STRI (Sports Turf Research Institute) Bulletin October 2014 | Page 4

FIRST WORD
Gordon McKillop
Chief Executive, STRI

As another great summer of sport
comes to a close and the nights start to
get longer and the days colder, a bit of
nostalgic reflection never goes amiss.
The World Cup was our most demanding
event. From mid-May until the end of
the tournament we had 14 staff working
throughout Brazil and we have calculated
that we put in about 650 days’ work during
this period, most of which rarely involved
less than a 12-hour day…and it would have
been quite a few more if we had been able
to include the days when people were
laid low with Montezuma’s revenge! Such
are the trials and tribulations of working
abroad, though of course the opportunity
to be involved in such an event more than
compensated even the most badly affected
consultant!
Then there was Wimbledon, where
the courts performed to the usual high
standards expected at the event and
where we have the pleasure of working
alongside Neil Stubley and his team.
Hot on the heels of Wimbledon came
The Open at Royal Liverpool and this
was a great success with the course in
spectacular condition and the greens
putting true and smooth. Our team of
four consultants arrived on the course
10 days before the competition started
and worked with Craig Gilholm and his
team to ensure that the greens were up
to tournament standard by the time of the
first practice round until the last putt was

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Bulletin October 2014 Issue 267

holed and Rory was presented with the
Claret Jug. Our own Head of Agronomy,
Alistair Beggs, was Club Captain at Royal
Liverpool and had the honour and pleasure
of being the one to present the Jug. Of
course, there is no truth in the rumour
that his work colleagues in Bingley had
asked him how it would feel to be the first
Captain to drop the Jug in the history of
The Open!
And the RDS arena in Dublin performed
extremely well for the annual Horse Show
although it was disappointing that Ireland
and Britain lost out in the Nations’ Cup,
its premier event, to a great American
team.
The Commonwealth Games followed on
where the Olympic Games left off in terms
of the levels of sporting performance and
crowd participation. As a child, I grew
up near Hampden Park and was taken
regularly to see the mighty Queen’s Park
play there by my grandfather; being one
of 500 in a stadium that at the time held
145,000 was an experience! So it was
very strange for me to see it converted
into an athletics track. What you may not
know is that the platform on which the
track was laid is the same one that was
used to create the show jumping arena at
Greenwich for the Olympic Games. Of
course the pitch under the plat