Melbourne, Australia: It seems that maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all. John Angliss is the turf technician at Kingston Heath Golf Club and although he isn’t strictly old, he was certainly set it in his ways when it came to backlapping his reels!
As someone that had always been taught and used backlapping, he was staunchly against grinders, dismissing them as ‘a load of rubbish’.
In addition to his standard backlapping regime, he admits to sporadically using manual grinders, which he found to be quite a messy and time-consuming process.
“I was brought up on backlapping. I have been in the industry since 1975 and it was always grind and backlap, grind and backlap. And out on the course they never really used to have grinders so you would always backlap just to keep the edge.
“Most clubs never had grinders because of the cost and also most people didn’t really know how to use them anyway. There were no mechanics around; only your higher-class clubs could afford to have a mechanic on site.
“You go through bearings a lot more when you’re always backlapping and grinding will always get a sharper result.”
Angliss was involved in the Australian Open at Victoria Golf Club when he worked there in 1981. He says at this time he used both grinding and backlapping.
He also worked on the 2009 Masters at Melbourne’s Kingston Heath. Even as recently as that, backlapping was still the predominant maintenance technique used.
He said: “The grinder we had then was all done by hand. Now we have Bernhard grinders, which are all automatic and they’re so quick, too.
“I had to grind 50 units back in 2009 and that took me about a month. I didn’t really know there were different options for grinders out there. I knew about different brands but I didn’t really know that there were automatic grinders out there for the relief type grinding. You can’t compare the manual grinders with the automatics.”
Kingston Heath got the automatic grinders about two years ago. In that time they have had the 2012 Australian Masters and purely used grinders for that tournament.
Angliss says that now he doesn’t have to backlap and he can keep an edge much better than he used to be able to.
“We do a lot of dusting here and I couldn’t backlap to keep the edge, I would have to regrind. The quality of cut has improved significantly.”
Angliss first re-assessed his ideas about grinding when he attended a small conference run by Bernhard Grinders.
“Stephen Bernhard went through the good and bad of everything. At that point I thought it was all rubbish. I thought I knew a lot about grinding but Stephen Bernhard knows a lot more than most people.
“From that point on I got thinking and they offered us a demo and I thought; ‘Well, we will give it a try’. Aside from anything else, I was amazed by the speed of it.”
Angliss also says that compared to backlapping, grinding gives a much cleaner cut.
“When you backlap it doesn’t cut the grass cleanly, it sort of jams the grass in and can damage the turf. Whereas with what we’re doing now, we’re not damaging the blade, it is just slicing the top off.
“I have had a look at the turf through a magnifier and you can actually see the quality of the turf improve from two years ago to now. And that’s what gives you the colour on the course. The turf is a lot healthier overall.”
In addition to his work at Kingston Heath, Angliss is also President of the Turf Equipment Technicians Association. He has been running the group for the last 12 months, but only recently formally took the position.
Boasting some 20 members, the association meets six times a year. Among its sponsors are Bernhard and Toro, both members of the Asian Golf Industry Federation.
“Our role is an information body. A lot of guys that come into this industry have no idea what they’re coming into. We do training days and one field day a year. It’s all about networking among turf mechanics, as well as training,” he said.
Article by Amy Foyster