Worth waiting for

Scott MacCallum speaks with Links Manager James Bledge about a “little cracker” that is about to be revealed to the world when The Open gets underway at Royal Liverpool

When Steve Jobs signed off on the very first iPhone, the wait to announce to the world that he’d changed the course of telecommunications must have been excruciating. The same with Leonardo da Vinci, when he dabbed that last bit of paint on the Mona Lisa, stood back and realised that he’d produced a little cracker. The wait for it to be unveiled would have tested the patience of most.

Royal Liverpool Golf Club has its own brand new “little cracker”, and the club is patiently waiting for the rest of the golfing world to find out all about it. That wait, extended because the new hole was built before lockdown and the Open rota was then put back a year, will come to an end in the third week in July when The Open is played over this historic course on the Wirral.

The new par-3 17th is inspiring and completely different from what it replaced which, in itself was a very decent hole. Played in the opposite direction to its predecessor, the new hole is a true masterpiece. Just over 130 yards, it is played to a small raised green with the runoffs shaved to seven millimetres meaning anything less than a well struck, well judged, shot could disappear off the sides and very likely into one of three cavernous bunkers. Any player, within four good swings of lifting the Claret Jug, (the 18th has also been redesigned and is now a 600 yard plus par-5) is undoubtedly going to take a few extra deep breaths before the tee shot. Indeed, players close to the cut line come Friday afternoon will heave a sign of relief if they depart the green with scorecard intact.

Links Manager, James Bledge, believes that the hole will soon join the pantheon of famous par-3s, which includes luminaries such as the Postage Stamp at Royal Troon, the 12th at Augusta National, the 17th at Sawgrass and the 11th at the Old Course. He’s not wrong, it’s unlikely that after this Open the 17th at Royal Liverpool would be blackballed and left out of the top par-3 club.

“I think it will be one of the most famous golf holes in the world when The Open is over – it should be. Much will depend on the weather. If we get four windy days, it’s going to be really exciting. If we get four calm days it would be a case of just pitching into the green and it should be fairly easy,” he said, adding that Ryder Cup Captain Luke Donald and DP Tour Pro, Richie Ramsay, had already tested out the hole with Ramsay hitting the green with both an 8 and a 9-iron.

James, universally known as “Bledge”, takes no credit for the new hole having joined the club from Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club after it had been designed by Martin Ebert and constructed by Golflink Evolve Ltd, but since arriving at the club 18 months ago he and his team have nurtured it with all the care of a new born baby.

“It had all grown in when I arrived, but what we’ve done is really try to improve the turf quality over the back of the green because that was very thin because of the sand blow. We’ve now got a really good sward around the back and it’s a lot fairer as the ball will stick now rather than roll down into the sand scrape, while the Marram grass is coming through nicely,” explained Bledge, as we stood admiring the stunning new hole.

It’s not as though Royal Liverpool, also known as Hoylake, hasn’t been good enough to identify the best when The Open came to town. The two most recent Opens, since the course returned to the rota in 2006 and 2014, were won by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy respectively. Others to have won The Open around Royal Liverpool include JH Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and Peter Thomson – legends all.

So you can see why the opportunity to take over as Links Manager was such an enticing prospect and pulled Bledge away from Royal Cinque Ports GC, a club and golf course which had held his heart and soul for the previous seven years.

“Cinque Ports is where my heart is and will always be. It’s where all my friends are and, that we had taken the course out of the doldrums and into the top 100 courses in the world, is the biggest achievement the team and I ever had.

“But I felt that I couldn’t take it much further, and I’d never made a secret of the fact that I wanted an Open golf course. They don’t come up very often so you’ve really got to go for it when they do. And I went hard at it,” he explained, adding that the opportunity to bring up his two children in the Liverpool area, live in a house on the golf }

} course itself and be closer to his wider family in Dumfries and Galloway was an added bonus.

Having taken over in November 2021 from Craig Gilholm, who had produced excellent tests of golf for the two most recent Opens, The Open was very much front and centre in his thinking from day one. Correction. Before day one, as he started making plans, creating spreadsheets, thinking about the volunteer team, from the moment the job had been confirmed.

“I’m a big planner and like to get as much done as early as possible. I hate leaving things to the last minute, so Jenny would be watching the telly and I’d be banging ideas into a laptop.”

If he had a middle name, and being known by a single moniker he doesn’t, it would be “Meticulous”, because nothing with Bledge is left to chance.

What that means is that when we visited, two months ahead of the Championship, he was relaxed, safe in the knowledge that all the major work had already been carried out.

“There are no major activities or processes that we still need to do. We are carrying on with our wetting agents and small fertiliser applications on the fairways and greens and that’s about it. If we get a dry spell, though, it will be all hands on deck with moisture management. We don’t want any fairy rings, as these greens do dry out very fast.”

Wetting agents and water management weren’t at the top of the list when Bledge arrived at the club, as he had been warned that he was moving from the sunny south to one of the wettest parts of the country.

“It was all lies. We had the driest summer in history last year and it was a real baptism of fire. I was taking on a new job and having to learn about the course, the team and about the area and it didn’t rain from March right the way through.

“We couldn’t lay any turf or do any seeding and, being my first year, I had no idea how to budget our water supply. I didn’t want to waste it, or use it up to early, so I erred on the side of caution.”

He has enjoyed bringing some of the practices he developed at Deal and implementing them within his new team, while he also was impressed with many of the things that were already going on within the Royal Liverpool team.

“I brought in some ideas on how the shed should be set up and agronomy practices, but every site is different and not everything worked. I have had to eat humble pie on occasion. Craig did an amazing job here as we all know and the team wanted to keep a lot of existing practices going and I’m guided by them.”

As we looked around the course the staging was well underway with massive hospitality units and grand stands rising above the dunes.

Bledge is well aware of what a wonderful opportunity it is for any greenkeeper to be a part of The Open and he has worked hard to ensure there all levels of greenkeeper are a part of the experience.

“I’ve got a really diverse team of volunteers including everyone from apprentices and assistants up to Deputies and Course Manages. I’ve also made sure I’ve got some of the very best Course Managers with me, including Lee Strutt, who is coming over from Canada; Grant Frogley, from Ladybank; Matt Plested, from Stoneham, and John Mcloughlin, from Wallasey, while I’ve also got some guys from Royal Dornoch. In addition, he will also have the BIGGA Greenkeeping Support team, who look after the bunkers during the Championship, at his disposal should additional people power be required.

“One of the things we did was run an apprentice competition and the three winners will be on the team. Two of them are going to be cutting greens for The Open. I love giving kids a chance and responsibility and what an amazing chance from them to come into our industry with this under their belts.”

Unlike St Andrews last year where Toro Greens triples were used to cut the greens, Bledge will revert to hand mowers this year, albeit Toro electric hand mowers.

“We do use Toro electric triples –3370s – to cut greens here but for The Open itself we are using hand mowers. The reason being, that we have some quite sharp run-offs on some of these greens – notably the 17th – and with double cutting in the mornings I don’t want tyre marks, especially if it is going to be dry, as that would stress them out.

“St Andrews was different as their greens are huge. Our greens are much smaller. The one we are standing on now for example is just 330 square metres so I believe hand mowing is the way to go,” he said, adding that he has six teams of two set up for the task.

As Bledge scans the course and the vast Open preparations he surely lets his mind wander back to where his golfing education began – sitting on a stile by the side of the 13th hole at Dumfries and Galloway Golf Club.

“We lived next to a farm and the golf course shared a boundary with one of the fields. At the age of 10 I’d sit all day on that stile watching the golfers go by and then, just before it was time to go in for tea, I’d go and find all the lost balls,” said Bledge, who learned his own golf at nearly Lockerbie Golf Club, before eventually becoming Deputy Course Manager at the Dumfries and Galloway.

“My predecessor, Steven Carmichael, has just left the club, but he regularly sent me pictures of Bledge’s Stile.”

It was his love of the outdoor live, working on his neighbour’s farm, and golf which led him to Elmwood College, Cupar, and then on a path which took him from Dumfries and Galloway, to Norway, Gullane, Kingsbarns, Sweden, GWest and then Deal.

“The opportunities are amazing in greenkeeping. I’m a big golfer and a golf geek and the places I’ve visited and had the chance to play through invites and having reciprocal visits with others are insane. If I’m ever down I just look through the pictures of the places I’ve been and think I’m the luckiest person alive.”

For a few minutes on the afternoon of Sunday, July 23, he will also be one of the most recognisable people alive, when he is a part of the presentation party on the 18th green.

“It’s the thing I’m looking forward to most to be honest. I always remember my peers, Craig Boath, at Carnoustie and Graeme Beatt, at Portrush, being on that presentation party. I took a picture of the television screen and sent it to them, saying that they were in front of 600 million people.

“It’s the highlight of your career… but we need to get to that point first.”

Pragmatic as ever, but you can sense that, like Steve and Leonardo, he can’t wait to show off his work and, in particular, the new hole for which he is now custodian.