Murasaki Country club
Situated around an hour’s drive from Tokyo, Murasaki Country Club’s Sumire Course, Chiba hosted the 2022 Japan Women’s Open Golf Championship, for which Bernhard and Company, namely Mirai Takahashi, provided tournament support.
The running of the tournament was a great success and the course conditioning received rave reviews from everybody involved with the event. The club’s Director of Golf provided glowing feedback on the course presentation, commenting: “I have never seen the greens in such good condition.”
The golf course boasts 54 holes with unique design features. Each hole can be played using two different greens, and the greens are alternated every other day. From a design perspective, this creates an ever-changing playing style, as depending on which green is set up, golfers will play the hole from different positions and angles. Tee shot placement becomes imperative when it comes to compiling a good score.
Preparing a golf course for a tournament is challenging, but preparing a golf course with two sets of greens for each hole is an extremely demanding challenge that the Superintendent and his team contend with on a daily basis.
The bent grass greens at Murasaki are maintained following the same high standard on both sets of greens. All fertility procedures, moisture management, cultural practices, disease management, grinding procedures, mowing regimes, and rolling regimes remain identical for all greens. Naturally, this creates twice the amount of work that a normal 18-hole golf course would require.
Maintaining the greens to the highest possible standard is the task of Superintendent, Mr Yoshiha, and machinery maintenance and the sharpening of 200 cutting units is the job of head mechanic Mr Nishikihori.
The greenkeeping staff is made up of 17 people. The size of the facility is impressive, and the amount and quality of equipment is amazing.
A question that came to mind. Why use the greens every other day? Simply, it is an attractive, unique selling point for golfers. Players can have a totally different approach shot from the fairway depending on which green is set up.
One of the challenges for the Superintendent during the tournament was maintaining the speed of the greens. Slowing or increasing the speed is easy, while maintaining it is the trickiest part.
The height of cut on the greens was 3.5 mm and the Baroness mowers used on greens, fairways, and semi-rough were all sharpened using two sets of Bernhard and Company grinders. A Dual Master 3000iR was used in conjunction with an Anglemaster 4000, as well as an Express Dual 4000 fitted with an Express Relief, and an Anglemaster 4100.
The grinders were used on a daily basis and were an essential part of the maintenance programme designed to maintain the 54 holes to the very highest standards.
