Build it and they will come to the Goodwood Festival of Speed!
The Goodwood Festival of Speed, has grown considerably and Head Greenkeeper Simon Berry, gives a refreshed insight into the greens team’s challenges of his pre and post event maintenance and repair work.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed, founded in 1993 by the then Lord March, now The Duke of Richmond, is an annual motorsports festival featuring modern and historic motor racing vehicles taking part in a hill climb and other events, held on the Goodwood estate in West Sussex.
The event has grown considerably since those early days, and now attracts an annual ‘sell-out’ audience of 250 thousand visitors over the four-day packed schedule (Glastonbury 2024 reached 143 thousand visitors as comparison)!
Simon’s challenge
Simon started his Goodwood journey back in the spring of 2004, beginning as assistant greenkeeper on The Downs golf course. He progressively rose through the ranks of the West Sussex golfing jewel, until he eventually landed the head job on the estates equally distinctive alternative 18-hole parkland golf course, The Park, in 2011.
Simon and Scott Goodwood 2024
“The Park and I go back a long way,” explained Simon. “I’ve been its head greenkeeper for thirteen years and seen its ever increasing involvement with the Festival of Speed event”. He continued, “Due to the success of the event, more and more areas of The Park course have been needed to cater for the evolution and sprawl of the build. The 10th fairway is now the main entrance to the event and food hall area, as well as housing the extremely popular super car paddock.” Simon explained, “As you can imagine, this element is extremely popular and the foot fall is considerable. The 9th fairway, which runs parallel, hosts the helicopter pads (four in total) which give guests the chance to view the entire site from above. They take off every five minutes for the entire event, which is amazing, but can cause damage to the turf from exhaust burn marks, rotor wind damage and fuel drops, if organisers aren’t careful.”
Simon must also cope with three fairways (3rd, 12th, and 13th) being used as VIP car parking, as well as the driving range. “It’s all good for the success of the estate, and as part of the one Goodwood team, we have learnt over the years how to best manage the impact of the excessive traffic so that it minimises damage,” he said. “We basically pray for dry conditions, with little or no rain for the build-up, the event itself and deconstruction, so that the vast number of heavy artic lorries, cranes and legions of utility vehicles and people cause minimum damage,” smiled Simon.
Fail to prepare…prepare to fail!
Every turf manager will testify, good preparation and planning for recovery is key to success when preparing the turf for an event of this magnitude. “As you would imagine, the work is intense, and I thank my team for all their hard work,” Simon explained, “with a special mention for my deputy, Scott Peterson, who heads up the event maintenance programme and does a terrific job. We are always conscious of the dual role our surfaces play, and so leading into the event we are mindful of the playability of the golf course and the disruption our preparation work can create. Therefore, we tread carefully, but begin two months ahead with a combination of deep aeration using 14 inches by 1 inch thick verti-draining tines (with minimum heave), followed by a liquid feed. We duplicate this process again four weeks later leading up to the event.”
“Once the tracking and mats go down two weeks prior to the start of the festival, to allow the event traffic access, we simply have to wait and see how the areas have coped with the lack of air and natural sunlight,” explained Simon.
10th fairway. Main entrance and super car paddock and 10 days after repairs (right)
Silver lining
During the ten days of golf course closure, Simon and his team embark on a comprehensive maintenance programme on all his remaining fine turf surfaces. “While there is no golf, we take the opportunity to micro core, verti-drain, overseed, dress, and granular feed (sustain organic) all our greens and tees,” Simon described. “We have three days to complete the work, allowing for seven days recovery before the golf course opens for full play. It’s intense, but works well for us.”
When the circus leaves town
“Once everything is cleared away, we access the conditions and make our repair plans,” Simon revealed. “We repeat our pre-event aeration and liquid feed programme (omitting the growth retardant), once we have terra-raked the entire area beforehand, removing any debris and dead matter. We overseed with a rye and red fescue mix at a higher rate (between 35-50Gms/m2), and if it doesn’t rain, we set up travelling sprinklers as we don’t have fairway irrigation to keep surfaces damp.”
Simon has just celebrated his 20th anniversary year at Goodwood, so huge congratulations to him, and a big thank you from me for taking the time to catch up!