When Gerry Byrne landed the top greenkeeping job in the K Club, he knew he’d stumbled on a special place. This week after 28 years service he retires from his full time role at the resort.
The son of a greenkeeper, Gerry worked under his father, Jim at Elm Park Golf Club as soon as he could, starting small through summer holidays in 1978 before following his dad to Hermitage to begin an apprenticeship in 1984.
They were great times for Byrne, learning his trade from his old man while attending college at the Botanic Gardens from 1986-88. Byrne then moved to Westmanstown where he helped grow-in the front nine and develop the back before finding more construction experience as Growing Superintendent at Luttrellstown Castle, where he spent four fantastic years from 1992.
The K Club position came up in the autumn of ’96; over 35 applicants from at home and abroad vying for a standout role in the industry. “I didn’t think I had a chance,” Byrne admits. “Even to this day I shudder to remember the interview process. It was pretty intense, even back then. “One of the questions was ‘would I be able for the hot potato?’, and I just said, ‘I’ve got strong hands!’”
1996 was a transitional time for the now iconic K Club. Byrne inherited a golf course with drainage issues and struggling greens, but with the European Tour visiting every year for the Smurfit European Open, there was no time to sit still.
“We were always in tournament mode,” Byrne recalls. “We’d critique the course immediately after the tournament and make plans around how we can improve for the following year. “But even then, we always had one eye on the Ryder Cup.”
Indeed, when Byrne arrived in 1996, the famous biennial contest between Europe and the USA was already planned to touch down in Ireland in 2005. And given the level of anticipation around the event’s arrival to the K Club, Byrne admits he thought the occasion would never come.
“It always felt like an eternity away,” he says. “After 9/11 it was pushed out another year. So it went from ‘would we ever get to 2005?’ to ‘would we ever get to 2006?!’ “We’d have a European Open in the summer every year but we’d try and mature the course for that third week in September each year as well– a dress rehearsal, maturing it twice a year – knowing September is a tricky time.”
All the while the Straffan site pumped money into the golf course to bring it up to speed. €1.5million worth of trees transformed a pleasant resort course to a Tiger-proofed championship one. Byrne’s team built tee-boxes, dug extra bunkering and ultimately plugged the gap between the course’s strengths and weaknesses. “The great thing during those years was we had the tour players visiting every year and they’d have their say and make their recommendations and we’d always listen to them,” Byrne says.
“Testimony to that was that winning scores started coming down from 21-under in 1997 to the 12 to 15-under range. We knew we were getting there in terms of the strength of the golf course.”
When 2006 finally arrived, Byrne and his team never felt more ready. The golfing gods had other ideas. “We were preparing for a wet week and while it helped that we were preparing for 24 golfers inside the ropes, my focus was outside the ropes,” Byrne says.
“We embarked on a heavy sanding programme outside the ropes, and about 6,000 metres of drains. We felt we were prepared… and then seven inches of rain fell during that week. “No matter how much sand and drainage you put in, when you have 40,000 people a day walking on grass, 250,000 for the week, it’s going to go to soup.”
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Byrne reached out to the timber merchants of Leinster who assembled 16 articulated lorries loaded with bark mulch. “I had 86 volunteers that week prepared to help present a golf course for the Ryder Cup,” Byrne says. “I don’t think 40 of them expected to be on bark mulch duty trying to keep patrons safe with 400 tons of mulch!
“They were long days but at the end of the week, we had 250,000 people through the gate, and one broken thumb. “It was a result, an incredible effort from the team and the volunteers, but our Ryder Cup week didn’t end there. We had a clean-up job on our hands up to December 14th with a golf course that was half mud-bath, half bark mulch!”
With a successful Ryder Cup in the locker after Ian Woosnam’s men in blue romped home by a record margin, the sky was the limit for the K Club as the Celtic Tiger’s roar provided the soundtrack to a remarkable time on the island. Little did Byrne realise the lows that would swiftly follow such epic highs; a global recession changing the golfing landscape forever. After staging 11 European Opens and a Ryder Cup, it wasn’t until 2016 and Rory McIlroy’s marvellous fairway woods that the K Club felt that tournament buzz once more.
And after a further few years of relative calm, a new era, heralded by the arrival of new owner, Michael Fetherston has given the K Club a new lease on life, and nobody more so than Byrne. Tournament mode has returned, kicked off by a great hosting of the Irish Challenge on the Palmer South Course in 2022. “We’ve gone from a staff of 12 to 23 which means we can dedicate our teams to both courses, and Palmer South got an enormous amount of attention,” Byrne says.
“The joy of playing Palmer South is the greens. Getting those to a place where they become world class was our focus. “The Challenge Tour guys recognised to a man that we probably delivered the best turned out course of their year, and particularly the greens.”
Next up for the K Club is the return of the Amgen Irish Open in 2025 and 2027, as well as another Irish Challenge visits in ’24 and ’26 and Byrne knows the resort is in great hands. In preparation for hosting the 2023 Irish Open on Palmer North, Byrne had initiated the unthinkable; that famous turf that’s provided the platform for so many of the game’s greats was ripped up and re-sodded in a trailblazing fairway overhaul.
“The drainage capacity had lessened, we were struggling in the winter months and the action needed,” Byrne explains. “We knew the problem was in the top 60mm which would be a commonplace issue in Premiership football pitches. There’s a machine called the Koro Field Top Maker developed for football pitches to cultivate out and remove 2 inches of dying organic matter and go back to the original sand layer.
“I spoke to groundsmen in the UK and in Croke Park and I came up with the idea of doing our fairways with it.”
Needing bone dry conditions to stand a chance, unlike the Ryder Cup in ’06, the golfing gods shone down on Byrne’s mission with 13,000 tonnes of material moved from Arnold Palmer’s famous fairways during the week of March 28th, 2022.
Nine and a half weeks later, on June 1, the Palmer North was reopened for business with Byrne promising members and visitors alike a playing experience only matched by Adare Manor in Ireland, and the likes of Augusta National elsewhere and the feedback across the board was overwhelming remembers Byrne.
“Be ‘jaysus, those greens were great today’, or ‘those fairways are incredible’, it’s that simple ‘well done’ that every greenkeeper in this country lives for.” Byrne adds.
“At the end of the day, I still see myself like my father, as a greenkeeper, and all we work towards is getting positive feedback from people who play on the ground that we prepare”
Twenty-eight years later and that sense of pride has never gone away, even as Byrne steps away from his full time role.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been so long,” Byrne says. “I thought that Ryder Cup would never come and now I look back and that’s nearly 18 years ago!
“You hear soundbites from people that it only feels like yesterday but I can genuinely say that it does only feel like yesterday that I drove in that gate.”
Byrne’s thirst for work has never been really been quenched but over a quarter-Century on, he says it’s a never-ending journey running a golf course. Always striving for perfection, never quite there. Except…
“I will say that we got it perfect on the Saturday before the Ryder Cup,” Byrne says. “I remember I was asked if I was happy, and I thought just before that rain came, the golf course was absolutely perfect. “So I’ve hit nirvana once in my life and I’ve been chasing it ever since. We were lucky enough to hit close to those levels again in 2023 for the hosting of the Irish Open too, the new fairways just brought the course to another level”
There is a great team in place now at The K Club and i am confident they will again hit perfection for ’25 and ’27 hosting of the Irish Open too. With Michael’s (Fetherston’s) drive and support pushing them forward and providing that energy, i know they wont stop until they achieve it.
The next chapter for Byrne is to share his extensive turfgrass knowledge and experience with fellow greenkeepers through his small consultancy business,Sports Turf Practitioners. First with Jamie Robson who replaces Gerry at The K Club and with a small network of clubs he currently works with throughout the country. ” it’s an area I feel very passionate about, sharing ideas and grey hair knowledge to help run their operations to produce the best conditioned courses possible within sustainable budget frameworks”
Byrne is currently working with 11 clubs, some of which are in collaboration with Joe Bedford, also a very well-known consultant in Ireland. “The business model is all about the greenkeeping teams, developing agronomic improvements using only the best quality products to provide the best quality surfaces, we keep it simple but effective for the playing member or guest.”
Gerry’s passion and desire for The K Club to thrive into the future is still evident as he hits me with a parting quote and a smile.
“I loved this job and I love the K Club and i’m constantly in awe the incredible greenkeeping team here. The passion, drive and commitment Michael Fetherston has put into The K Club and backed me since he took over has also been unbelievable. I count myself very lucky to have been there throughout so many milestones in the The K Club’s history and I’m still very excited to see the resort back in tournament mode now and for many years to come.”