Ahead of the Ryder Cup we met with Brice Rué, Head Mechanic at Le Golf National. Brice has been working at the Le Golf National since 2012. He’s been working with Alejandro Reyes, superintendent at Le Golf National for over a year on planning his mechanics schedule ahead of the Ryder Cup 2018.
How do you sharpen your mowers pre-tournament?
The process we go through for sharpening our mowers is the same all year round. In tournament, the preparation is more intense. We are lucky to have 2 technicians from Bernhard and their distributor, Macdis, coming to help us the weeks before the tournament. In September, ahead of the Ryder Cup, they will be supporting us for 4 weeks.
In the run up to the Ryder Cup, we will have up to 100 machines to work on and make sure all units are at their sharpest.
The process is fairly easy, we will sharpen the bottom blade or bedknife, we will put the bottom blade back onto the cutting unit.
We will then sharpen the cutting unit on our Express Dual. Once we are happy with the cylinder, we will set it back up to the machine to the bottom blade.
Since we sharpen regularly, we are confident about setting up the height of cut we want to achieve. I will always set up the machine using the height of cut gauge, I will check that the quality of cut is consistent with the cutting strips and make any fine adjustments if I find it is not quite as consistent as I want it to be.
The key for us is consistency. We know that by having a strong team that knows what their expectations are and want to achieve the highest level of quality of cut, we will achieve it.
How many people in your mechanics team for the Ryder cup?
We will have 10 people in the team.
How do you recruit for your team of volunteers?
As far as the mechanics team is concerned, recommendations or word of mouth were the way we started recruiting. There is definitely more interest in working as a greenkeeper than a mechanic.
What advice would you give to people wanted to get into the profession?
I will give them just a few words:
- Communication
- Methodology
- Attention to detail
- Self-discipline
- Have the golfer’s eye
- Team spirit
This article has been compiled with the assistance of Bernhard & Company https://www.bernhard.co.uk/
Pictured top: Brice Rué, Head Mechanic at Le Golf National