For the past 18 months, James Bledge has been the Links Manager at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, leading a group preparing for the club’s hosting of the 151st Open Championship, which begins tomorrow (July 20). In an interview that first appeared in Greenkeeper International, the monthly journal for BIGGA members, James shares his experiences of the job and the work that has gone into preparing the course for the championship.
All the eyes of the golfing world will be on Royal Liverpool for The 151st Open this week. At the heart of the operation will be James Bledge and his team. The Scot’s route to Hoylake began at Dumfries and Galloway before working on the continent in Norway and Sweden and the links classics of Gullane, Kingsbarns and Royal Cinque Ports, where he was the course manager for seven years. All of his experience has led him to this most special week.
What were your initial thoughts when moving from Kent to Royal Liverpool?
I joined on January 31, 2022. I’d been at Royal Cinque Ports for nine years and I felt that I wanted the next big challenge and an Open course is the highlight of any greenkeeper’s career. Moving five hours closer to home was huge as I’ve just been so focused on my career and I’ve missed out on a lot of stuff from my friends back home. My wife Jenny and I have brought up the kids without any help at all and she was really up for it as well; she had her hen do in Liverpool and the Beatles are her favourite band.
I spoke to quite a lot of people about it, including Martin Ebert, who I worked with a lot at Deal and we discussed how this job would suit me. A friend of mine, Sam Cooper, got in touch and said that this was the perfect job for me. He had been impressed with the work we had done at Deal and was keen for me to move up, it was nice to know that I’d know someone. He also mentioned about starting a podcast, which is now called Golf Badgers and it’s been great fun.
Was there an intimidating factor of working on an Open course?
No, I felt ready. I’d done R&A tournaments, boys amateurs and Amateur Championships and half a dozen Final Qualifying events for The Open. I’d also worked with Alistair Beggs who was the head of agronomy with them back then. He’s a member at Hoylake and he was the captain when Rory McIlroy won in 2014. It seemed like it had to be. I would never want this to come across as being cocky but you know when something is yours, it’s too good.
What are the similarities with Royal Cinque Ports?
Deal gave me a genuine quality of life. The Deal members were my family because they took me in and I played a big part in the club making some big strides, I even had my name in gold leaf for winning competitions. I was invited to all the black-tie dinners. Steve Collins, an ex-chairman at Deal, said that Hoylake was his favourite club apart from Deal and that I would just love it here and he was right. It has the same culture, is very relaxed, no snobbery, is very inclusive and it just really is an awesome club. I had some guests up recently from Deal and you should have seen the lunch they put on for us – it was silver service and I’m a greenkeeper! It just shows you how much we’ve come on. I get these privileges but I will give them it back tenfold with my effort and passion. That is why it is such a special place and I would love that to come across to people. I feel that if I can get into the clubhouse, speak to members, play golf and be part of the club, then I can educate them more.
How many of your team have worked on previous Opens?
Four or five worked on the last one in 2014 and three have done both. There are a lot of Open virgins in the team, myself included, but all the guys are ready for it.
My role is to maintain our fleet of machinery and I’ve also been heavily involved with organising the tournament support machinery, from specification, numbers and arrival dates. I will start grinding at the start of July with the help of Ian Robson from ProSport and Luke, my apprentice. Gary Burgess from Wallasey will help out in the workshop and there will also be representatives from John Deere and Reesink. My son will also be joining me.
How different is the preparation to a non-Open year?
Royal Liverpool is much like Deal. You would go there as a visitor and expect to have Open conditions for as many days of the years as possible. The only things that are different are things like the rough being roped off and mats are used, otherwise the fertiliser and cutting regimes and the moisture management are the same. You’ll also have a lot more divots and people might be pulling their trolleys through the rough and there will be no infrastructure.
What’s it like to have your course invaded by all the infrastructure?
I live on site, so it literally is my garden! The place looks off the scale right now. You’re playing through a city, the place is class. I live by the Open 9th hole and, when we open the kitchen blinds, we can see the corner of the yellow scoreboard for the Open on the 18th. Try explaining that to some American golfers, it would blow their minds.
How have you found working with The R&A’s agronomists?
I am very used to working with Alistair because I worked with him for years at Deal. It has been seamless. It is a democracy and we will work on a plan together. It’s all about communication. Alistair is a member so he might play with his kids on a Sunday night and he’ll text me and I’ll walk a few holes with him. And that helps put your mind at rest. So there are little checks here and there so there are no big surprises. Alistair is quite relaxed about everything because he knows that we have a plan in place and we hope it stays like that because nobody likes stress. The things that can change are if the weather is severe and we haven’t seen this golf course with any crowds.
How has the weather treated the course?
I’ve had a baptism of fire here weather wise. In my first year we had the cold, dry spring and nothing grew at all and then I had the driest summer in history. So we didn’t have any rain until the end of the year and then we had loads. This year we had a really good spring and the course knitted in well and the rough began to grow because we lost a lot of it last year. We had Sheep’s Fescue growing through and we had clumps which made for awkward lies. Then we went into a six-week dry spell so it has been tough. We spent a lot of money on the irrigation system last year and that has been really fruitful, but you can’t beat actual rain.
What’s the ideal weather in the final build-up to The Open?
We really could do with an immediate rainfall between now and The Open. If we can get to 10 days before, then we can start to control it and decide if we want to speed things up. The key is the firmness and that is what we have been concentrating on. We have been working with Alistair on getting the organic matters down on the greens and firming them up. Even after the recent rain they still weren’t pitch marking. They have got a great coverage thanks to all the work that Craig Gilholm did over the last decade. They’re really beautiful surfaces.
What would a successful Open look like?
A great winner and a safe Open with no dramas and everyone walking out having had a really good day. Agronomy-wise, the team have a great time, learn a lot, make new friends, network and we walk away with a big smile on our faces and saying we are better greenkeepers. And to have all the thousands of spectators on site putting Hoylake on their bucket list.
What does the plan for the week itself look like?
I started putting this together months ago. I have my volunteer team and I know where they’re all coming from. We have all their accommodation sorted and we have sponsorship for their jumpers, T-shirts and waterproofs. We know where they will be parking and we even know who will be staying in which rooms together. We’ve got everyone’s strengths and what they will be doing. I’ve just put together a welcome pack and they will have a hard copy which details absolutely everything.
Do you hand-pick the team outside of the one at Hoylake?
I have hand-picked the best team that I can but I also wanted guys in the early stages of their careers so we had this competition where people answered five questions and I picked the best answers. So we have a guys from Prestwick, King’s Lynn and Abbey Hill and the latter two couldn’t be further away from The Open.
What an opportunity for these guys. Their bosses have had them out there practising. I’m so excited for these three youngsters who are going to be hand-cutting greens and raking bunkers, working with the likes of Lee Strutt from Cabot Cape Breton. They’re going to be working with the likes of John McLoughlin from Wallasey and Matt Plested from Stoneham, so some of the best greenkeepers in the country and they will be sharing all their knowledge. I have a vision that Sam from Abbey Hill will be phoning up Lee in Canada and picking his brains. That is what is so beautiful about greenkeeping, everyone is always willing to help each other out and we are giving everyone that opportunity.
What did you do at the 2022 Open in terms of learning what happens at an Open week?
I ‘work shadowed’ Sandy Reid for two days last year and we watched everyone do what they’re doing and I was called into what I labelled the Cobra meetings every night with the R&A and the weather people. I’m not going to treat it any differently from an Amateur Championship because they were good practice runs. A lot of the basics are still the same; we do the planning, keep level heads, give everyone their jobs and look after each other.
How many greenkeepers will you have working on site?
We’re going to have 47 which compares to, say, a team of 18 at Final Qualifying. That is quite a lot, although by American standards it is about half what they would have had at the US Open. When I was at the Ryder Cup they had about 100 people hand-cutting approaches. But it is enough, when I built the volunteer team I looked at how many we wanted, how fast we wanted to get it done, what level we were hand-cutting or triple-cutting and everyone agreed that this was a good number. GI
Hoylake’s facilities and machinery
We have a split of machinery so we have John Deere and Toro and we buy the best machine for the job. We have just taken delivery of a lot of John Deere utility vehicles, they have all been renewed. Everything for The Open will be hand cut so the greens and tees will be hand cut, approaches will be triple cut and there will be a lot of attention to detail and hand cutting. We will have 12 guys, six teams of two, working on the greens. We have very good machinery at the club and we have spent a lot of money making sure we have everything that we need.
This article first featured in Greenkeeper International, the monthly journal for BIGGA members. Read the digital magazine online here.