2011 US Women's Open Preview

Guest Blogger: Zach Bauer, Broadmoor West Golf Course Superintendent.
Zach was an intern of mine on the East Course at the Broadmoor a number of years ago. He was one of my best interns and has certainly deserved the position he now holds. I asked him to tell us a little about what is about to happen in the golf world in Colorado Springs next week:

Greetings fellow golf enthusiasts of Vail Golf Club. Steve has asked me to write a guest blog for Vail Golf Club and what better topic could I write about but our own US Women’s Open that’s coming up in 6 days, yes 6 days! The preparation for this year’s US Women’s Open has been a three year process that started the day after the US Senior Open we held at The Broadmoor in 2008, literally! The Monday following the final round of the US Senior Open the USGA’s US Women’s Open Committee was present to make sure it was the type of facility they wanted hosting the US Women’s Open Championship. Fortunately the East Course had finished major renovation work before the Senior Open and the amount of work required was minimal. One of the projects the East Course has worked on in the last few years was selective tree removal around greens to reduce shade stress during the winter months. Both East and West courses have begun allowing access for sunlight to putting surfaces during the winter to reduce ice damage.

Since 2008 it has pretty much been a waiting game up until the last few months when we started to really get things looking good for this year’s championship. There has been a lot of seeding, sodding and fertilizing going on to help fill in the our roughest areas on the golf course for the championship, but everything has come together nicely and the course is looking great. The final setup for a major championship takes more time than most people realize. Our grandstands starting going up around May 31st and with only a few days left until the Open we are still putting up scoreboards and the finishing touches on our tents. One of the key components to the grandstands, tents and T.V. towers construction is managing the irrigation around all these. For one thing the stakes used during this process are about three feet long and our irrigation manager has to ensure that our irrigation lines are not hit with one of these. Another is managing the irrigation heads around all the tents and grandstands. A lot of fully rotational irrigation heads need to be adjusted to part circle heads and this is utilized by removing parts from the West or Mountain courses and replace these with the ones on the East course throughout the championship. With all this preparation that goes into making a championship, there is always an end to it all. After the championship is over all three courses at The Broadmoor are fully open the very next day for guest and member play, no days off! The tear down of all the grandstands takes about another 4 weeks to complete while the entire time we are dealing with daily play and tournaments, such as our club championship.

With all this work associated with hosting a major championship I must not forget the help of volunteers. During championship week we will have another 60-80 volunteers helping out our Broadmoor staff of 55 each work shift. Yes that’s over 100 golf maintenance workers on 18 holes at one time. It always humors me when I hear the golfers say they want their respective courses to play like a US Open course every day. Now you know how many people it would take to provide those conditions. For example, we will have 12 greens mowers, 6 tee mowers, 15-20 crew handwatering and 8 fairway mowers just to give everyone a glimpse of our crew numbers on one shift. Here at The Broadmoor we are definitely looking forward to hosting another USGA Championship and also returning a great golf event back to the state of Colorado. Come on down and check out the tournament!