22 Jul 2023
For a few days each year, an international media circus descends upon a St Albans sporting venue as two of golf’s biggest tournaments are held on the outskirts of the city.
Last weekend, The Centurion Club on the Hemel Hempstead Road welcomed the Aramco Team Series for the third year running, having hosted the LIV Golf League for the second year at the start of July.
The Aramco Team Series event offers a valuable opportunity for some of Europe’s top female golfers to hone their skills and foster their teamwork abilities in the lead-up to the eagerly anticipated Solheim Cup in September.
Taking place across three continents, the Aramco Team Series tournaments see the world’s best players team up with amateur golfers to compete for $1m prize funds. Other venues are in Florida, Singapore, Hong Kong and Riyadh, so for an event of this standard to be held in St Albans is a massive coup for The Centurion, which celebrated its 10th anniversary just before the tournament.
The club previously welcomed the GolfSixes Cascais in 2017 and 2018, so it is definitely carving out a reputation for some of golf’s more high-profile competitions.
With the rain bucketing down outside the club’s media centre and extreme winds forecast for Saturday, we were privileged to speak to Aramco Team Series director Michael Wood on Friday afternoon and find out how they planned for unseasonable weather conditions.
He explained: “We have to plan and anticipate everything when you’re doing outside sporting events. It’s just a shame that the days we held the tournament there are some high winds forecast over the weekend.
“We’ve had meetings with the maintenance team from the Centurion Club to try and put in some mitigating factors to keep the course playable in high winds. It’s amazing what you can do with the science around how high you cut the greens and what sort of programme you have in place. So we’ve done our due diligence in terms of reacting to that and knowing what the forecast was, but there is a chance you could get gusts in the mid-40s which then potentially would make the golf course unplayable.
“There is also the health and safety aspect which we need to consider as well, but we do have a team on site who we work closely with in terms of our temporary structures and general infrastructure, and we can change things accordingly and make it as safe as possible, not just for the players but also everybody else.
Having returned to the Centurion Club for the third year running, Michael is full of praise for the venue and what it offers to his audience.
“It’s easily accessible from the London area so targets our catchment area, Centurion were very keen from the outset to host the event, and have that premium golf tournament here to showcase their venue within the UK and globally.
“It’s a very accessible course for spectators, it’s a beautiful facility, every hole’s got a different character. The first four that you play are tree-lined, it then opens up and the last four are back in the trees. It’s got six Par 5s which is quite unusual for most golf courses, and they’re exciting holes where players can make birdies and eagles.
“It’s a great course for how the team event plays out, with scores fluctuating, and as you go into the conclusion of the team event the leaderboard starts changing quite rapidly with the way people score.
“It’s been a fantastic three years. The Centurion are extremely accommodating, it’s a first-class facility and the golf course is in fantastic condition. It’s been a privilege to work with the team here.”
There are upwards of 40 Aramco staff on site throughout the week, but also different contractors coming in to deliver facilities, not just in terms of the food and drink offerings but also things like the kids’ zone, digital screens, live broadcasts and so on.
A massive hospitality structure at the 18th green provides a premium vantage point for spectators to watch the action, but also caters for the VIP guests who come to enjoy a first-class experience while networking and socialising, or taking part in business forums and Q&A sessions with the players.
The Centurion Club’s general manager Michael Duffy said the Aramco tournament has now become part of the fabric of the club alongside its other major competition: “We’ve got it until 2026 so it’s a firm fixture in our calendar. We did LIV Golf last week, we were the inaugural venue for that last year, so the eyes of the golfing world were firmly on Centurion last year, and all the controversy that surrounded that [the breakaway Saudi-funded tour has divided the world’s top golfers].
“There are a lot of players who have joined LIV within the last 12 months – reigning Open champion Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, all those big, big names were playing here in St Albans.”
Attracting these all-star events was always part of the Centurion masterplan: “We’ve always wanted to stage golf tournaments as a way of promoting the club, but we also feel the golf course is worthy of holding tournaments because it’s a modern day course which has the length you need for the modern game, but you can also get spectactors onto the course with a lot of really good vantage points and see multiple holes.
“Some of the older courses are on much smaller patches of land and you haven’t got the room to put spectators on them as there were never any plans for golf tournaments.
“People want to play where the golf pros play, so to have Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson here last week, our members can then come back and play on the course those guys played on in pretty much the same conditions they played on the day before. That’s the beauty of the sport of golf.”
In terms of preparations, the build for the tournaments started at the beginning of May, and they won’t be off-site until August 8 or 9, so it’s a long period before and after.
“There are guys who are working here from all over the world, pulling the events together. In terms of our own staff we have the best part of 90 staff, and also bring in a lot of uni students who come back year after year.
“We’ve got one young fella who came in as a volunteer to help out with the tournament and he ended up taking tips from Bryson DeChambeau on the driving range. That’s the opportunity you get, to rub shoulders with these golfing mega-stars.”
Michael, who has been a golfer all his life and worked on tournaments for around 25 years, said the tournaments add another dimension to the club and its location within the district of St Albans.
“Your everyday business is your membership and restaurant, but then you get to welcome these guys and the television cameras roll in, it just gives a different spotlight to the club.
“The commentary team for this week will be talking about St Albans, they will reference the club and its associations with the city, Centurion is a Roman name obviously as well. The coverage that LIV Golf broadcast online was also very much talking about St Albans – they always talk about the local area.”
This year’s tournament featured Boyzone singer Ronan Keating and former England, Manchester United and Spurs ace Teddy Sherringham, the latter part of a team made up of homegrown star Charley Hull, Isabella Deilert and Hayley Davis.
Teddy said on Friday: “It was brilliant. I really enjoyed it. The girls were fantastic. They showed me how to control a golf ball today and I was privileged to watch it. It was a joy to be out there, even in that weather.”
But it was American star Nelly Korda, ranked World number two, who took control of the tournament despite the extreme conditions: “It was probably the most brutal weather I’ve played in a really long time,” she said.
“I actually had a lot of fun out there. The weather may have not been too great, but I think when you are playing well in these rounds, you get to use a little bit more creativity and a different type of game. It’s a lot of fun.”
Nelly went on to record a four-stroke success to claim victory, adding afterwards: “It was a nice test of golf. It was a lot of fun to play in this weather. Growing up in Florida, it’s hot; it’s sometimes windy, but not all the elements are thrown at you at once in one day. It was a lot of fun getting to hit shots that I normally don’t and kind of being creative out there – and overall, I really enjoyed my experience playing.”
