Episode 21: Kyle Cruickshank - Course Manager at The North Berwick Golf Club

This week we welcome Kyle Cruickshank to the Top 100 Clubhouse. Kyle's a fascinating individual who's worked all over the world from Royal Melbourne to Muirfield, and is now the course manager at the fantastic North Berwick. 

We discuss his career journey so far, the current renovations taking place at North Berwick, and his Top 5 Favourite Courses. 

The Top100 Clubhouse Podcast is brought to you by Eden Mill: Bringing the art of distilling back to St Andrews, The Home Of Golf. 

Transcript

James Henderson
0:00:00
The Top 100 Clubhouse podcast is brought to you by Eden Mill. Bring the tradition of distilling whiskey and gin back to St Andrews, the home of golf. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Top 100 Clubhouse, the ultimate podcast for golf course enthusiasts worldwide. I'm your host, James Henderson, and we're about to embark on a journey through lush fairways and breathtaking landscapes, as well as delving deep into the minds of fascinating individuals from every corner of the golfing universe. Get ready to explore the world's top golf courses through the eyes of those who know them best. 

This week on The Pod, I sat down with Kyle Cruikshank. Kyle's a fascinating individual who's worked all over the world from Royal Melbourne to Muirfield and is now the course manager at the fantastic North Berwick Westlings. I waxed lyrically about it and I'm fortunate to be a member myself and what he's doing has got everyone excited. Changes that are sympathetic renovations of a golf course that is close to my heart so I hope you enjoy. 

Welcome to the Top 100 Clubhouse. It's great to have you on. I have to say I'm a member here so I'm very excited by what you're going through right now. Can you give us a wee bit of your background. How did you fall in love with golf? 

Kyle Cruickshank

Yeah, so I was born and brought up in Aberdeenshire, a small village just outside of Boyne. And my mum was the big golfer in the family. She kind of often played golf at Ballater and Balmoral every week. She's a club champion at Balmoral for about 30 odd years. She was a club champion at Ballater twice, and I think she's also a club champion at Braymar once upon a time. Some fun little courses there, really worth a wee trip. Yeah, so I'm from a place called Llanfannan and the nine hole course there is on the side of a hill and it's quite famous for any pennant matches or local matches, Llanfannan always wins because they know their way around so it's quite an interesting little track but I'm a member of Balmoral which is a nine hole just beside the castle so I pretty much spent my childhood up there playing golf when I was going to visit my granny and granda. I'm very lucky that they're still alive and still on the estate up there. So I was about to say your granny and granda isn't the queen. No, no, no. My granny was a housemaid for the queen and my granda was a farmer. Yeah, on the estate. So mum was kind of born and brought up on the estate and, you know, maybe didn't get to know the royal family, but knew a lot of people around them and a lot of the personal protection officers used to stay at my granny's house when the king and queen were up at the time, now the king. So yeah, it was quite an interesting background but I think when you're from a place like that you just get used to it, it doesn't really feel different and then you see the king might be up there on his holidays or whatever and you see it and you're like oh god that is a little bit strange it's not normal to have someone like that in your back garden. So yeah I played golf at Balmoral and pretty much any time I was at my granny and grandad's I just went out and played. What's the course there like? Yeah so it's a 9 hole course but it's got 18 tees and it's not long by any stretch but it's quite fun, quite challenging. A few holes that come down. But around there there's a lot of hills.

5
 0:03:43
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Henderson
0:03:44
But no, it's good fun. And pretty much just from there, developed a love of golf. Never took it seriously enough to think I could ever be a player. It was more just for the fun of it. And I was sitting in Academy one day and there was just this poster on the wall that said enjoy golf, how about becoming a greenkeeper and pretty much from that moment on that was me sold. I couldn't really think of a better job for someone that liked golf, liked being outdoors, was quite sporty when I was younger. I just thought yeah, this is exactly what I want to do. So I helped out for a week or two at Balmoral, helping the greenkeeper there. My mum at the time was actually the Assistant Secretary at Ballater, so she sorted me out with a school holiday job at Ballater Golf Club and pretty much from there just left school at 16, got an apprenticeship at Inchmarlow Golf Club which is just outside Bankery, got my qualifications, went off to Ireland for 6 months to work on a construction site, a golf construction site, but it was right at the end of the Celtic Tiger so it kind of fell into liquidation and so it was never finished? No. Was it a big project? Yeah it was a Ratiscuson designed hotel. It was an old manor house that was going to be redeveloped and turned into a hotel. It was Sol Golf that were constructing it and pretty much there was 20 million Euro put into the ground and nothing ever came of it. Yeah, so there's drainage, irrigation, you know, half a hotel was built, renovation started on the big house and then they ran out of money, so everything had to stop. So unfortunately for me, it was my kind of time in Ireland finished quite abruptly, but from there I went to Elmwood College to do my HNC full-time.

6
 0:05:35
 Yeah, yeah.

James Henderson
0:05:36
So I came out of it not too bad. Did you ever want to go into that side of the golf game, the more construction side? It was quite weird being there because when you worked in a golf course for a couple of years you're kind of used to having grass there and maintaining the golf course for players. When you're on a construction site at the time it probably moved very slowly. Not too much was happening there in the sense of one day you're laying drainage and the next day you're still laying that same bit of drainage. It's quite a tedious process. Probably the older I've got the more I've enjoyed it. But at the time I just remember thinking I just want this to be a golf course and I just want this to be finished. But unfortunately we just never got there. Yeah, I know it must be quite frustrating seeing all that work then just disappear. Yeah. It's probably built into houses now, isn't it? I think even there was a housing development as well and I think it's just known as the ghost town. Oh, it's just completely empty?

4
 0:06:30
 Yeah.

James Henderson
0:06:31
Wow, that's such a shame.

James Henderson
0:06:33
So then you went on to do your, was it HNC? 

Kyle Cruickshank

HNC, Elmwood, yeah. So I did that for six months. 

James Henderson 

Where were you based? 

Kyle Cruickshank

In Cooper, Elmwood College. So that was great. You know, Elmwood, I did my apprenticeship there, and I've done my HND there down the line as well.

James Henderson 

Is that the main place in Scotland for that kind of stuff? 

Kyle Cruickshank

Yeah, it goes as far as saying it's probably the main place in Europe for Greenkeepers to go to. Certainly a lot of international students go there to learn as well. It's a place that I try and, you know, I thank them for what they've done for me, so I try to push a lot back onto them as well. So we've got a few of our guys currently doing their qualifications to Elmwood as well, which is great. And do they work closely with St Andrews then? Yeah, there's quite a bit of a tie-in with St Andrews. We used to take field trips to St Andrews and go and look around the sheds there or go up to the dukes and have a look at the course up there. So there was quite a good tie-in with St Andrews and the Links. Yeah, because Coopers is so close, it's not far at all. Did you ever think St Andrews might be the stop you want to be at? Funnily enough, I was never at that moment in time because I'd never really been exposed to Links golf. I'd always been kind of parkland, inland courses. I never really thought it was for me. But once I finished my qualification, there was an advert going out for greenkeepers at Glen Eagles which I thought was more up my street. So I got a job there after college and that was, I was put straight onto the PGA Centenary course and it was kind of doing the build up for the 2014 Ryder Cup. So it was a great time to be there, pretty much went in with not a lot of experience and came out with experience of doing a lot of things, you know, using diggers, drainage, irrigation, obviously day-to-day work out in the course. But it was just great to be able to be a part of quite a big project going into quite a big event. Also a very high level. Yeah. Yes, they were expecting so much of that. Yeah. I mean, we had the Johnny Walkers every year and I think every year there was a, you know, interest into how the course was playing and how it was going to look going into 2014. And I think it was 2011, we underwent a big reconstruction job and rebuilt half the 18th to what it is now, which was quite a big project. I can't remember exactly how many tonnage of material came out of that 18th hole, but it dropped quite considerably, the height of it, and became this amphitheatre. Was that the whole intention, to build an amphitheater? Yeah, just in case the final game got there, which it obviously never did. But it was built with that kind of purpose in mind, I think. And I think the 18th before was this long uphill par five. And I think it was the last Johnny Walker that was held there. There was a five-man playoff and it lasted five holes and it was just pretty much the same hole every time. It was quite tedious and boring. Whereas, you know, once the new 18th came in, there was a bit of jeopardy there. And, you know, it was quite a narrow, long green, which massive swales either side. So if you didn't quite hit the right shot, you're going to be penalized as opposed to, you know, hitting an uphill shot into, you know, an uphill green pretty much. The one thing I want to, as a greenkeeper who's worked at Gleneagles, one thing I've not asked someone is, I hear a lot about the quality of the soil that's at Gleneagles. It seems to be a bit different to everywhere else on the inland courses around there. Is that true? Is there kind of a... Yeah, there's, I mean, certainly in the PGA, there was a lot of issues with drainage there. It's a bit, quite a bit wetter than the other two, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, central Scotland, you're pretty much getting rain nine times out of ten. It's funnily enough pretty hard to work in. I'm so used to wearing waterproofs every day from working in Glen Eccles. Certainly, there's areas in the PGA that were really heavy soil and there was a lot of drainage put in. I think what didn't help was the fact that a lot of the drainage that was put in initially was storm drainage. So it was built for that once in a 20-year storm and it would move water really well, but day-to-day rain where it just kind of rained constantly, it couldn't really soak up the same way. So a lot of secondary drainage was installed trying to combat that. The sub-air systems were installed in the greens just in case we had a repeat of Kilik Manor, their wider cup, at least we could move water quite quickly off the greens if needs be and better Billy Bunker put into the bunker so that we could, you know, we wouldn't have the same washouts and things like that. So it was everything was kind of geared up to try and make it as dry as possible.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:11:29
 So what came after Gleneagles?

James Henderson
 0:11:30
 What was your next? So pretty much the week after the Rider Cup, I was on a jet to Melbourne and I went to work at Royal Melbourne for six months. So, um... Not bad. No, it was pretty good. I'd been at Glen Eagles for six and a half years and by the time the Ryder Cup came, it was pretty much the good opportunity to leave. I was 26, I think, at the time. So I needed to kind of spread my wings and go and see something a little bit different. And yeah, I went to Melbourne for six months to work at Royal Melbourne, which was just incredible. Very different from Glen Eagles. Took me quite a bit of time to adjust but it certainly formed quite an impression on me and how I think about greenkeeping and golf. What was the differences? Why was it so different? I mean climate obviously helps. In Melbourne, in the sand belt, it's a free-draining soil, a really warm climate. I know the kind of jokes that Melbourne gets four seasons in a day, similar to Scotland, but at least you get the warm weather. It's about 10 degrees hotter. Yeah, that was the best bit about it. It was just going to work in your shorts and t-shirts, not to worry about the waterproofs. But just the fact that everything was firm and fast. Richard Forsyth, the course super over there, he really prides himself on his greens and how hard they are and how fast they played. And it was just a real eye-opener to see really pure Bent Greens being grown in a warmer environment. And just the kind of, the way that he thought about golf, we held the Asian Pacific Amateur Championship in my first or second week when I was there, which was a great event. But the brief that came from Richard was, we want the smartest player to win, not necessarily the best player. We want someone who will go around Royal Melbourne thinking their way around and plotting their way around as opposed to someone that just stands in the T and obliterates the ball. So I think that kind of philosophy sticks with me and I think certainly now working on a length course like North Berwick, you're more conscious of that. Well, you can't lengthen here. There's no room for an extra T, you know? No. You know, Royal Melbourne's the same. I mean, the interesting thing there was that the course was the defense. They had re-turfed all the fairways with this type of grass called Legend's Couch, Bermuda grass which is really thick. The idea was instead of on a link course here where the ball and it just stops. So you're not getting the same distance off the tee, everything is a bit longer. And then with the firm greens and the firm approaches, you're laying up quite short to let the ball run out and go into the green. Well, it's got such a great rep around the world for both the golf courses. It's really the leading golf course in that area. Yeah. And what else did you learn while you were there? Did you learn any techniques that you hadn't experienced when you were over here? Yeah, I think like the way Richard manages the course, hand watering was a big part of day-to-day activities. So, you know, it might be going out in the morning and cutting greens, but then straight after that you've got a hose and you're just going round hitting the greens. Water management is something I'm quite interested in. We've got quite an important public commodity in Scotland with our water and it's something we need to manage sensibly. We don't want to lose that. So certainly using water efficiently and well was something that opened up my eyes. Being at Gleneagles, like I said, where it was wet nine times out of 10. You didn't have to worry about it. It's the opposite, you're trying to get rid of it. Yeah, but then coming onto a Links, of course, it's maybe not the same climate, but it's the same type of environment where you're trying to. Well, you're very dry here.

5
 0:15:29
 Yeah.

James Henderson
 0:15:29
 I don't know what your rainfall is, about 600, 700 mil a year? Not even that.

8
 0:15:34
 Not even that?

7
 0:15:34
 No.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:15:35
 So for the Americans, that's about 18, 17 inches or something, which is absolutely crazy. Yeah, and you know, I think the Eagles were measuring it in meters rather than centimeters, which we measure in. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Quite, quite incredible. And, but you're right next to the sea. So you had a storm the other day here, right? And what happened? So yeah, we stormed a bit, came and you know, we were, we were working at the time and we knew it was quite wild and we were watching the waves out in the sea and it was the lamb, which is one of the islands just off the coast here, was just about getting gulfed by waves. But we didn't quite realise the damage it was doing along the coastline so our third tee, we lost probably about a metre or two of coastline there, so much so that we've got irrigation lines being exposed along the coastline. The back of the 14th Green Perfection, there's probably been a couple of meters washed away there as well. We've got a few areas of coastal erosion on the course that have held up really well to the storms but unfortunately it's just everything further up the coastline that's been damaged most. Sorry, before we move back on to other things, the coastal erosion stuff here is a major issue at North Berwick. And I don't think people really appreciate how much work is put into managing that. Yeah, I mean, it's not just a problem that affects us, it affects, you know, I think most of the East Coast of Scotland was kind of affected in the last storms. Certainly, Royal Aberdeen, the Matros are the two that kind of come to mind. Before my time here, there was coastal erosion installed on the second hole, which is Rock Armory, and also at the back of the 11th Green, there were geotextile sandbags installed in there to help stabilise the dune. Can you explain what that is? Yes, so pretty much, I think they're about tonne-sized bags of sand that have been filled up and they're pretty much laid in a brickwork formation underneath the dune. And then all the sand was put back on top of them and the dune was reformed on top of them just to try and hold the dune in place. Like I say, the storm Babette didn't really do too much damage to these areas which was great because they're obviously areas that we're concerned about. It was more areas up coastline from them. Certainly the big dune that we've got that runs from the 10th to 11th, a lot of the build up of sand at the bottom there had maybe 5-10 years worth of build up had been taken in one fell swoop. So it shows you that the sea is a cruel mistress and it can take almost as quickly as it can give it to you. Do you have, this is a really rogue question, but I know the rise of sea level chat, do you have any concerns about what's going to happen to North Berwick through that? Is that

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:18:36
 a discussion around the Green Key?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:18:38
 Yeah, to be brutally honest, I was probably a bit naive about coastal erosion obviously not being here when the coastal erosion was put in place. And maybe just thinking, oh, you know, we're protected or most vulnerable areas are protected. And that storm just proved that, you know, this is a front and centre issue for the club. If not, you know, not just our club, it's, you know, courses up and down the East Coast of Scotland, even the West Coast of Scotland as well. You know, we're hopefully going to be getting a survey done to show what that one in a hundred year storm might do and it could be quite cataclysmic for the course but we just need to protect ourselves as best as we can and make sure that our areas of interest like the back of the 14th Green or the back of the 11th Green are protected as best as we can. It's scary stuff because obviously a lot of people are in love with this place and to know that one day you could lose a whole hole. Yeah, I think when you see the reports that come out and they say, you know, St Andrews could be underwater by 2050 or whatever it is, I think you always take them with a large pinch of salt, but I think after seeing that type of damage, it probably hits home a lot harder.

6
 0:19:53
 Yeah.

James Henderson
 0:19:54
 So, we'll just go back to, so Royal Melbourne, which you definitely don't have that problem. Where did you go after Royal Melbourne? So after Royal Melbourne I was at Le Golf National in Paris for six months. So again, just doing a bit of construction work in the lead to the 2018 Ryder Cup. And yeah, I really enjoyed my time in France as well. It was a very different culture and I never drank coffee until I went to France. So that's my thing I took home. I was there for six months, did a bit of the construction work on some of the improvements for the 2018 Ryder Cup. But I saw a job advert back home for a deputy course manager at the Roxburgh down the Scottish borders. Another wet area of Scotland. Yeah. So I was very fortunate to get that job as well where I was down there for four and a half years learning under Ross Ovens. And yeah, another great experience in management and how to deal with a different side of the job as opposed to the nitty gritty of greenkeeping, you're maybe a bit more focused on man management or a bit more admin, which is what I wanted to get out of that. And then from there, my wife, we were living in Galashiels at the time and she was getting on the train for an hour to work every day and an hour back and it was getting a bit hard on her so I promised her that if a job ever came up in Edinburgh or East Lothian I would go for it. And luckily a job came up at Muirfield so I took that and was up there for just under 10 months I think. As an experience at Muirfield, that must have been quite an interesting eye-opening experience because it's got a similar level status as Royal Melbourne. Yeah, I mean certainly going through the gates, anyone that's ever been to Muirfield, going through those gates every morning was just a real joy and then kind of just seeing this golf course open up in front of you, it was quite a great feeling going into work every morning I've never known a golf course that is literally getting spit polished every day. Just such good condition all the time. My first experience of Links courses, again, you're coming from that Glen Eagles mindset where you're thinking, oh, I've got to do this, got to do that and there just isn't the same concern up there, it's just, you know, everything's just pretty much spot on all the time. Out of interest, you've obviously worked your whole career in a different style of golf course, you then arrive at Links. What are the differences between managing the two styles of golf course? Yeah, I think being inland, certainly Gleneagles, it was that wet climate and pretty much your winters are spent laying drainage and doing jobs like that or a lot of turfing work from maybe areas that you have drained or tried to drain that have been wet and needed to be sorted out. Going on to a Links or Sandbelt where it's dry, you're working in a very, very different environment. Certainly through the summer where it is drier, you're maybe putting that little bit more irrigation out, you're trying to promote those finer grasses that can thrive on a Links course, so you're conscious about your nutrient inputs. Whereas Glen Eagles was geared up for European tour events, Ryder Cup, it maybe had to have a certain aesthetic, whereas a Links course, if things kind of burn off a little bit, it's not the end of the world and it's something that I think a lot of our members like to see on the course as well. Yeah, very much so. Firm and fast is the classic phrase. Firm and fast has been dominating rankings you know. You see what's happened to North Berwick over the last, it's crazy how popular it's become. Yeah, and it's great that something that maybe 30 years ago was relatively unheard of or was a bit of a hidden gem is now being fully realized that is a great. I think we've got it at top. I think we've got a 30th in the world or something. And that brings me to the point of you becoming course manager here. You must be quite excited.

5
 0:24:25
 Yeah.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:24:26
 Pretty cool. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah, it was quite incredible to be able to get this opportunity. I mean, it was all when I was up in Muirfield, I just started doing my degree in sports science. And like I said before, really happy there. Wasn't really looking to move. But my predecessor, Darren, when he started here, there was a job advert went out for a senior greenkeeper initially. So I just emailed him off chance to see what's going on at North Berwick, what's your plans, I wonder if you might be able to entice me away from your field. He said if you're looking for an easy job, don't come to North Berwick because we've got quite a project on our hands and we've got a lot of things that we want to try and improve. Just speaking to him that day, I kind of got my juices going a little bit and I thought yeah actually as much as I love your field and know what it is, I think the excitement of what Darren was proposing was probably too good to turn down. But it seems like that's been something that's run throughout your whole career, you've always been a project that's kind of had a culmination somewhere, you know? Would you get bored at a place where you kind of sit still? Not necessarily. I think it's more looking for that progression in your career. You know, getting to, when I was deputy course manager down at the Roxburgh, I think obviously the next progression would have been to be a head man or a course manager somewhere. And I applied for lots of jobs, but there was the opportunity just was never there. So taking the step back and going to a LINX course and experiencing something different as a greenkeeper and not in a management role was probably the best thing I did and furthered my experience and my knowledge of how to manage a site. And then again coming in with Darren, it was again that excitement of what North Berwick, a lot of people were talking about the course and how much everyone loved it and it was an exciting time to be a part of something that we were going to be improving. So it was a bit of a no-brainer really. I was really fortunate that within six months I was promoted to deputy and then probably about a year later an opportunity came up for Darren, closer to home for him in the West Coast. It was just good timing on my part that I was here and he got me almost ready for the job. So I'm forever grateful for him for his help in getting me here. It was quite amazing, double promotion in one and a half years. Yeah, I mean, and this is my first course manager's job. It's not like I've got that experience. Which would be rare for a top 100 golf course, which shows you the trust that the board have with you. Yeah, and it's a huge honour really to be able to have this as your first job and have people put their trust and belief in you to obviously produce some things. It's a huge honour, it's a huge privilege and I've always said I'm just the latest custodian of this Links course and I just need to try and leave it in a better condition than for the next person. A lot of the projects which I'm sure we'll come on to that we've done, that's all aimed at that. It's all about improving the experience that people have here, not just for the golfer but our employees as well. We've done a lot of work behind the scenes for our greenkeepers to give them a better environment to work in. So, let's do that. Let's move on to what you've got planned and what you're doing currently. I know you've rebuilt one big bunker in 17 already. Yeah. So pretty much the brief for 17 was last year, the committee decided that they didn't want anything done to that until a course manager was in place. So, shortly after my appointment, we sat down and just decided that we were going to rebuild this bunker which is quite an iconic part of North Berwick. So we had Chris Haspel who was the course manager at Castle Stewart, he consults with us so he came down for a visit and we kind of walked around the entire site and we looked at a few different ideas and projects that we thought in the future, but 17 was definitely the one that was most pressing. From there, Clyde Johnson came down for a look about and we decided that it was too big a job for us to do in-house and it needed someone that had a bit more skill set, better expertise than us to be able to achieve what we were looking for. To put it into contents, these guys are actual course builders. They build golf courses for Tom Doak and for the likes of Gil Hans for everyone. They're quite famous in their field. Yeah. So, I mean, Clyde did pretty much work all over the world helping build courses for Tom Doak and- He's at Tire E.T., wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah. So, it was important that we got people like Chris and Clyde on board to help us with a project like this. And certainly within my first few months of being here it was a big project to take on. So we kind of, beginning of January, Chris and Clyde came on board, we got the big 8 tonne excavator in the bunker and just got to work. And I think initially from what they started digging out there was maybe a bit of an eye opener for a lot of the members and the visitors to see this is actually quite a big project and quite a big rebuild. But the idea was to make it, you know, we found old sleepers. We found old sleepers in the face from where, you know, maybe it was the old bridle path that was there years ago. But it was to bring back what it kind of used to be like. It probably lost its shape over the years. It lost its riveted wall, which is a feature that looked really good a few years ago. So we wanted to bring all that back. And looking at old photos, we kind of just took it from there because it's not just that bunker. You've been planning a few other things. What are the other things you've been? Yeah, so I mean, 17 was obviously the starting point for that. And then there's been a few projects that we've kind of had our eye on for a few years. So 10th Tees was one that we wanted to make it, try and fit its surrounding a little bit better. So before it had a bit of a sheer face and it sat in the dune but it didn't really look like it should have been there. So the idea was to dig down, take out some of the poorer root zone and soil that was in there, build it up with a better root zone but also do a lot of landscaping around the sides and taking, there was a rubber crumb path that used to run from the bottom of the hill or the bottom of the bank to the top and then right through the middle of the T which always looked a bit unsightly. So that was one of the first things to go. We now have a full grass T and a grass path going up from the bottom of the bank up to the T and then coming back down again as well. It's looking good. Yeah, so it's a big change on what was there before but it's definitely a massive improvement. It opens up the views as well, big time. You've got a much nicer view across to Fife and down the coasts. Yeah, certainly of the four islands that are just off the coast of Fidra, Lamm, Craigleith and Bass Rock. You can open that up a lot better to have a better view of that. So from there we moved down to the 6T. The 6T wasn't one that was most pressing to rebuild. It was more from a maintenance point of view with World's Handicap System changing and a lot more people playing off the white tee. Our first big competition of the year, the Bern Shield, pretty much an all club event. The first time that they're playing off turf after using mats through the winter. So they go back onto the white tee and within a week it's pretty much unplayable because it's just absolutely full of divots. So my objective to Clyde was give me a tee that we can use for a lot longer and utilize a lot better. So pretty much the white tee now is probably double the width, three times the length. So now we can give players a lot better ground to play off.

James Henderson
 0:32:45
 I noticed you got rid of something at the back of five as well. What was the intention of that?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:32:50
 So, I'd always felt that the quarry hole, which is the 6 here, par 3 hole that goes over a big dip onto the green, it was probably a great feature but was very underappreciated. So part of, again, the objective for the 60s was to try and accentuate it a bit more and make it a bit more of a feature. And there was this mound at the back of the 5th green, so we've taken that out and now you've got the feeling of an infinity green going down into the sixth hole. So it opens up a lot better. We're hoping now that people get onto the fifth green and you see the next hole straight away and think, wow, that's quite a feature already. But from there as well, the green's been moved out by a couple of yards. There'll be a bit of a runoff off the back of the green as well. And then next year as part of our works as well, we'll rebuild the bunker on the right side of the green and then just soften the bank there a little bit so we can cut it all to fairway height and it will be a bit of a bigger complex to play out of. That will be fun, yeah. The one thing I did notice is the view when you're walking up is much more prevalent. You can see the whole course and it really opens the place up. Where else have you been attacking the... Yeah, so the big project, probably the one that gave me the most fear, was we started on the bunker left of the 15th Green and the 15th Green here is the most copied hole in the world, which is the Redan Hole. So it's not something that you take lightly of making any changes to. But, you know, I've got a picture in my office of that hole from a drone and you look at the bunker on the left, it just never really looked like it should be there, it just didn't look natural. So again, I kind of said to Chris and Clyde, you know, let's try and do something with this and make it fit a lot better. So they went away and did their homework and came out with a lot of great photos of how that bunker used to be and it's grown quite a bit in size but it certainly is more in line with what used to be there. And I think, again, it might be a bit of a shock to a lot of members and visitors that come here to see what was there before to what's there now but I think the whole, it suits the whole a lot better. And it was a type of, like we said, sensitive restoration where we weren't doing something for the sake of doing it, we were doing something with a purpose and we're not planning to do the entire course like that. It's just these certain areas that we feel need to be brought back to life. Well, I was there that day and I remember seeing you, Clyde, and Chris standing there. It's Clyde Johnson and Chris Haspel. And there was a lot of nervous tension in the air because taking on the challenge of rebuilding a major bunker in probably, as I've heard it be described, probably the most famous hole in golf that doesn't go on TV. And most copied hole in golf.

James Henderson
 0:35:57
 It must have been pretty nerve-wracking.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:35:59
 Yeah, I mean, I don't think they shared my nerve. I think, certainly Clyde was really excited about the prospect. And you know, you saw yourself when we were up there, it didn't take them long to get going at all. Pretty much within an hour or two, pretty much the rough shape of what was going to be there was in, and the tee that was on top of the bunker there as well, you know, had come out. We're moving that across to the left, again to provide a bit of a bigger teeing round but also takes it away from the line of play. But yeah, it was quite a sight to behold, two 14 tonne excavators working in close proximity. And at speed, I tell you what, these guys work. There's no flags out, there's no nothing, they just go for it. And they're so inch perfect. Honestly the speed they go at, I was shocked at how good they were. They were rolling grass, turf off the ground with these massive excavators. It takes a lot of skill just to even know how to use one of those, let alone be able to do what they can do with it. Like I say to my guys, whenever we're in the vicinity of Chris and Clyde's, like just watch how impressive this is because we could all try and emulate it, but never to that extent. I was blown away about the skill these guys have. And the really, their understanding of how to shape, how to create a natural shape was,

3
 0:37:26
 with a huge bit of kit. Yeah.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:37:29
 It's amazing. That's the impressive thing for me, certainly about Clyde, Chris as well, but I like to think that I've got an eye for certain things and I can do certain things. It's not until you see someone like that and you realize, actually, I don't have that skill at all. I mean, the creative mindset that he has in that artistic, you know, mindset that he's got, he didn't work off a plan. He knew in his mind what he wanted to do. Um, so seeing that in actions, impressive. I mean, like I said, if that was myself in the digger trying to do that I would have been it wouldn't be anywhere near what it is now. And you did it in an afternoon. Yeah. It's like painting fine art with a fist, you know, it's unbelievable. Yeah. It's really shocking how impressive it was. We've got a wee video of it that I think we're going to have coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that guys. Yes, that's quite a lot going on. Have you got any more projects that you're planning? So over the course of winter we're planning to rebuild 15 or 16 bunkers as well. So we've done two already, two at the left side of the 12th green and then there'll be just other bunkers around the course with a wee bit of gentle landscaping around the sides to try and get them back to how they, not the same extent as what the 15th bunker was but just trying to make them fit in their surrounding a little bit better. Now, this is a question that I probably shouldn't ask, but it must have been quite a bizarre scenario when you had, you've just come into, did you have any sort of insecurity around the fact that you've just come into your job and then you've got these two guys coming in who are obviously world class at building bunkers and doing things. Must have been quite daunting for you having these guys come in and be like, oh shit, what am I doing here? No, I mean, Chris and Clyde are, they're charming, aren't they? Yeah, probably for what they've done in the game. I mean, you know, Clyde's got a fairly short career and already what he's achieved is, you know, to be respected, but I mean, very humble guys. Chris, someone I've looked up to for a long time, you know, you look at him as a bit of a mentor as well. Probably as much a friend now as anything as well. Chris is great in the sense that he's always at the end of the phone if you need him. If you're not sure about something, he'll happily answer. He's never short to give you advice and how he would tackle something. If he hasn't encountered a problem before, he'll know someone who has and is always willing to help you out. So they've been absolutely brilliant to work with. Yeah, but it's like having a three-star Michelin chef come into your kitchen when you've been in the job for six months, you know? And it must be a massive compliment that they want to work with you, knowing that that's the case. Yeah, and I'd like to think that we offer them the same flexibility as, you know, we afford them. And I think that's where our relationship works quite well, where if we gave them a brief and they had to stick to it and give me exactly what I want, they would probably be stifled and they probably wouldn't be able to create what they want to. But North Berwick is bigger than me, so by looking at these old pictures and old photos of how the course used to look or how bunkers used to be, it is important for them to be able to have that creative license and artistic license to be able to do what they need to do. I'm fairly hands-off in that sense where I just let them work away. I'll go up and check on them periodically and we'll talk about what they're doing, whether there's a little bit that I'd like to see slightly changed or whether there's a bit that they're not sure about, we can talk it through. But it's a very open dialogue and a good relationship. Well, that's great because I know what you're doing is very exciting for everyone involved. Is there anything that when you're working with these guys that you go, bugger, he's not thinking about this, I need to, come on guys, this is important, like health and safety or like... It's probably everything that ties into what they're doing. So, Clyde's coming in with a view to shape. So he's moving soil and he's maybe not concerned about where it's going or what's maybe coming behind it. Whereas part of my stress is we've got to put irrigation in and we've got to get turf in and we've got to do this and we've got to do that and managing bodies and staff to do these things. So as I always say to the guys, patience and flexibility is the key when they're on site because we know that in a moment's notice we might need to change our plans or what they initially wanted to do has changed, but that's all part of the fun. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's, if you don't have that flexibility, then you won't get the job done. And it's, especially when these guys are working so fast. There's, what, at North Berwick, what are the, apart from the coastal erosion we talked about, what are the difficulties as the course manager that you're faced with, that you find maybe, you have certain areas that grass might not grow properly, or what difficulties are

James Henderson
 0:42:40
 you faced regularly?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:42:41
 I don't know if there's difficulties as such that are different from anywhere else on the course. It's maybe, we're a very, very busy golf course. Yeah, pretty much from seven o'clock in the morning until dusk in the height of summer, we've got golf out, which kind of inhibits how much work that our guys can actually do. So we have an early start to try and get ahead of them. Obviously there's an expectation for a good condition course all year round, which we can't always promise, you know, there'll be days that we need to top dress or punch holes somewhere that maybe the golfers don't want to see, but unfortunately that's just golf maintenance. But probably trying to fit everything in around a packed tee sheet. I mean, the make-up of the course is we've got three clubs essentially that play their fixtures over the course. And that's a lot in itself without a fully booked tee sheet from visitors as well. And we're delighted that we're providing a once in a lifetime experience to a lot of members, or sorry, visitors. And it's great that they want to be able to come here and spend their time, but sometimes it's just, you're desperate to get work done and you just can't move for golf. But it's a nice problem to have. Maybe if the golf course was on a bigger footprint it would be easier but it's not on a big footprint. It's a long footprint. I think it's not far from the clubhouse to the ninth hole which is the furthest out point. I think it's the shortest three kilometers. So it's a long footprint but it's not wide. So I mean we've pretty much got holes side by side right along the coastline. I think the strange bit is our coastal holes, you know the ones right on the coastline, we don't really suffer with worm casts or anything like that because they're on quite sandy soil. But literally just moving another hole over, so 3 and 16 as an example, 16 and then obviously further over again, the wee course, the children's course, they can be quite badly hit by worm casts and the soil is just slightly richer. So that's probably one of the bigger headaches that we have is trying to manage that and trying to cut and present good quality turf when you've got maybe a lot of worm castings through the autumn months is difficult but it's just part and part of the topography that we have. But that's saying you're talking about 10 meters.

3
 0:45:03
 Yeah.

James Henderson
 0:45:04
 It's crazy. A lot of people don't realize, can you give me a wee bit of understanding of what you do at the kids course? People don't really understand what you have there, this little 9-hole golf course? Yeah, so we've got this 9-hole course that is predominantly for use of children in the town or nearby and it's meant to be prohibited to adults. It should be, if you're playing, you've got to have a child with you. And it's just this small par 3 course essentially and we manage it exactly the same way as we manage the main 18 holes here. The Greens can get pretty quick in the heat of summer. But yeah, it's great. It's a great space for kids to come and play and learn how to learn the game. We have a get into golf program which is run by Katie in the pro shop and the pro team where they take people who maybe never really experienced golf before and get a chance to kind of learn and develop and get a chance to play in the course before maybe graduating onto the bigger course here or another course in the area. So it's a great breeding ground and training ground for a lot of people in the area. I think Katrina Matthews is probably the most famous person to come out of that. She won a few of the Cubs there. Yeah, no, I grew up playing my junior golf there and it's quite an amazing place. They have five majors or four majors and then the players And they're all very historic cups and the one one of the cool things I heard about North Beret the other days has the oldest Junior competition in the world. Yeah Which is quite amazing 1968 or something. That's one of the cool things about this golf course. It's the same golf course that's been played here since, I don't know what, 18... well the club was formed in 1832, so coming up to 200 years old, but they say that golf's been played a couple of hundred years prior to that. For anyone that knows the course, the original boundary was the wall that's at the back of the 15th green, so it was a 6-hole loop played 3 times. And then the course was extended out to Eelburn, which is just in front of the 7th green. And then laterally, the course was extended out to holes 8, 9, 10 and 11. One last thing that we didn't include in the, I would say, football you have on the golf course is the fact the number of walkers you have. Do you have problems with them walking up and down on rough areas, creating paths that you don't want them there? Most of them are fairly respectful. You get the odd one or two that you see them doing things you shouldn't be doing, like walking over greens with their dogs and you wince a little bit. Or throwing balls down the middle of the fairway and dogs running about. Again I think it's part of the charm with North Berwick and the fact that there's this close proximity to the town. It's almost an extension of the town. Well it's owned by the town. Yeah. It's one of these things, I think we always struggle to police dog walkers and walkers on the course. Like with the old course at St Andrews, the great joy for people is that on a Sunday, people can play football, they can picnic, they can do whatever on the course there, and it's public land, and I think that's part of our charm as well, the fact that we've got that here. It's frustrating for golfers, don't get me wrong, especially on the second hole when the tide's in. And you've got a massive problem walking down the red fairway. Yeah, it's one of these things that we can't help. So what do you see as a common golfing or sorry, golfing norm and normality? So divots or whatever, pitch park repairing that frustrates you as a head greenkeeper, maybe like not picking up T's on T boxes. What would be the ones that you'd want people to respect greenkeepers more? Yeah, I mean, the big ones are always going to be pitch marks and divots. With the amount of play that we get, we have a lot of divots on the fairways that take time to heal. We do have a divot squad that go out there, but they can't really keep up with the amount of divots that are out there. So yeah, definitely replacing divots and pitch marks are the two big ones, but I think there's just the element of course etiquette at times and certainly for screen keepers we know all too well about being in the fire line and people saying we didn't see you or you put a bit of rope and stake out to try and stop people walking somewhere and you see people just walking over it. I think those are the big frustrations that you get but sometimes it's better the things you don't see and don't know about are probably best that way. Out of interest, there's a lot of people, the divot stuff, I hear different not to replace it, to replace it. What's your, do you think replacing it is better or is it? I would say it's one of those, certainly on the T I wouldn't worry about replacing divots on the T. They're managed a bit more intensely than the fairways are and a bit more concentrated as well. But certainly on fairways, you can't really go wrong with putting a big divot back if you take one out, you know, big fillet stake divot, you know. Does the root system stay within the grass?

4
 0:50:32
 Yeah.

James Henderson
 0:50:33
 I was always trained, I was, God, I'd get death stares by my dad if I didn't replace a divot. That's a classic, he was a farmer so that makes a lot of sense. And in terms of replacing, not replacing, repairing a pitchmark, what is the, what's

James Henderson
 0:50:51
 the best way of going around that?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:50:53
 Yeah, so pretty much pushing towards the middle. So I think a lot of folk think that you're trying to pull it up from the middle, but instead you should actually be putting your pitch mark repair in and pushing it towards the middle to fill in the hole that way as opposed to lifting it up and ripping the roots out from there. Oh, is that what happens? It rips the roots out? Sorry, those are two questions I think people find interesting. And lastly, I've always liked to finish on one thing. Well, two things actually. Things tend to go on sometimes. Firstly, what's your top five favorite golf courses? Where's your, like Ely's one for me. It doesn't mean that they're the best golf courses, but you just have ones that mean something to you, your favourites. North Berwick aside, obviously, I would say it doesn't have to be five. Simon Holt gave us 13. He's played a lot more golf than me. Definitely Balmoral, that's definitely special. Ballotor, if ever I'm home and I get a chance to play Ballotor, I'll always take that up. Muirfield as well, it's going with the theme of places I've worked. But probably the outlier would be Royal Porfcoil, down in Wales. I was lucky to be invited down to a Greencuban event there last year. And I've known Ian Kinley, the course manager there for a few years, and always really enjoyed seeing what they were up to in the course, going through a bit of a redevelopment and getting down there it was just breathtaking and loved the golf course. The clubhouse was just, I think it's an old cricket pavilion and it's just wall to wall, floor to ceiling, old memorabilia, just a great place to be in and a great place to socialise but I was just blown away by the golf course. I've heard the whole set up there is just special. Just the experience, the all-round experience. I don't know if you would have been able to because of the fact that there's probably quite a few greenkeepers there for the event. Yeah, I think there was about 50 of us altogether. Do you meet up quite a lot of greenkeepers? Yeah, yeah. That's probably a really good thing about the industry is it's a small industry so a lot of people know a lot of people. And we do have a few events a year, so BTME, which is the British Greenkeepers Turf Show down in Harrogate is a great chance in January to go down and see the latest developments, machinery, fertilizer, whatever else, but it's probably a better chance to catch up with your peers and people that maybe haven't seen for a few years. I've been very lucky that I've been invited to an event called the Links Club for three years now, and that's pretty much Links Greenkeeper or Links course managers from around the UK going to different parts of the UK to see different golf courses and just a networking thing really. The first year I went was Carnoustie on the championship course which was brilliant. The second year was Royal Porthcrawl and this past year we were down at Fairhaven and St. Ann's Old Links in Lytham. Okay, yeah. Which unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad, so we got rained off at Fairhaven, but the company that you get and the people you get to meet is brilliant. And even last week as well, I was invited to an event up at Kernish Tee for a seed launch, and it was course managers from along the East Coast. And again, guys you maybe know, but you don't necessarily know that well and it's just a great chance to kind of speak to them in a quite relaxed setting. What do you think is next for greenkeepers? What's the next big solution whether it be automated grass cutting or what do you think

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:54:39
 is going to happen next?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:54:40
 I think the big one that's coming is going to be water management. A lot of courses run off mains water which isn't ideal but maybe don't have access to water elsewhere. And it is our greatest public resource and something that we should be proud of and try to keep. But we need to be sensible with how we put water out and how we use it. Like I said on the LINX courses where if it browns off from getting a little bit dry, it's not the worst thing in the world, but maybe on other courses they see a brown patch and think, well, we need to get the water on. It's maybe just managing things like that, that's going to be the big challenge. That along with, you know, reduction of the chemicals that we can use. We don't use a lot of chemicals on North Berwick, but there is a few that we use, you know, fungicides after, you know, a seeding event or insecticides to manage the chaffer grub population. Things like that, if we lose them, that could be a quick disaster for the industry in a lot of courses when the expectations of what we need to produce are quite high. Staffing is going to be another one. I think every industry in the UK at the minute is feeling a crisis with staffing and trying to get people into roles and Greenkeeping is no different. We've actually picked up a lot of guys that haven't come from a Greenkeeping background and wanted to try something new, which is great for us. They've kind of taken the job really well. But there maybe isn't the same interest there was 10, 15 years ago of a place like North Berwick putting a job advert out and maybe getting inundated. Now it's a little bit harder to find that stuff. Well, that's the thing, for a lot of people seeing the very early hours outside in the dark, cutting glass is probably not something that a young guy just out of university getting up at 12 o'clock wants to see, you know, or out of college or wherever. Yeah, but I mean, if that's what you know, the perk of the job, I mean, you'll know as well as me. I get to the first green in the morning and you've got the sun rising over Bass Rock. Oh, it's one of the most beautiful spots. Yeah, I mean, the amount of people that come down here and they've maybe never visited East Lothian before, they've never come to North Berwick, and they get to our sheds to drop something off and they're like, wow, this place is just incredible. And I think sometimes I take it for granted and you kind of forget how special a place it is and you just kind of look at it as work and you look at the things that you need to improve but certainly the days when you stand back and you look out at the sea and see the different scenery and whatever else, it is a really special place. Even those big orange sunsets and sunrises, they happen all the time. Beautiful. Especially because you get so little cloud coverage here. Lots of them. Is there anything you would like to say to young people in the game that might want to emulate or move to the same heights that

3
 0:57:44
 you are?

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:57:45
 I mean, probably just for anyone that thinks about getting into the industry, it's a great industry to be part of. Probably one of the very few industries that you could literally work anywhere in the world. I think, without getting in my soapbox here, I think we maybe don't do a great job of promoting the job to people as well as what we could. I think, you know, like I say, I was 16 when I wanted to be, or maybe 13 or 14 when I wanted to be a greenkeeper. You speak to career advisors and they say, oh, well, you don't need any qualifications and they don't really give you much more information. But once you're kind of in the industry, it's quite a wide umbrella of different roles that you could have. I've pretty much stayed within golf course maintenance and greenkeeping, but there's sales, there's research and development, there's agronomical work, there's design work, there's construction work, there's machinery work. There's all these different facets of the industry that probably not a lot of people know about and maybe accidentally fall into, but maybe if people knew about it from an earlier age something that you know like I say us as an industry have to maybe get better at and promote the industry better and it's a great industry to be part of and you know certainly the people I've met along the way I've got friends for life that you might not speak to for you know 5, 10, 15 years but as soon as you meet up it's remember when we used to work together or remember when we did this event together and you know you just pick up from pick up from where you left off. That's one of the cool things especially if you're doing a good job like you are. The members at a golf club like this tend to it's almost like their second wife you know it's their second husband it's the love for the golf course they're a member of you know.

Kyle Cruickshank
 0:59:35
 Yeah.

James Henderson
 0:59:36
 That's evident in North Berwick, there's a real pride in what they have here and rightly so because it's a spectacular place and the course speaks for itself. It's part of our job to make sure that they're as happy as they can be when they're coming here to play. Whether it's a member that's been here 50 years or whether it's a visitor coming from the other side of America for the first time, we want them to have a special experience.

Kyle Cruickshank
 1:00:03
 Well, you're very much doing that. So thank you very much, Kyle. That was superb.

James Henderson
 1:00:07
 I really enjoyed that. No, thanks for having me on.

4
 1:00:09
♪♪

James Henderson
 1:00:14
 Kyle, thank you very much for sitting down with me. I know you're incredibly busy with all the stuff going on, and I just want to thank you for doing a very, very good job on the golf course that I love. So thank you. If you want to get in touch, it's James at top100golfcourses.com or get me on Instagram at OfficialTop100. I'm always happy to hear even just a gripe. I had someone with something recently and I really enjoyed having an email exchange with them. And please remember, play fast, lunch slow. And please remember, play fast, lunch slow.

4
 1:00:46
 Music

 
 
 Transcribed with Cockatoo