I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.
When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Ball in a brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg Frida, egg Frida egg bride egg.
Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson, and this is another edition of our Superintendent series. This one, I think is a pretty special one. Steven Beale the superintendent at Wolf River Golf Course in Northern Michigan. It's in bear Lake, Michigan. Uh, this is an incredible story. I've known Stephen for a number of years. We actually played golf before he made
the move from Chicago up to Northern Michigan. He's a great guy, and I think he undertook and executed maybe the most remarkable project of the last couple of years. He did more with less than any any superintendent that I know of. And this is an incredible story. It is a superintendent that has gone above and beyond and really transformative property and is delivering an exceptional product at
a very you know, budget, friendly and low cost. I think you know, we give a lot of praise to the great golf courses in the world, the elite courses, the places that have millions of dollars for maintenance budgets, But to me, the most remarkable, the most inspiring places are the places that do a lot for a little bit of dollars. And Wolf River is that Steven has did an amazing renovation with a small staff and a very small budget, and it is an exceptional place to
play golf. And it's very cheap and very very friendly to all types of golfers. So he's doing an incredible job and excited for everybody to hear this episode of the Superintendent series. The Superintendent Series is brought to you by Toro, the only brand with a full line of equipment and irrigation products to keep your golf course in
top condition. Toro is serious about R and D and they are always out there listening to superintendents so they can develop products that help you solve your biggest challenges. And when it comes to local service and support, their distributor network is second to none. See how Toro is always solved and always evolving at Toro dot com. All right, let's get to Stephen Beale. Steven, I gotta ask, do you would you include golf architect now on your resume.
I suppose a few people would probably say I should. I haven't had to update the resume, so I haven't felt the need to do that. But I suppose with a scope of work that was done, I could make that argument.
I you know, I don't think a lot of people have the context of what you've done. What you did, but you are the superintendent at at Wolf River Golf Park, which is in northern Michigan. It was formerly bear Lake Highland's golf course, and you guys underwent what I think a lot of people dream of is the idea of taking a golf course that a lot of people play. That's you know, it is what the golf course is
and reimagining it. You you conducted a renovation that looked at the t's the green, redid the t's the greens, the grass. You know, you installed the new grass and uh and redid all the bunkers. And you know, I think where most people kind of lose that dream of doing that is when you start to look at the cost. I think what you've done is that you've kind of
done it at a at a remarkable cost. What was the the budget that you guys completed this project eighteen hole real renovation and how did you guys do it at such a cheap price.
Well, if you want to highlight just the project costs, including some cathol equipment, we bought a seater. It was probably around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars mark. The reason we were able to do that is because it was on a great piece of property. To begin with. We had fantastic soils. They drained well and that allowed us to just go in and put a bunker where we wanted. That allowed us to recontour the greens how we needed, and we could achieve an end result that
was very playable because the soils were fantastic. It was a great site, a lot of great natural drainage that allowed for you know, just a little one off pieces of work. We didn't have to move a lot of soil to put in a bunker. We could just nestle a bunker into a hill. We could just recontour greens and match up with what existed outside the green surface. And so the costs were time more than money. It It just required a little bit of time to establish grass, move the soil, et cetera.
One hundred and fifty dollars. That is a number that I think people will say, there's no possible way you did this, so l way you did this for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And that's that's fine. You know that there are when people lump in project costs, they also lump in sometimes the big clubs that will lump in operating loss from the clubhouse, they'll lump in all in costs. And if if we're gonna putting the costs all the way down to property taxes, yeah that's that's a little bit more. But there's this cost of ownership of owning a golf course that every facility has. And we were closed for a year to do it. So again that's time. That's
not necessarily money that somebody needed to complete it. So I say a lot that you can do anything you want to a golf course. You just need time or money, and if you're short on one, you need more of the other. You can accomplish a lot through you know, a little bit of money, as long as you got the timeline to complete it.
How do you I guess you know, so you're up in northern Michigan. How do you look at golf courses before? I'm not sure if you thought you could do the whole project for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, But how do you do you look at golf courses differently before and after this project? Just general golf courses.
I've always felt like I looked at golf courses differently every place I go to. I'm always looking at things that I would do different Being able to actually execute the changes on it on a property that was fantastic to begin with. You know, you learn a lot and when you're doing it, but it also convinced me the ad it can be done.
So you you went about this project, you guys did the whole all the work in totality and house. You would be the golf architect. You were leaving the chart a charge. How did it come to be that you were the golf architect on this project?
When we were going through the planning process, we had decided that okay, we were we were going to do a project. What was the scope of the project is what we were looking at. We we talked about hiring an architect, perhaps a couple of people to come in and help, and you know, whigh in the way and the benefits of that, weigh in different opportunities beside that, and one of the one of the decision makers just looked at me and said, can you build a bunker?
I said, yeah, I built a bunker before he just goes, okay, you do it. And that was that. That's how it That's how it came to be. I think that speaks a lot of the trust they had in me that or or maybe maybe maybe the ignorance of what I was wanting to do. But I felt like I was pretty detailed and what the possibilities were on the property and what the possibilities were for a project, and uh, based on what they wanted out of it. You know,
they wanted it to remain a community golf course. They didn't want it to be They knew it wasn't going to be any type of destination resort. They knew that they wanted to They wanted to remain part of the community, They wanted it to be available to locals. So, you know, some of those aspects of what an architect provides you know we weren't going to get our return. An architect can certainly provide a lot of expertise in that they can you know, provide some speed as far as how
quickly those changes get done. There's some marketing that you can put behind that. And when you add all that up, and the decision was made that we wanted we just wanted to keep it a place that that locals can play, and we wanted to keep it affordable. You know, that kind of kind of made the decision for us. I knew that we could make it a lot better. I knew that we could make it interesting, and you know,
I think we've done that. And part of the you know, part of my plan for it is, okay, don't overdo it. You know, this is just going to be me shaping some bunkers and greens. We're not going to go crazy here trying to do trying to do some wholesale changes when I don't have the expertise to fit all that together, not doing a you know, not being an actual golf course architect that has done this before. I think the
way to go is keep it simple. Just do one bunker at a time, just do one green at a time and and don't get out over my skis even though it probably already was.
Again, I want to go back to when when they said you do it, yes, you do it. How did you feel like I? I you were? So to give people context, you got a double degree at Purdue. You you an agronomy like your turf degree, but you also got a landscape architecture degree.
I started in both. So I had I had. I started as a double major landscape architecture in turf grass science to be a golf course architect. M h. That was that was my intent when I graduated high school. I wanted to be a golf course architect. And uh so that was that was the plan. And after a couple of years, you have the tech bubble burst, and any type of golf construction just seized. I just kind of made the decision that I was going to go just into turf and I yeah, then just focused on turf.
And and so I do have a four year agronomy degree in turf breast science for Purdue. And sorry about that.
Okay, And and so yeah, I've always looked at golf courses with an architecture I I've always you know, studied golf course architecture on my own.
And so when they say okay, you do it, I'm like, oh, okay, And as a couple of days later, I'm like, well, wait a second, I guess this is going to happen. And so I just started taking tons of notes. And I'd been on the property for three years up to that point, so I had a good knowledge of the property and it has spent three years driving around and
thinking of ideas. So now it was just a point of trying to figure out how to which ones to implement and which ones we're going to be best to implement.
Let's talk a little bit about the creative process we talked. You know, you talked about how you kind of approached it as one bunker, one green at a time. What when you look at like where did you start and you know, you get on your start like you've never built a green before. When you look back, like what was it like building eighteen new greens and shaping them? And what did you learn along the way? What were
the early greens? And do you look at them ever and be like I wish I would have done this, or do you look back and think like you know this like walk us through, just like shaping eighteen greens when you've never done it before, and how it how it went, and the thoughts that were in your head while you're doing them.
I had quite a few notes laid out that when I went to each green, I had already mapped out an idea of what I was going to try to do with that specific green. We had a handful of greens that had surface drainage issues, so that's the number one priority. How are we going to shape it to improve the surface drainage. I had ideas mapped out of how the surface drainage was going to come off the green. So I had already ideas where I was going to try to put shapes to get the surface drainage off
the green. And so it each time I went to a green and started and through the we stripped off the old layer. We stripped off a thin layer of the old greens, and then we tilled them up, so when I got there, it was just a tiled up patch of dirt, and so I already in my head I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the green. So then it's just a matter of
going out and starting to move the dirt around. I started with a tractor with a loader and moved the just move the dirt around with a loader, and then went and started to do finished grading with sand pro and uh, and then just drug it smooth and looked at it for a day and said, okay, let's let's go seet it. Yeah. The the first few greens I did were fine. It was the first green was one of the first ones I did, and I could never I could never get what was in my head into
the dirt. And so I ended up just saying I've got to get something. I got to get something going so I can get some seed on this. I can't just spend two weeks on this green. So you know, I just at that point it's like, Okay, that's good enough. I'll tie it in and float it out and seed it. There's certainly a couple of greens I wish I could have another crack at, because once you once you do several of them, you you'll learn a lot real fast. And uh, and so there's a there's a couple that
that I wish I could have a redo of. But oh, in all, you know, I'm I'm pretty happy with with how they turned out, and yeah, so it's yeah, before I started, I had it, I had an idea, I had notes, and I would I would go around the green and I would place flags at the low point, place flags at the high point on the edges, and then just try to match up the dirt with that.
What I'm I'm shocked that the first one was your first one, the first green.
No, it wasn't. It wasn't.
No, it was the first one.
So the ninth green was the first one I did.
Okay, okay, yeah, and then what was the what was what I mean? Where would you say you just like started you feel like? What green number were you? Like? I really feel great about this? And what green are you most proud of?
I think the eleventh green turned out pretty well for for what it was before and what I was trying to do with it. It's benched into a side of a hill and just really difficult to get the contours right. There was a third of the green that was on a flat area and the rest of it just sloped off so hard to the left that you couldn't put
a pin in it. And so the goal there was to you know, put a shelf in it so that I could get a level spot on the other side to add some whole locations there, but also try to match up this this shelf in the middle of the green to a valley that went off the front of the green. So there was a little low spot in the fairway, and so it was it was an effort to try to match up this little low spot that's
in the fairway make it look like this. This was a valley that ran into the green, and that was going to be the little valley that separated the two shells. And yeah, I think it worked out. I had there's a few pen placements on the left side that work, and it drains well, and all the contours meshined pretty well. So I think the Eleventh Green was pretty ambitious for what I wanted to do, but I think it turned out pretty pretty well.
It's a memorable green. I mean, it's amazing. It kind of sits on the side of ridge. It's got that valley in the middle of it. It kind of kicks in from the right, everything left that if you miss left, is going to tumble down a hill. I was way down there, like twenty yards down, twenty yards to the left and twenty feet below the green. It is a really huge scale green and I think it did turn out well. What was the toughest part of the project that you didn't really expect going into it?
Oh, just timelines.
You know.
I was completely ignorant of how long it was going to take to do some stuff. But you know, find fescue comes up really fast and then it just sits there and it doesn't doesn't look like it's doing anything for a long time. So I'm sitting there, you know, just waiting for grass to grow in, essentially, and I you know, I wasn't you know, familiar enough with seating on that type of scale too have the patience to just wait it out. So that was a that was
a big one. And the biggest unexpected thing was probably our our pond project. We there was a pond that was bulkheaded with railroad ties all the way around it,
and that was in the scope of the project. We were going to remove the railroad ties, rebuild the pond edge, and we had the permitting for that, and it got to a point in the in the year where the the plan to have a contractor come do that never came to fruition, and so I'm sitting here with a permit that's going to be expiring in a couple of months and a pond project that's not done. And I pretty much just said, okay, if this, if we're going to do this project, then it's got to be now
or it's never going to get done. So we pulled the trigger to remove all these railroad ties four hundred railroad ties or something the bulkheaded this pond, and then rebuild the pond edge. And yeah, so me in the in the staff of five that we're doing it. I had another person on staff, but they were mowing the whole time. Just started doing this project.
How do you even go about reworking rebuilding a pond? Like what did you know what you were doing? Did you have to do? You google how to rebuild a pond? Like, how do you how do you do that?
Well, there wasn't. It was It was just a matter of rebuilding the pond edge and you know, reshaping the pond edge with with some soil and then re establishing it. So it wasn't drastic work, but it was a lot of work and it took a lot of time out of you know, some other project we could have been doing. On the golf course. But I'm so glad we did it. It's the result is is so much better. It's you know, there's two holes. Well each hole on either side of the pond plays a lot differ for now that that
project is done. So yeah, the timeline on getting that grass established is extended. I mean, I think I don't know if you made it down there by that pod, but you can still see the grass is still pretty thin, but it certainly get certainly quite a bit better than it was last year. So little by little it keeps getting a little bit better.
So what was the most fun part of the project for you?
Shaping bunkers? Yeah, I learned. You know, there's a reason golf course architects get into this business because, yeah, shaping bunkers is a ton of thought and it's fun to get in there and just start digging and trying to you know, take what's in your head and put it on the ground. So definitely, shaping bunkers was my favorite part of it.
What were you trying to do with the bunkers? Like when you're when you're in there shaping, what what are you thinking about? You know, Like while you're shaping, say you know, twenty five thirty bunkers. How what are the thoughts that are going through your head about them?
Number one was getting them constructed in a way that the surrounding water does not drain into the bunker, and that was that was number one priority. Over the aesthetic part of the goals of the project were to create a golf course that was efficient to maintain over the long term. And anytime you get to go out and fix washouts is just a terrible drain on labor and it just it just wears the age of a bunker
down really fast. If it's full of water all the time, and if you can shape it in a way the water doesn't run in there most of the time, you're not going to get water standing in a water standing in a bunker is the result of water coming in from outside the bunker. So that was the number one goal, is to shape it so that water ran away from the bunker, it ran around the bunker, and you know, you can you can get some interesting shapes when that's a goal also, and that's also what I wanted to do,
was to make bunkers that people didn't typically see. Our clientele is, you know, the local community golfer and there's some bunker shapes out there that that you know, they just don't see at any other places. And that was that was a goal of the project also was to create interesting shapes and give the bunker aesthetic, you know, make that a unique characteristic of golf course.
Yeah, I mean they definitely they have a feel. It's it doesn't feel like your run of the mill, local municipal golf course and makes you feel like you're playing at kind of like a new design that was designed
by somebody you know. Of note with the the way they kind of sit into the land and are placed in place in strategic places when you kind of zoom out, is there a hole that you feel like was really transformed the most from something you thought was you know, it was fine, but I you know, maybe you're you even didn't see what it could be based off of the work that you guys did.
Yeah, there's a there's a couple holes that come to mind. I think sixteen is a lot different and a lot better. And all we did was remove a bunch of trees and redo the one bunker that was on the hole to begin with. It sits on some good land and there was just a huge number. It just choked out
the playing lines. It played along a line of trees on the left side of the hole, and we removed thirty feet of that tree line, so the tree line got pushed back thirty feet and that opened up a lot of views and also opened up some playing lines into the green, you know, if somebody wanted to go for it in two. So I think that hole is plays a lot different now and it opens up a lot of it just it's just more open and opens
up more views. And I think I think that hole was transformed quite a bit, and I think the third hole is a lot different. The third hole used to be just straight out. There was there was no bunker in it. The green was just kind of a raised up perch that was flat. And I remember that that image of the Eighth Green that Augusta National that goes
around it was kind of like that. It is kind of this perched up level table that didn't have any contour in it, and water would run off the front and the front was always wet as a result of that. So I was just kind of straight out all with no interest that you know, it does run between two ponds, so that constrains a lot of what you're able to do there because it's not very wide on either side
before you go into the water. But yeah, it added a small bunker in the fair way to to add some interest and decision making off the tee and just added a bunch of contour to the green, get some water to run off in a different spot, and add some pudding interest that that play. It plays a lot different and yeah, you can get a lot of different shots depending on how you played each day.
You spoke about the clientele being like your local northern Michigan golf course where you get a lot of people from playing around town, maybe a little a little bit of tourist traffic from people that are visiting the lakes around. How have the regular clientele received the work? How was it when it initially opened, because it's a drastically different golf course, and how is it today, you know, a year plus in.
I think there was some shock when they returned after we were open. I don't think they you know, they didn't have a good idea of what we were going to do. We essentially told them, oh, we're going to be closed, and we're gonna we're going to regrass and you know, redo the bunkers and greens, and it's kind of the communication we left it with. And so they didn't know what to expect. And I don't think you know that clientele doesn't you know, they don't really they're
not exposed to that, you know, the private club industry. Oh, they're closing to do a renovation at this point, it's okay, Yeah, we'll check it out when it's done. It's it's not new to the private club industry, but doing this type of work on a golf course that is targeted to the to the local community is is fairly unusual. So I don't think they knew what to expect, and I think they were in shock when they came back. There was some grumbling there, some some people, uh, you know,
didn't like what we were doing. They didn't like what they saw out there. But there was a lot of positive comments though too. And as time has gone on, the positive comments of have continued, and some of those some of those people that that grumbled about it early last year, this year, they're like, wow, you know, they they kind of as they've gotten used to it, as they've played it a lot, they I think they understand
what what our goal was. And and some of those people have come up and given me positive comments now say they really enjoy the golf course. So I think it was I think it was shocked for a lot of the locals. But yeah, by and large, it's it's been very positive since then. And yeah, just a lot of good comments from it.
I think I was, you know, I was still shocked at the dollar amount, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Was that the original plan to be in that kind of range. I assume that you kind of sold it in that you could do this for an affordable price, like not that much money. Was it always the plan to do it that cheap? And what, you know, how do you think courses? What do you think local courses
in similar positions to to your course? Maybe they don't have the natural advantages that you have of sandy soil and you know, uh, you know, good kind of starting place, like great natural elements that you can you can work in. But how should how should local other local courses look at doing projects on a less expensive end?
So it was it was not originally planned to to be as cheap as it ended up being, you know, we had we had outlined, you know, a variety of other other plans for it that just didn't materialize. And you know, we came to you know the middle of the season, and when those didn't materialize, it's like, okay, I guess we've got to finish this project. Is what we got?
I mean a half friend of golf course, right.
Yeah, what can you do but just keep going and keep growing the grass. So, and we had purchased the seed and fertilizer before the inflation really struck the golf industry. Seed costs. Find fescue seed tripled in price in the nine months after we bought our seed to do the project. So yeah, so you know, if you're going out to buy that same quantity of seed now, you'd pay three times as much as what we did. So we bought
some of our starting materials at a perfect time. We had no irrigation costs because all the irrigation had stayed in the same spot, so we didn't have any irrigation changes. That is a massive saving. We just bought a local sand so you know, twenty tons of sand is going to cost a six hundred box, and is there a few stones in it? Yep, there is. But our marketing is that the bunkers are hazards and we want to maintain as hazards and that's how that's how we do it.
The sand is actually pretty white, so it offsets the green color pretty well. Uh in that. But so you know, we had set out to do it efficiently. We knew that we were going to do it in house with our own labor, with some rental equipment. Yeah, as the project went on, yeah, things things just never materialized as they as they were originally laid out. And yeah, we did the project all in house with six people. And again it's possible if you have the time to do that.
As far as you know, other golf courses trying to mimic it, it's what we did wasn't hard. We didn't do anything that was impossible to do. I shaped all the greens and bunkers with a tractor with a loader and a sand pro with a blade on the front of it. Almost every golf course has got those two pieces of equipment, so that's possible. And again, it was sandy soil easy to work in. I didn't need to put drains in any of the bunkers, so obviously that
was a big help. We did all our treework ourselves, cut the trees down ourselves, rented a stump grinder, ground the stumps out ourselves. So you know, that type of stuff any golf course can do. Now, we did have a lot of tree removal done before we actually started doing any seeding, which that's going to be needed if you if you want to if you want a good growing environment to grow the new seed, then you're gonna need to get the trees out. So some of the
tree work was already done prior to that. But as far as as far as other local golf courses trying to do the same thing, it's it's not hard to do.
You know.
Can can you go out and pick off one or two holes a year and do something like this? I don't see why you couldn't. If you're going to start to do, you know a renovation that you want sixty bunkers, Well, now you now that's a different that's a different scope. That's a now you're now you're bringing an architect, Now you're bringing in a contractor to do that work for you. We have seventeen bunkers. It's less than nine thousand square feet of bunker areas what exists out there right now.
So having small bunkers is a big help in doing that also. And just don't just don't try to do too much. You can add a whole lot of interest in a golf course without having to do too much. You know, widen the plaine corridors, take advantage of some slopes and you can provide a lot of interesting shots without a lot of work.
To me, a whole that would scream that at Wolf River is the eighth where it seems like you just took down some trees, exposed this great slope on the terrain, and you know, then you know, reshape the green that sits on this nice ridge. And it was like, I think that was the thing I was kind of shocked about, is how well the original routing was done. That you had like some holes that with a little bit more pizazz to it, with a little more short grass and
some reshaped bunkers and greens. Like it's like, wow, this is a really great hole. But that eighth one, the eighth hole stood out to me. It's like it seems like you just got got rid of trees, expanded the short grass, and you had you know, a hole that has like world class scale and interest. You know, you're trying to hug it up the right side, and and you know if you don't hit it right up the right side, you're going to bound further away from the target.
It was. It just seemed like a classic golf hole.
Yeah, that's and that's all we did. There were fourteen trees on that hole that we removed, and just saying that is incredible. Fourteen trees that were lying in the left and right side of the tree. There's a narrow shoot up that fair way, so yeah, remove the trees expanded out and there there was a bunker on the front right of that green beforehand, and I added that bunker in the back of the green just kind of dug into the slope that was behind the green. Yeah,
you didn't have to do anything. That's one of those areas where you know, don't do too much. You're just gonna start messing stuff up. Just let the hole sit in the land and be done with it.
I know that you finished the big aspects of the project, but you know, as we played in one round, you talked a lot about like other things you want to do. Having done so much work for such a low dollar amount. What are the things that you want to add to the golf course as you continue, Like I imagine, your mind probably wanders and thinks about the more stuff that you can do to continue to improve the golf course at
a low dollar amount. What are some things that you're looking at over the next you know, a couple of years as to what you want to add to the course.
We still have some forward tees to build, and there's some other t's that I'd still like to level out more So it's just a matter of you know, rolling the side back level in the soil and then rolling the sod back on. We have one more bunker to rebuild on the twelfth green, so that that bunker was never rebuilt on the twelve so we have one more
bunker to rebuild. And other projects more than anything else, was kind of cleaning up the brush outside the holes and just continue, you know, just continue nursing grass on overseating thin areas. You know, when you reseed a golf course, it's it's not a one year project. That's that's a that's a three year project too that that requires you know, revisiting thin areas for a few years to get some more eat in the ground. Yeah, still some more trees or we've got some willows that just are pain to
deal with. So uh some willows that I want to take out. Expands some fairway area where these willows are. So yeah, there's there's and those aren't those are still like look on my notes, Like those items are in my notes for the project. It's just when when uh, you know, when when the plan didn't stay on the rails.
When you got when you're rebuilding a lake instead of working on the golf course.
Yeah, you have to pick and choose, and the focus was, Okay, we got to get right down the middle done first and then we'll start working our way out. So so those are still little projects that we're going to keep going on. And you know, we've got seed and we've got the cedar, and you know, I like I like seeding a lot better than sod. It'ser in and establishes better over the long term. So yeah, that's the plan. Just keep picking off these little things as time goes on.
We're redoing some mowing lines. I know, Andy, you and Cameron both put your put your ball in the tall grass behind three green but I don't know if the lines were painted, but we're expanding that mow lineback, so there's gonna be more motor grass behind behind three. So just little things like that that you know, hopefully make it more fun to play.
What what's been the most satisfying moment since you finished the project? What's what spend the you know, the time that you just you know, couldn't help but smile on the inside the most.
Yeah, driving around in the morning and seeing the finished product is is a lot of fun. Now, you know, you get the sun coming up, you can see it a lot more now off the hills now that the trees are thinned out, you can actually see the slopes. It's really satisfying. And then you know, hearing other people come off the golf course that have played it for a long time or played it, you know, when they were a kid, and they come back and are just
gushing over the changes. You know, that's happened a few times now, and it's really satisfying that, you know, somebody that was very familiar with the golf course before we did the project really likes the changes afterwards, and and you know they have a similar excitement about it. Now that that that I did when I was out there building a bunkers. So I think that's the most satisfying thing is when when other people get to get to be excited about stuff that I I was excited about doing.
Did you have like an inspiration for the greens what you were trying to do? Would was there set or certain types of greens that you had in your mind?
There? When I started playing it out, I was trying to do that. I was trying to say, Okay, what what greens do? I like, can I mimic those greens in a way? And I learned pretty quick that that was going to be that was gonna be me falling flat on my face trying to do that. And I think the easier route was going to be, Look, just just get the surface drainage off and tie in the contours with those outside the green as best you can, and you know, the internal contours that kind of take
care of themselves and you'll get some interesting putting. So so yeah, I thought about it quite a bit. But once, you know, once I got to it, it's like, no, I don't think that's gonna I don't think that's going to work out for me. And it's it was easier and I think turned out better when I just take my cues from what's on the ground there to begin with, and it gets a better result. It looks better, it
looks more finished. When, yeah, when I just kind of tie into the little contours around the green or tie in bunkers to the slopes, rather than trying to, you know, make make something that I saw somewhere else, I will say the bunkers. You know, what I would have loved to do with the bunkers is make them look like you know, the heathln courses in England, like the Berkshire or lip Hook or Sunningdale, Like I love the look of those bunkers. A lot of that has to do
with the heather that's around him. But you know, some of the shapes that I saw in some pictures from those courses, like, you know, maybe I can, maybe I can attempt to mimic those shapes and the bumpers that I'm make.
So so I think like your path to two Wolf Rivers interesting. You were in Chicago working at like big name club You had worked at big name clubs, you had since had offers to work at big, big name clubs, Like, what drew you to working at this small casino resort course in northern Michigan. What got you up there?
Well, I I had lived in bear Lake. When I was at Perdue, I did an internship at Arcadia Bluffs, and after spending a summer at Arcadia Bluff, man this northern Michigan is pretty awesome. So that was my first time visiting northern Michigan and first summer, you know, first time spending a summer in northern Michigan. So I fell in love with northern Michigan then, and then stated in Michigan to do three more internships before I graduated Purdue.
I did Wesco one Players Club down to Holland, and then I did an internship at Crystal Downs also and decided, okay, I want to find something in northern Michigan. As luck would have it, when I graduated Purdue, Arcadia had an internship available, so I worked for four years at Acadia and then went down to down to Chicago. So I was, you know, very familiar with northern Michigan, and I love northern Michigan, and you know, just wanted to find a
way back. And I knew of bear Lake Islands. I had played it, you know, when I when I was living in bear Lake and interning at Arcadia Bluff, so twenty years ago, and I remember thinking, men, it was like, oh, this place is kind of cool. But I hadn't been back in a lot of years. And I saw the job posted and did a little research and found out, oh, that this job was for bear Lake Islands. I'm like, oh,
that's kind of cool, and so I applied. And then when I came up for an interview, I toured the course and I was like wow, Like I was like blown away. The course was terrible shape because it had been bank owing, so there's just been no investment in it for many, many years. But man, the bones were really nice, like the contours and even the layout was good,
and I'm like, man, this could be really cool. So I kind of just talked with them about what their goals were for the property, and they're like, well, we don't know. This has kind of happened really fast for us. We don't know what our goals are for the property. And they said, that's why we're hiring you. So it sounded like a good opportunity and I just I just took a shot at it, and it's it's been amazing.
I never had any idea that it would, you know, just kind of snowball into into what it's what it's been, but man took a left turn and it's been awesome.
It's I mean, it sounds like a job that provided you a lot of autonomy. And I think I think one of the things that probably is the toughest aspect of the superintendent life is the lack of autonomy the committeees, the you know, the idea of like, you know, all the layers of people that you have to work with and you know, in a sense for in in the in the at the high end club model versus the autonomy that a a smaller shop and and you know, relatively hands off ownership can provide.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, and it and it was that way from the beginning. And you know, I've been in those situations and and you know, you're you're kind of an administrator of the strategic direction of the golf course, you know, and at those big clubs there's typically an architect that is on staff to make those directions for you, and then there's a green committee.
You have to answer to. Sometimes there's another capital planning committee, and when you have all these different layers, any type of decision making for better or worse gets watered down. I think the best product, the best products of whether it's a renovation at a at a high end private club or or like the work that we did, the vision of one person or the vision of two people is what gets realized is what the best product is.
And in my situation, you know, I didn't know it at the time, but yeah, they put a lot of trust in me, and they put a lot of trust in me leading the crew. And yeah, with without a lot of reason to trust me. You know, I don't know that I gave them a ton of reason to trust me.
But they exactly, they knew they wanted it improved, and I came to them with ideas and they, you know, they were they got excited.
When, uh, you know, when I was presenting the plan for you know, if we were to close, what what could we do? You know, they kind of perked up, like they didn't they never thought about you can rebuild a bunker and you can plant new grass on the green. But yeah, if you close, you can do those kind of things. And so they got excited and yeah, it just it just it just happened.
When you think out now, I mean, I imagine that for you, with your interest in golf architecture, you're you know, at some point a large part of the point of large portion of your life, you wanted to be a golf course architect. You know, you've almost I imagine, opened up opened up a vein per se here, like you know, what do you want now? You know, when you think about your career before and after this, like, do you have more ambition to do more projects as in your future?
Yeah, I would, I'd love to do more projects. It's not I still feel like there's some loose ends on this one that I want to. I want to, you know, finish up, but you know, I don't know, I don't know where it'll take me. It was it wasn't. It's not something that I was, you know, thinking about when I was doing the project. Doing the project, it's like, okay, well we're like I said, okay, we're going to rebuild
this bunker. Let's rebuild this bunker. And and you know, it was, how can I make this bunker interesting for the whole and how can I make it fit into the hole, and it was. It was never a there was never a larger overarching view of what it would turn into. So you know, if if something happened that, you know, i'd certainly and there's still projects on the table here that are going to allow me to to scratch that itch. You know, we've got all the materials
for a putting course. You've got some contouring done already, it's all cleared and yeah, so we've it's there. It's just a matter of getting to it. And you know, building up it's going to be about a two acre putting course and it's you just have some big, wild contours and yeah, so you know, I still get a I still get a play around in the dirt.
So with the with the one of the things that stood out to be was the conditioning. I thought, uh, you know, you have a single cut of of fair way. And then what I found really interesting was the greens. The firmness of the greens. They were extraordinarily firm, but I would just characterize them. You know a lot of people there's this fascination with firm and fast. I would
say they were more firm and slow. But I found it to be a you know, like I haven't seen many of my golf balls react the way that they reacted, Wedges bouncing, you know, five six feet in the air and really it by the end of the round, I was having to hit shot. I had was having to carefully approach whole locations with you know, thinking, Okay, where am I landing this with short irons in my hand? Something that's very rare, and you know, throw on top of this, It's not like I came in with two
weeks of drought. There were there had been some substantial rain in the recent time, in the recent weeks in the area. How are you going about maintaining this golf course and presenting this and what are the advantages to presenting the greens in the manner that you're presenting.
Yeah, that's uh, that's one of the goals is keeping slower greens. And our goal is not fast greens. Our goal was to the interest in the green would be from the contours, and some of them are contoured in a way that just won't allow for super fast greens. So yeah, I try to maintain them so that, you know, we can put interesting pins in some of these locations that you just wouldn't be able to if they were super fast, And yeah, that I think the firmness is.
I mean, that's how that's how they need to play, because that allows you to utilize the contours that are around the green, whether it's you know, trying to bounce something in off the right side of number eleven or run something up from the front of the green. I think that's it's the most fun to play that and I think people are starting to learn that. And you know, a lot of the clientele that that you know, we we attract, they're not used to that. And it is different.
Last year we were major drought in the spring and these greens were there were tabletops. It was it was extremely difficult to approach these greens. Last springs, they were brand new and it was a drought. They were really hard and you know, there were a lot of complaints about that, and so we tried to balance, you know, how we're presenting the golf course with you know, the communication of that's that's how we want you to play.
We want you to try to play different shots into the greens and having greens that are a little bit slower allows you to run balls up onto the greens and get them to hold a little better. And you know, it's it's not if you can get good surface drainage or you know, our native soil material drains well enough internally that you know, I don't I just don't have
issues with excess water. It's if you know, you get the big grain, can you get the can you get the water off the greens quick enough to be able to maintain the firmness And yeah, so far, so far, we've been able to do that. And yeah, the fine fescue makes a fantastic surface and you know, find fescue seeded into you know, we didn't do any we didn't move any soil on the fairways, so that those are you know, still the soil that was there beforehand. So
that added some cushion. And when you plant a new variety of grass that is more drought tolerant, that cushion gets really bouncy when it dries out. So the fine fescue can stay green, but if that cushion on top dries out, it gets really bouncy.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's just a matter of yeah, trying to hang onto that, trying to hang onto those condition to give that you know, that playability.
That's uh, it was I thought it was perfect. And obviously I think like the mowing, I imagine maintenance wise, you're you're saving a ton of time using the gang mowers to just have that single cut of of grass in the fairways.
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, our fairways we have about sixty five acres of fairways. But we're able to utilize you know, large area tow behind mowers because there are large areas that we're mowing. So it's much more efficient for us to mow with these large mowers, and we can get a lot of grass cut in a little amount of time. So yeah, it's very efficient to mow the fairways, even though they're large. It's very efficient to moan.
Yeah, well, congratulations. I I'm not sure, you know, if you know, one of the things that you think about is is how people decide renovation of the year or these projects, these awards, and it's you know, I doubt that many golf digests for Golf magazine raiders were visiting your place. But I think in terms of sheer accomplishment, you know, what what was done at the budget and the constraints of labor, and you know, a fairly aggressive
time frame. I can't think of many projects over the last decade that have been as impressive, So, you know, congratulations, Stephen. I can't wait till my next visit up there. It's one of my favorite places in the world, Northern Michigan and definitely found another place that I will I will frequent when I visit up there. It's a to me, you know, kind of like the perfect place to go
play golf when you're on vacation in Northern Michigan. Lots of fun and and it's affordable and I think probably pretty welcoming to all golfers of all skill levels and ages. So congratulations. People can uh, you know, follow you. You're on X at Wolf River Greens uh and then on Instagram it's Stephen J. Beal and Stephen Beale no no Jay in there, so Steven Beal on Instagram And if if anybody wants to reach out to you, those are probably two good ways to get a hold of you.
But big thanks for coming on. It's it's amazing to see what you did up there.
Thanks for having me and you appreciate.
It all right. That was a great episode, great story. Everybody. If you're in Northern Michigan. Go visit Wolf River. It is. It's really cool. Big thanks to Stephen for coming on, and big thanks to p J Clark for editing and producing this episode. Thank you, PJ. A quick reminder, if you're interested in more golf course content, more content in general from US, check out club TF. It is our membership. It is one hundred and twenty dollars for the year
and it gets you a boatload of content. There are a couple articles every week I'm writing. I'm working on one on Clearcreek, a little talks about Core Crunshaw up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It's a course profile. It's you know, it'll be a deep dive into the design of it. Check that out at the fridagg dot com slash membership. Thank you PJ, and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back next week with a couple episodes of podcasts.