TEE TO GREEN:Let's just give the players our great Kileen course in as good condition as we can. The rest is up to Mother Nature

I’M A Scot who has been living in Kerry for a long time, but I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be praying for a wee bit of rain. With the 3 Irish Open looming – it takes place on our Killeen course at Killarney Golf Fishing Club from July 29th-August 1st – we’re been working away to get the course in tip-top condition but the one thing we need more than any other is a little help from Mother Nature.

Of course we want fine weather for the actual tournament – when we’re looking forward to Messrs Westwood, Harrington, McIlroy, McDowell and the rest taking on the course – but the green-keeping staff could do with a helping hand with the elements.

After a cold, dry spring, we’ve had a long warm, dry spell and we could do with some rain to thicken the rough and help the fairways.

I believe there is normally 2,000-2,800 millimetres of annual rainfall in Kerry and we’re actually more geared for drainage than irrigation and, while we’ve been able to get water on to the tees and greens, we have limited access to water the fairways and rough.

The weather has been quite remarkable. I mean, six months ago the water in the lakes was at a record high and they’re so low now that only a week or so ago some fishermen couldn’t get out of the lagoon. We had to get a digger to scoop out some sand off the bottom.

The countdown is well and truly on now, and it’s been all hands on deck to make sure the course conditions are up to the standard we demand of ourselves in playing host to one of the flagship tournaments on the PGA European Tour.

We’ve completed a programme of hollow tining the greens – so that, in the event we did get rain during the tournaments, they won’t get flooded – and also heavily sanded them to ensure when the time comes they will putt true. It’s a kind of fire-fighting, as we want the greens to be firm and free-draining. The sand helps that as the ball will roll much better.

From this week on, we’ll just do light sanding and apply a long-term fungicide which is a preventative measure. Our greens are a mixture of poa and bent, with more of an emphasis on bent. However, it is impossible to keep the poa entirely out of the surfaces.

We’re looking for a good roll on firm greens come the tournament. The greens will be the real defence, with reasonably fast run-offs where players will have to use their imagination. Do they chip? Do they use the putter? Do they bump and run? Do they flop? We want to ask all of these questions of the players.

As I’ve pointed out, I don’t see any major rough because of the weather we’ve had in the spring and in the summer so far. We’ve been putting 100,000 gallons of water a night on to the course from the bore hole we have but that really just looks after the greens and the tees and doesn’t really get to the rough. We’re totally reliant on nature to take its course as far as the thickness of rough is concerned.

There’s a lot of people getting excited that the players will take the course apart because of the lack of rough. My attitude is, what difference does it make?

Most people have got over the old attitude that par is good that really only applies these days in US Open set-ups. I’ve been telling people that no matter how tough you make the course, these players are so good they will find a way to get a good score. Look at what Rory McIlroy did at Quail Hollow: he shot a 62 in the final round on a course they were saying was tough enough to host a US Open. And Robert Karlsson shot a 62 around the West Course at Wentworth, one of the toughest in Europe.

So, these players really are very good – let’s just give them our great course in as good condition as we can. That’s all we can do. The rest is up to Mother Nature.

David MacIndoe is the course superintendent at the Killarney Golf Fishing Club, which hosts the 3 Irish Open on July 29th-August 1st. For ticket information on the tournament, visit www.3golf.ie