Horry-Georgetown Technical College students prep greens for Myrtle Beach Classic
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — The Grand Strand’s first-ever PGA TOUR event is right around the corner, and Horry-Georgetown Technical College students have been busy prepping the greens.
The Myrtle Beach Classic is May 6-12 at the Dunes Club. Some of next week’s interns and volunteers are from the Turf Grass Management Program at HGTC.
As of now, seven HGTC students are employed at the Dunes Club, but 14 more students and two professors joined them for course preparation.
One HGTC student, Levi Crapps, said they’ve been weed-eating around ponds, flower beds, and just getting everything neat and tidy for the course.
The Myrtle Beach Classic starts Monday, but “advance week” happens the week before in terms of preparation.
Another student, Bryce Holliday, says they’ve been busy double cutting the greens trying to prepare for the stress they’re going to put on them during next week’s tournament.
HGTC students say a lot of the prep work consists of the tiny details people won’t notice until everything’s finished. Examples they gave were knowing the different types of fertilizers, pesticides, and mowing heights…
“When we started school and started working here, we’d come here in the mornings and leave around 2 p.m., now, we get here an hour earlier in the morning and leave probably two hours later,” Crapps said.
Professor of Golf and Sports Turf Management at HGTC, Charles Granger, said advance week is one of the toughest weeks because of the golf course agronomy.
He said the golf term is the science and practice of maintaining healthy and playable turf grass, soil, and landscape on the golf course.
“You just can’t replicate tournament conditions,” Granger said. “You cannot replicate what you’re going through.”
He added the experience is a great hands-on experience for his students.
“PGA TOUR, agronomy, and rules will get together and basically set up what height rough they want, what they’re expecting green speeds to be,” Granger said. “They’ll work together with the dunes club staff to be able to make those conditions to meet the TOUR standards.”
Granger said HGTC has had this program for more than 50 years and there’s been students working at the Dunes Club since.
Crapps said he’s excited for the classic next weekend, but what he’s looking forward to the most are the compliments on how well the golf course looks.
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Jackie LiBrizzi is a multimedia journalist at News13. Jackie is originally from Hamilton, New Jersey, and was raised in Piedmont, South Carolina. Jackie joined the News13 team in June 2023 after she graduated as a student-athlete from the University of South Carolina in May 2023. Follow Jackie on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and read more of her work here.
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