that spanned the width of the fairways advanced the length of the hole completing divot repairs. The result - within 3 hours of the last player completing their round, the course was essentially ready for the next day's play.
Early morning routines saw the sand traps watered and raked and all greens double cut by hand. Shaughnessy had the advantage of possessing a highly trained full time staff, the assistance of Dolf Canada and PGA Tour officials and a number of part time and student interns only too happy to be working on a national championship. On Saturday the rough bordering the fairways was "topped" - in other words given the lightest of touch ups in order to keep it a uniform length for the entire tournament. Other activity centred on the eighth green where, in the small hours of Saturday morning, vandals entered the course and poured bleach or some other caustic solution across the green. Course workers flushed the affected area with water and pin placements were adjusted to protect the integrity of the putting surface. Police were contacted and the area was scoured for forensic evidence. By the time the crew were done, unless one knew what to look for, the damage was very hard to see.
It was also interesting to see how the tone of the tournament changed day by day. Early in the week the atmosphere was much lighter as players and spectators mingled, joked and interacted with each other. Photographs were taken, autographs asked for and exchanged. On Thursday the pros got down to business getting very serious about their game. By the weekend the tension was palpable as players focused on posting low numbers and the galleries grew to big ones. In contrast, the attitude on the grounds crew stayed the same all week. The brown shirted, white hard hatted crew were all business all the time, emerging daily at 5 AM from their arena sized maintenance facility, swarming across the course like so many worker ants, only to disappear by 7:30 before re-emerging at 3:30 PM to prepare the course for the next day's play. The grounds crew maintained the same degree of effort whether they were grooming sand traps or topping the much discussed rough. They seemed to be men on a mission every day. Only on Sunday did the crew make an early appearance near the 18th green, likely to witness the final fruits of their labors.
I suspect the crew were pleased that the course was such a major player in determining the final outcome. The final playoff put an exclamation point on this fact as both players were forced to lay up after missing the fairway. Seeing approach shots skitter to a nervous stop short of the hole or run through the green respectively, provided further evidence of how the course impacted play. In the end, the event was won with a bogey over a double bogey, proving that the toughest competitor in the tournament was really the course itself!
Folks have asked whether I would do this sort of thing again. The answer is definitely yes. I enjoyed the golf, was fascinated by the spectacle of it all, and learned a lot about the operation of a grounds crew during a major tournament. It was reaffirming to see just how much of what we do at Links is similar, if not almost the same, to what is done at the professional level. While our course certainly doesn't have access to the same level of resources available to a course like Shaughnessy, we share the same level of commitment to prepare the best course we can for our players. And as for that rough the pros were complaining about, you can find it on just about every hole here at home. So the next time you find yourself hacking out of the mounds or deep in the cabbage far from the fairway just keep an open frame of mind and tell yourself that you are mastering the same conditions that existed at this year's Canadian Open!
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