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Home International SportsNotes Thought I'd send you a few photos of The European Open (July 3-6, 2008) held here at the London Golf Club, Kent, England. The European Open is one of the European Tour events that closely precedes the Open Championship and seen by many as a warm up for the third Major of the year. With that in mind we aimed to keep the Nicklaus designed Heritage Course firm, fast and running. The weather conditions helped with winds in the high teens all week and gusts up to 30 mph on Sunday.

The feedback from all involved was very pleasing with my favorite comment coming from Padraig Harrington describing this venue as a "near ideal preparation for The Open Championship",which he is now defending. Quite an achievement since we're 40 plus miles from any coastland and every bit a parkland course. The preparation must have been beneficial for him though, because as I sit writing this Padraig is preparing to go out in the final group on the last day of what so far has been a most entertaining Open Championship (editor's note: Padraig Harrington won the 2008 Open).

From a course maintenance point of view, bunkers are always our biggest concern on this heavily bunkered, open and very windy site. As soon as we were awarded the event in late February we accelerated our normal bunker renovation program in order to deal with some of the reoccurring problems and we increased the amount of labor all season on maintaining and checking sand levels.

As far as conditioning and turf quality not much changed from our normal practices, we regularly set-up to this standard for the European Seniors tour and for our members.

The most significant change this year was fairway widths and rough lines which were altered in a attempt to toughen the place up for today's long hitting professional.

Ross Fisher won by a long way with an impressive 20 under, seven shots ahead of Sergio Garcia who fought hard for second position.

I was amazed at just how well Fisher struck the ball; he was regularly hitting wind assisted drives of over 400 yards! How do you set a golf course up for that?

note: Glenn Kirby is Assistant Golf Courses Manager at the London Golf Club. He is a former International Intern and student at The Ohio State University.

Posted by Glenn Kirby