The men’s Australian Open makes a highly anticipated return to Royal Melbourne Golf Club this December, with the iconic Composite Course hosting the tournament after a 34-year hiatus. Starting in last week's edition of The Cut, Royal Melbourne links crew members Michael Clavin (West Course assistant) and Mat Isbester (East Course assistant) kicked off a series of regular updates that will provide an insight into course preparations across the next six weeks as the tournament nears. 

Read on below as Isbester provides the latest update and pictures from across the past week, one which saw some wild weather lash Melbourne on Wednesday...

With less than 45 days to go until Rory and Co. are set to take on the Composite Course for the 2025 Men’s Australian Open, it’s all starting to feel a little real for the Royal Melbourne links crew. The first of the shipping containers and equipment arrived on site this week, with the tournament operations site office to be based at the southern end of our maintenance facility. Building of hospitality and stands is set to start in the first week of November with the footprint continuing to expand as the tournament draws closer. 

The quarter-finals and semi-finals of Royal Melbourne Club Championships were played over the weekend on the East Course, with the dry conditions over the last few weeks assisting to produce firm conditions. It was good to see the greens fiery and bouncy, with the surfaces mown and rolled multiple times over the week with minimal hand watering applied. We are hoping for similar conditions leading into the Open week and it will be great to see how the best players in the world tackle the course when the greens are at their trademark best. The final of the Club Championship will be played this weekend on the original Composite Course, which will be the same layout used for the upcoming Open.

This week has seen applications of fungicide and wetting agent to all fairways, as well as an application of calcium to greens and surrounds, including the 8th and 9th at Sandy Golf Links which will be used as a short game practice area for the tournament. All products applied to Composite greens from now until the tournament will also be applied on these Sandy Links holes for uniformity. 

The VGR Top Changer has been in action to aerate selected surrounds and tees affected by tree roots and traffic compaction. In addition to that, staff have continued Hydrojecting greens (pictured above left), spot spraying Poa annua and broadleaf weeds, plugging and spot sanding on greens and surrounds and undertaking ongoing tree work lifting branches and widening paths on the Composite holes.

Other work not associated with tournament preparations has included preparing 1800 square meters of fescue nursery to be reseeded. The area was fraise mown (pictured above right) to remove the turf layer then rotary hoed and prepared for fumigation this week.

With only 14mm of rain for the whole of September, Wednesday saw our first decent rainfall in weeks with over 17mm in the gauge. This was well received and, with added warmer temperatures, fairway and green mowing will need to be ramped up with the expected growth in the coming weeks. 

- Mat Isbester (Assistant - East Course)