Mr. Engelmann, you are a trained agricultural technician and a state-certified greenkeeper. Your company takes care of the construction and maintenance of golf courses, including soccer fields. What role do grass tennis courts play for you?
They play a big role for us because we are direct partners of Wimbledon.
It is of course an honor that the English have chosen us as their partner on the continent.
That is a task that we appreciate accordingly.
Is it also a special challenge?
Basically, lawn is always a challenge.
Whether in golf, tennis or soccer.
The demands are different, but the principle is always the same: that the turf is produced for the needs of the players.
Now the lawn tournament in Bad Homburg was supposed to take place last June, but was postponed due to Corona. What did this mean for your work? For the six seats that are about to premiere this Sunday?
For us, that made little difference on the whole.
With a year more, it has certainly become a little easier for us in preparation.
Turf is always a living system, and the longer it has time to establish itself, the better it is.
The good news is that the coronavirus has done the lawn good.
(laughs) Yes, as long as it's not a lawn virus, everything is fine.
How did you get the places through the winter, through the cold?
Cold is always a problem for lawns.
But, to put it banally, he goes to sleep in winter, and then he wakes up again in spring.
One problem was that the warmer temperatures came relatively late and the lawn started to grow late.
The vegetation was on four to five weeks later than it would have been normal, which is not that relevant for the event in Bad Homburg.
The tournament takes place under the license of the legendary Wimbledon grass tournament. How was the cooperation with the English, what specifications did you receive?
The specifications are made from experience.
Wimbledon turf has been looked after for decades by Neil Stubley, the tournament's head groundsman.
His experiences are recorded in a kind of performance description, which we use as a guide.
Even in times of the Corona, we used new media to coordinate a one-hour appointment with Stubley and his team every two weeks.
What kind of guy is Stubley?
He is something like the cardinal of the sacred lawn, in any case he is a very nice, courteous person who has dealt with lawn and tennis for decades.
The type of lawn that is used in Wimbledon and now also on the six pitches in Bad Homburg is called "Lolium perenne", which means ryegrass. What is so special about that?
The advantage of ryegrass is that it grows relatively quickly and also regenerates relatively quickly.
How is an ideal football or golf turf different from it?
Of course, the demands are different.
Football is now often played in Europe at a time that does not suit an ideal lawn.
Now that the turf is full, nobody plays football apart from the European Championship, because there is a break in the game, that makes it difficult.
But otherwise the difference to tennis turf is marginal.
In golf, by and large, it is the putt surfaces that are different because the type of lawn there is different.
What are the requirements for Bad Homburg in terms of lawn care during the tournament?
That is precisely defined: the grass has a height of eight millimeters and is shortened by two millimeters every day during the tournament.
Wimbledon also places emphasis on shading by lawn mower strips that are said to be 91 centimeters wide. Also something that you have to consider in Bad Homburg?
We will do that.
Looks nice too.
The 91 centimeters, however, are not a mandatory measure.
It must be pretty painful when tennis players plow their lawns now. There won't be many stalks left at the baselines. How can you still play tennis properly on it?
There is a rule about the hardness of the ground with which we have to go into the tournament.
It is measured with a device.
To do this, a weight connected to a measuring device is dropped from a height of 0.3 meters.
If the soil is too hard or too soft, we correct this with the irrigation to the value prescribed by Wimbledon.
Does that mean that not only the lawn, but also the ground is important for a place that is to be played on for many days?
Exactly, it has almost the greater importance because in the end it all comes down to how much the soil forgives and how level it is until the end.
The evenness can only be maintained through the hardness of the floor during extreme gaming operations.
How much staff do you put into the tournament?
With the layout of the squares that was ten people.
Now for maintenance there are two greenkeepers and two helpers.
Are you actually out and about with nail scissors, as you would imagine when you think of Wimbledon?
Not with nail scissors.
But in fact, the areas required for irrigation are cut out with scissors.
Where are the enemies of a perfect lawn lurking?
The enemy of the lawn, the enemy of the tournament, is the rain.
Every rain forces us to pause the game and cover the courts.
This minimizes our time to maintain the lawn, for example if it has to be covered overnight.
And if it cannot be completely ruled out that it will rain, it is covered because too much water can make the place unusable for a long time.
What is your conclusion before the start of the tournament? Happy with the lawn?
The feedback from the players who made their first strokes has been positive. I am therefore very optimistic about the next few days.