The Monday Mowdown has made a Tuesday tee time this week. Royal Birkdale’s course story deserved more digging than the usual fact sheet.
When the opening groups begin The 154th Open at 6:30 a.m. Thursday, Sean McLean will already have been awake for roughly three hours. His morning meeting is expected to begin around 4. The mowing, setup, moisture checks and last-minute adjustments must be completed before the first player walks onto the 1st tee. Later, the evening shift could run until 9:30 or 10.
That schedule offers a better introduction to Royal Birkdale than another list of famous winners.
The Southport links will host The Open for the 11th time, more than any venue other than St Andrews since Birkdale first welcomed the championship in 1954. The public story begins Thursday. The work behind it began years ago.
McLean Arrived for More Than Maintenance
In the United States, McLean would generally be called the golf course superintendent. At Royal Birkdale, his title is course manager, a fitting description considering how much of his tenure has involved construction, turf establishment, personnel management and championship preparation.
Originally from Edinburgh, McLean started at Craigmillar Park Golf Club before serving internships at Oak Hill and Southern Hills in the United States. His career also took him to Huntingdale and Avondale in Australia, then Archerfield, Turnberry and The Duke’s Course in St Andrews. He spent more than a decade at Prince’s Golf Club in Kent, becoming its links superintendent in 2013, before Royal Birkdale selected him to succeed longtime course manager Chris Whittle.
The résumé fit what Birkdale was about to undertake. McLean arrived with experience in major construction, fine-turf development, environmental management and championship setup. He has now been in charge for approximately 3½ years, with his first Open as course manager arriving amid one of the most substantial periods of change in the club’s history.
This was never going to be a caretaker assignment.
Five Greens, 110 Bunkers and Two Very Different Seasons
Monday Mowdown | By the Numbers
The Work Behind Royal Birkdale
5
Greens rebuilt or significantly changed, including the practice green.
About 110
Bunkers reconstructed across the course and practice area.
120
Metric tons of sand included in the club's firmness and organic-matter plan.
3:30 a.m.
Sean McLean's expected alarm time during championship days.
Royal Birkdale rebuilt five greens, including its practice putting green and the putting surfaces at Nos. 5, 7, 14 and 15. The 5th and 7th became essentially new holes. The old par-3 14th was replaced by a redesigned par-5, while a new 241-yard par-3 15th was built on nearby ground.
That was only the visible part.
McLean said the project included new tees and path complexes throughout the course, the reconstruction of approximately 110 bunkers, reshaped surrounds, a new practice facility and drainage work on the lower-lying 2nd, 3rd and 6th fairways.
The work unfolded in two phases, and the weather gave the team opposite problems. The first phase, beginning in September 2023, was wet enough to complicate soil preparation and turfing. The second was dry, which helped construction but made turf establishment difficult during a prolonged drought stretching through much of 2025.
Royal Birkdale’s greenkeepers rebuilt the bunkers, returfed nearly every new tee and reinstated the turf over the drainage lines. McLean called it “a monumental effort by the green staff and the contractors.”
That point matters this week. The golf course players are studying was not simply handed from an architect to a maintenance staff. McLean’s team helped build it, grow it in and blend young turf with established surfaces that have been part of Royal Birkdale for decades.
Firmness Is Built Below the Surface
Television viewers will see the pale fairways, deep bunkers and golden rough. The most important agronomic work is harder to spot.
Royal Birkdale’s preparation has included verticutting and brushing, scarifying the upper 7 millimeters of the turf profile, deep-tine aeration, micro-coring, fine-fescue overseeding and heavy sand topdressing. Each procedure addresses a different part of the same objective: reducing excess organic matter and producing firmer, more consistent surfaces.
The club’s published preparation plan called for approximately 120 metric tons of sand across greens and surrounds. It also identified championship tees requiring additional water and nutrition, drought-thinned rough around the 14th fairway and protective mat use during winter and spring to limit divots and traffic damage.
McLean’s preferred seed blend includes Chewings fescue, slender creeping red fescue and browntop bent. The fescues provide the fine texture and resilience associated with links turf, while the browntop bent adds density, disease tolerance and durability under close mowing.
For the players, the result should be felt most clearly around the greens. Royal Birkdale’s redesigned surfaces feature severe runoffs, elevated targets and bunkers that can turn a small distance-control error into a difficult recovery. Firm turf brings the ground into play, rewards imagination and makes the wrong miss considerably worse.
That is the distinction between preparing a course to look good and preparing one to ask meaningful golf questions.
Open Week Is the Last Shift, Not the Whole Job
Royal Birkdale entered championship week baked by another stretch of summer heat. The course has taken on the brown, fast-running appearance expected from a links in dry conditions, with players already adjusting club selection and strategy because of the additional release.
Tuesday’s official forecast called for temperatures near 82 degrees, with east-northeast gusts reaching 30 mph late in the day. The broader championship outlook remained hot and predominantly dry through Friday, with sustained winds expected to keep the course moving even when the fairways stop receiving help from gravity.
That creates one final balancing act for McLean, his staff and The R&A’s Championship Agronomy team. They must protect turf that has endured drought and construction while preserving the firm, running conditions that make links golf distinctive. The objective is not artificial difficulty or a particular shade of green. It is control, consistency and enough restraint to let Royal Birkdale’s architecture and the weather dictate the examination.
McLean has described the final transition into Open week as less of a reinvention than an increase in repetition. Once the groundwork is right, he said, “all it really is for The Open is upping your frequency of cuts.”
That sounds simple only because years of difficult work came first.
The 154th Open will produce its share of bunker escapes, wind-battered approaches and putts rolling beneath the Art Deco clubhouse. One of those moments may become the next piece of Birkdale history.
Before any of it happens, McLean’s alarm will ring in the dark. His team will head onto the course, and Royal Birkdale’s first round of the day will begin without a scorecard.
PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on R.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.
