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RBC CANADIAN OPEN

July 24, 2015

OAKVILLE, ONTARIO

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us. Pleased to be joined by Kyle Kellgren, President of the Canadian Golf Superintendents Association. He's with the Jackfish Lodge Golf and Conference Center in Cochin, Saskatchewan. I hope I said that correct. We also have Mr. Andrew Gyba, superintendent here at the Glen Abbey Golf Club for a special presentation. Kyle, why don't we just ask you to a say a few words and we'll get into some Q & A and ask for a comment after as well.

KYLE KELLGREN: Thank you very much. Thank you to Golf Canada and the RBC for the opportunity to recognize one of our members today of the CGSA. The Canadian golf course superintendents association represents 1100 members across Canada in the profession of the golf course management. Our members are the essential part of the team that ensures the golf course provides fair and consistent conditions for their members and the competition. The CGSA represents the superintendent at the national level in Canada. Its mandate is to support, promote the profession, and provide education and research for all areas of the golf course managers. As part of the ongoing effort to recognize the role of the superintendent, the national tournament program for members was brought up a few years ago, and the RBC Canadian Open is one of the most prestigious of the tournaments. Andrew Gyba is the superintendent here at the Glen Abbey. He's been a member since 2013, and he's been 18 years in the golf course industry. It is my pleasure and my honor to present Andrew with this award for The National Tournament Award and the recognition of his efforts of hosting the RBC Open. So congratulations, Andrew.

ANDREW GYBA: Thank you. That's great. What to say? First of all, I want to thank my staff and all the volunteers that have come out to support us here at the 2015 RBC Canadian Open. I know we've been getting some feedback from the players about the condition of the golf course, and you guys need to know that all the hard work and everything that made today possible is due to what those guys do on a day-to-day basis. The 16-hour, the 18-hour days, the countless weekends, all the hard hours in the rain and all the weather out there, so I mean, all my thanks goes to my staff and to my volunteers for making this possible.

Q. Talk about preparation for hosting a National Championship. Obviously, you've mentioned the volunteers and everything that goes into it. You've obviously built up to tournament week, you get to tournament week and the work really begins and you've got to maintain. Talk about that process?
ANDREW GYBA: Yeah, we're thinking about the tournament in the spring time. So trying to keep -- almost trying to keep a tournament golf course on a day-to-day basis leading up. Obviously, during advance week we'll obviously ramp up with some of our mowing practices and some of our rolling practices. But we want those greens kind of in that wheelhouse as soon as possible. I would say sometime around mid-May we started really working on our firmness, working on our mowing practices. Trying to get the turf to tighten up as much as possible, and trying to achieve those speeds or at least get within a foot of the speeds that would be required from us for this event. So things just kind of came together this year and really happy with the way things have turned out out there.

Q. Andrew, the players are talking specifically about the greens.
ANDREW GYBA: Right.

Q. What are they running at, number one, and number two, what specifically are you doing to make them like that?
ANDREW GYBA: We're right around the 12-foot mark, which is, I don't think you want to get much quicker on these greens out here. I think if you talked to a lot of the rules officials you'd find we would start giving up pin positions and start losing pin positions. These greens are really small, and very, very undulating. So I think right around the 12-foot mark is a good place to be. We're averaging about 12'1" this morning, and we plan on maintaining that right through the entire event. So the toughest thing for us right now is to maintain what we have through Saturday and Sunday. It's all due to mowing practice, backtrack mowing, targeting grain, consistently rolling every 12 hours and reaping the benefit of the cumulative effect of rolling on the property is what's really helping us become consistent. Now in the mornings we'll find we might have a slower green, so let's say the entire property, for example, is rolling at 12 feet. This morning we came across our tenth green. It was only rolling 11 and a half. So we'll have a roller on stand by, one on each nine. There is a guy on each nine that's stimping greens and getting green speeds. If we come across something that's slow, we'll roll as many times as we need to to make sure we get that green right where we want it to be.

Q. You're also, from what I understand, in a way more into green practices now. Can you give us an idea of what exactly you're doing that way?
ANDREW GYBA: Yeah. You can't discount the amount of work that goes into -- we were able to be successful this week because of the amount of work we put into these greens all spring long. The amount of core aerifying we've done, the amount of top dressing, the amount of venting we've done, and veri-cutting and all these different practices that really helped groom our turf and make it healthy. So when it comes time to essentially abuse them the way we are this week, they'll stand up to it. We'll maintain our density and make sure that things are rolling true out there. So I think that one of the biggest parts of our success has been our membership's understanding and club lengths understanding and the amount of times that we do need to core aerify this property and the amount of times we need to top dress and do all these practices.

Q. (Indiscernible) compared to most golf courses anyway. That must be difficult?
ANDREW GYBA: Yeah. Oh, you know --

Q. You don't have to be polite?
ANDREW GYBA: Of course I do. I've got cameras in my face, and a mic on my shirt and you're telling me I don't have to be politically correct? (Laughing). No, I started working for this company when I was 15 years old, and they've always been really good to me. They've always rewarded hard work and always been really understanding when you can speak their language. So the key to being successful and being successful on this property is communication. Just really being able to relate to our executive, to our board, to our membership what it is that we need to do to achieve the conditions that our membership and our clientele request and expect.

Q. Andrew, maybe you can speak to it, I know I asked you a couple weeks back. In terms of the PGA TOUR, they give you guidance on what they want green speeds and rough. You said from your first time preparing for the Open a couple years back here, this time the rough, they decided they wanted it pulled back a little bit. Do you have any ideas why or what was the reasoning there?
ANDREW GYBA: The original thought was in 2013 we were at three inch, and we topped it at three inches on Sunday, and we just let it go through the week. So leading up to this event this year we were talking about slightly shorter rough and faster greens. So we were talking about a two-and-a-half inch height of cut, and around the 12-foot mark on greens, which is where we are right now. That ended up changing. We did end up going to three inches at the beginning of advance week. I think it's a better height of cut to be at. The idea behind it is that for these players and as good as they are, rough really doesn't get difficult until they get up to the five, six-inch mark. The truth is that it's boring. It's boring for the spectators. It's boring for the fans. It makes for boring TV. You put a player 200 yards out into six-inch rough, he's going to pitch out to his yardage, he's going to throw a dart into the pin, tap in for par and walk off to the next hole, right? But if you can let that player see that ball, he's going for it. So now you've got more risk-reward. You've got more exciting golf. You've got eagles on 18. You've got eagles on 16. You've got an exciting tournament. That's what I strive for. I want the spectators to have a good time out here. I want to see these players score as well as they can. I'm going to try to make the course as tough as I can within the guidelines I've been given. But do I feel like we need to punish them with six-inch rough and all these sorts of things? I don't know if that's necessary.

Q. You get to the end of the week. Obviously the weekend is ahead. Do you get a chance to kind of look back and watch some golf with the staff and you kind of enjoy it finally?
ANDREW GYBA: Yeah, one thing I've been -- '13 was a real whirlwind for me, and I really didn't process much of what happened except for the job I was doing. I really am trying to enjoy it a lot more this time around. So I think one of the big highlights of our week is on Sunday when we get to get up on 18 green with the champion and take a photo. I am very much looking forward to Sunday afternoon when the pressure is off and we know we don't have a night shift coming up, and we can get out on the golf course and truly enjoy the round and watch the final pairings come in. Hopefully a great player takes this one down.

Q. Thunderstorms are expected tomorrow. Is that going to change anything?
ANDREW GYBA: We work, myself and the competition's agronomist Harry Schuemann, we work carefully with Stewart from the PGA TOUR there, their meteorologist. Stewart has been talking about the potential of a weak front coming through Saturday evening into Sunday morning. It is something we are on the look out for. I don't think it's going to change much with our practices and what we're doing. Although they're talking about potential of strong thundershowers, I only saw potential of about roughly a millimeter of rain, so it really should not affect playing conditions at all. We are watering on a nightly basis on the property, trying to maintain. Even though you might see the property slowly kind of getting firmer each day and maybe drying out a little more each day, we are irrigating and trying to maintain a certain level out there. We're not exactly looking for absolute, rock-hard fairways. But we are trying to get them to react, and we are trying to get them to roll. So am I concerned about the rainfall Saturday night? Knock on wood, no. But hopefully it doesn't become an issue for us. But we'll be watching it very carefully, and I know the PGA TOUR especially is very interested in any potential of any weather Saturday evening.
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