Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Toro. For more than a century, with cutting edge turf equipment and irrigation solutions, Toro has had your front nine covered and your back nine two. In fact, Toro's always had your back period. Toro is as committed to your long term success as
tour pros are committed to their shot. That's down to top notch customer support from Toro and its dedicated local distributors, both of whom are passionate about delivering turf equipment and irrigation solutions that solve real world problems. Follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor today. Today's podcast is with Brendan Burn. Brendan is the longtime superintendent and co GM at Lanark Country Club
in Philadelphia. Lanner has recently undergone a big time renovation from Brian Schneider and then with the help of blay Conan doing shaping with Brian, they have completely transformed the golf course. So I got to see this place last year when it was halfway done. They did each nine at each time and Brendan was obviously extremely involved in this process from both the club side as the GM and then also as a superintendent. And he has been
around Philadelphia for decades. Legendary superintendent in Philadelphia. So without further ado, here is Brendan and thanks for listening. 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.
Friday.
Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. It was it hard to break the single cart.
Oh, it was really brutal. It was so funny because at every club I would talk to other super intense and he said all the members wanted to play in one cart, but when they went to have a drink that there was no COVID around the bar, and then they could sit together. So that was kind of the joke. And then eventually once people started getting vaccinated, they were fine with it.
That's funny. It's it's not good for the golf course having the dual carts or the individual car.
We do seventy five percent of rounds with carts on one hundred and nineteen acres. So like I say, like I had a member, goes really did that much damage? I go, what happens if you laid down and ran a cart ever you oh that feel? It would hurt right, And he started laughing. I go, that's what you're doing to the grass every day.
You could tell them to just go park car on their front line.
Right, a parker car or take let us put let us out and run over it on the blacktop. See what looks like it's mashed. That's exactly what you're doing. But it's such a source of revenue. And now everybody's in a rush to play and get done in three hours and thirty minutes. The carts are faster sometimes now they're good here this club. I've been employed with a lot of clubs. This club's really good. They are like three thirty here. They don't play around. They play golf.
It's a small place.
It is, but it's hard. They play reddy.
Golf here nineteen acres.
Well one hundred and twenty nine altogether. But the you know, the clubhouse in the parking lots and the pool take up some spots.
Yeah, what are You've got the pros of being you know, or the continents of being small for cars? What are what are the pros from from a job in turf standpoint, there.
Is no pros because there you you would think, well, it's smaller, so you wouldn't need as much. But we have all like so we have we're caught in half by a road, so those perimeters have to be maintained. We have perimeters around all both both nine so all of them have to be hand mode or weed waxed or.
So their labor socked, landscaped.
Yeah, it's just maintaining the perimeters in itself for a battle. So we have a lot of nooks and crannies. But then like when you are doing like course set up, there's only so many places you can put the cup, only so many places you can put tea markers, only so many places you can put the put the carts.
Where do you start your career in turf?
Rolling? Green? With my two brothers and oh my lord, nineteen eighty.
Six, are you from here?
I grew up in Delaware County, Delca. Yeah, I'm a Delca kid, Springfield.
So your two brothers were they younger or older?
Older one was really smart and got out of the business. The other one's dumb, and it's a superintendent just like me.
Where's he at.
He's up at Cherry Valley, New Jersey. He's older than me. He's the nicer version of me. Everybody tells me.
He has both In out of the armpit of of America in the summer.
It seems like three four degrees cooler. He has it easy. He's good superintendent. He's a great guy. He's just a Yeah. It's a big difference. I take that we would.
Would you say I have the thing about winter being fake, Like I think you guys have fake winter.
Oh in Philadelphia, Yeah, like you could go we have skits, we have schizophrenic winter.
But like you can go play golf, like in January.
Oh in February too, Like this is the first time we had snowed a long time. Now they'll play like these guys here, they'll play all year rounds.
And then there's like five days a year that are like really cold and they all freak out. Or like New York City's the worst. They get like three snowstorms a year and it's like the world's ending. It's like when did you come to Chicago?
Like I love snow. It gets some everybody to give the course a break. It's like a blanket. But here, I don't know, if you know about Philadelphia, they have like a huge winter play thing. So even at our club, you can play in groups as big as sixteen somems. So they just all play at once and then they do all this like gambling stuff. They have a great time.
I'm like, fine, whatever, just put two cups in olk green and say play fake winter, fake winter, except for the grass doesn't like your carts in fake winter.
But then then now people are saying that I have fake summer. Would you agree with that? Because you have real summer I have.
I have Southeast Asia summer. I have like humidity. I mean, I like to say, since I started, was you you could take all the cities along the East coast and move them down to a city and heat. So boss used to be really cold. Now it's like New York. New York's like Philly, Philly's like Washington, DC. Baltimore, and DC is like Raleigh. It's that's the change I've seen in thirty years, that each city has gotten progressively warmer than what it was when I started thirty five years ago.
That's kind of wild.
It makes sense if you think about it. So when you saw the other thing you saw was we used to have a little bit of rain, a little bit of rain, hot drought, a little bit of rain, big storm, little rain than these seasons. Ever, now we get drought, huge storm drought, huge storm drought. The little storm is almost gone.
How does that impact what you do?
It's it's devastating because what happens is all that water displaces auction in the soil profile, so the grass starts to like basically simmer and it can't breathe. So you're always constantly venting the soil so that you can get auxygen back into it because of the water, So we use wedding agents because that's what makes water wetter, so we can move the water faster.
Hey, I want to go back to Rolling Green going there with your brother. I do you have like a story that you remember the boast from that, like just going over.
This we were one time we were we were doing dibbits on number twelve. It's kind of an iconic hold because the call the ground's maintenance is on the hillside and there's this big old stone mansion.
It's like, yeah, it's cool.
It's haunted too. All the greenekeepers that live there would say it used to be like an old militia guy there from the seventeen hundred's apparently it's long story, but any other time, Yeah, this one is definitely for real, asked Brian Chapin. I'll tell you. So we were doing
divots in the rain and we proceeded. My brother thought it was funny to proceed to throw uh divot mix at me, and we end up starting like the three of us having a huge divot and it was mushroom sotel which stunk like hell, and you could make it into balls, and we just threw it at each other for like ten to fifteen minutes. Of members was just laughing. So it's covered in divot mix. I wasn't very happy. I was the youngest too, so I lost something.
That would only happen with brothers, Like three Red Maintenance.
Start doing just throwing mix each other.
On number twelve, would you guys walk there?
Yeah? We walked. Yeah, we walked to work. My father was like as soon as we were like fifteen sixty, he was like, get to work, go walk because there's a club across the street. Just go walk. He just find something to do. So I try to get a job in the kitchen or something. They're like, no, we need greenkeepers. So I went down and walked down the hill and here I am. Yeah, that's that's because I
got rejected from being a bus boy. That's that's. It's not a great It's not a romantic story, now, is it?
Those who can't bus tables?
You go green camp? Yeah? It was weed whacking craigs, but it's funny. I ended up meeting Jim Ronney who's at Soakon Valley now. He was with me. We whack and creeks. And then I got to know a lot of great people, and I've been very fortunately. I worked with a lot of guys that now have become really good superintendents.
That's how you joined the wolf back.
Yeah, change jates. I picked Ncy State for a couple of reasons. My mom and dad were big into education, and a lot of people were just getting two year certificates in turf and they were both adamantly against it. They were like, you need to go get a degree in agronomy, Like you need to know not how to do it, but why and you need to understand the science. And so I'm like, well, I got to take like biology, chemistry, physics and all this stuff. And they're like, yeah, well
that's that's what you need to do. And so that's what I went and got a degree in agronomy from there. And also State was cool because it was you had both cool season and m worm seasoned grasses rate on the same piece of land. You don't get that at all. The Northern Universities say, look at bermuda, like that's like something that's like in a book.
So that's a that's a big advantage for huge.
So I learned how to use gross centipede and uh, you know, like bermuda and all that. But I had bent grass and tall fescu right next to me, so you could see all those grasses. So like now, because the climate change, we're using bermuda on the on some of the range. To you, I'm like, oh, well, I did a bermuda grass grow and I know what the story is of bermuda.
So then it just goes dormant and then you go to matt when it gets cool.
Yeah, it does go dormant. But now they're getting so much better it lasts longer. The veriees just keep getting better and better, so it lasts lot longer. You can overseed it with poetryvialis or like rye grass, so you can get more of his extended season out of it.
And then you got zoyja on the bunkers. Yeah, you got all kinds of grasses out here.
Yeah, so the Zeysa, see, are you.
The grass king of Philly?
No, nobody wears that ground. There's a lot of there's a lot of really good superintendents here. I mean you can go up the street.
I'm saying, do you have more grasses than anybody else?
I probably do. I probably the only guy in the here that has bermuda zeyja bent. But I really don't have any pola i polla in the rough because we fumigated an four and since then we really haven't had so much moth. But the Zeusa had no choice. Brian Schneider comes in and builds these bunkers. They're awesome, but they're so the slope is so steep, and we did the first bunker. I'm looking at with my one assistant,
I go, what are we going on this? He's like, I don't know, I said, it's all to die find esk and fall apart. Is what do you want to do? So we're gonna use Sousia. We changed everything. I'm like, we gotta go find Soysia. So we found Xenith and then that's when we started doing the Zenith.
Then you have to cut them different, right, you.
Weed welcome, you can go out there there. The funny thing is is that they're a heck of a lot less maintenance. They hardly need any water, they don't want any nitrogen. After the second year, they don't get any weeds. They choke it out, balls don't stick to them. I love them.
Sounds ideal.
It is. Brian wasn't really a big fan of it because of the color contrasts in the fall or in the winter. But it's cool because when you mow them, like at the end of September, you can get them like really be smooth, and then it gets cold and then they don't they don't move, so the whole winter they're kind of like that. And then in the in January you can sprain with roundup and it kills all the weeds. If there's any weeds in them, you can kill it because it's normant.
After NC stage, you stay down in Carolina for a while.
Now I went right back up and did. I got it a growing job as a spray technician at Heartfelt National with that was a Fassier design, And ironically my brother became superintendent like fifteen years later after I was there. So I went there, and then I went to the country club at Brookline.
How was how was that? What years were you at Brookline?
I was in Brookline for the beginning of the real restoration before the ninety nine Rider Cups. That was like mid nineties. That was after I interned at Marion, then did growing in North Carolina, and then did then went, Yeah, I went up to Brooklyn. Brookline was great because it was just like it was cold. I was like, Wow, it's not really that hot here, you know what I mean?
Did you feel like it was fake summer?
It was fake summer. They didn't even I don't even know if they had any hoses. I'm like, you guys have hoses. You got a water to grass here? You know? They thought eighty two degrees is like a hot day. My god, it's gonna one hundred and seven today.
What uh? What was it like? Getting ready for a Ryder Cup. You know, was that a cool experience? It is? You know, I hear some super say they like just get obsessed with the tournament, golf aspect of it and the pressure of that. Did you Was that something that that captured your interest at all?
Or well? I was. I was employed by a really good superintendent, and Bill Spence he had already done He was a superintendent like Hominy Hills. He was at Pebble Beach, he had done opens Country Club. Can't see this is all old hat for him. So he was really smooth, even tempered. So he divided all the different tasks amongst four or five people, so we were all kind of in our lane doing certain things. But he really was more about every day golf and making sure membership was fine.
I kind of carry his management Philossy and his greenkeeping Phlossy, which is every day's kind of member guest. By the time you get to a tournament, you really shouldn't have to do much. You should have be already on. You should only be you should be rate at the doorstep. Anyway, how does that?
How does that work day to day?
Then?
Like is it just like hey, we just we work hard.
Every well, you just yeah, you just keep the course cycled in. I always say you got to cycle the greens. You got to keep them in a cycle where they're always a day or two away from that you can go, okay, let's get ready back to tournament speed, you know, like thirteen or you know nowaday you have to be almost fourteen, you know feet, So you have to do like for us, like our standard are probably a standard stems probably like eleven eleven and a half.
How much did that change from when you got into the industry.
Well, you can tell, like you as you know so much about golf architecture, they built those greens for half inch greens heights, they didn't build them for a tenth of an inch. And then so now we go from poa to bent grass and these new bermudas which are super tight, and now it's almost if you have really old greens, they go almost too fast. So it's easier to get to that speed because the greens are especially the older greens.
Yeah, it's wild. I feel like when I was a kid playing the muni that I even like when I go back and play that meanie. The speed of the greens is like just night and day. I remember, you know, he was a little kid like playing late in that night and like you just have to murder putts to get them up the hills, right, and now it's like they put like great.
All the time. You got to remember too, is that? And this is not a slight to of the you know, old school suit greenkeepers. They didn't have the technology we had, I mean the machinery we have now. I mean when I was growing up, when we would go to a green and decide how to water, You put a knife in it, You push your thumb against it, try to see how wet it was. This is we didn't have moisture meters we had. We're just guessing. I always say,
you know, a greenkeepers are professional guessers. All we do is guess does that fertilizer really work? I don't know, I'll guess is that really work? You just guess and then you note, you take notes and say this looks like they're work and this didn't. But then we have moisture meters, so I can control my water level much better. The wetter the grasses, the fatterric gets, the less water to do. It starts the will it gets smaller. Less drag co fishing balls faster. It's not rocket science.
With with that r Ryder Cup in ninety nine, do you have any good memories from that week on the on the crew?
Ryder Cup was absolutely fabulous because we had so much fun taking care of the course that the European team was very like talkative with us. They were really a lot of fun. They were they would bust their chops and stuff like that.
I hear that almost every Ryder Cup venue that I go to. Every time I talk to like somebody that's on the staff, whether it's the pro shop or the groundscrew, they're always like, oh, yeah, we we loved the European Yeah, so nice and and we ended up just rooting for the Europeans.
Yeah.
I mean it might mean why they win more because they just are are nicer people.
So it was before September eleventh, so like it was nothing for me to walk I walked those with tiger woods within like you know, ten feet of them, and you know, uh Peene Stewart, you know, and and that when you were allowed to do all that stuff. But boy, the probably the thing that stuck out the most was I was told I always said at the end of the trip or the end of the tournament. You know, you could pick a hole whatever you wanted to go see.
And I was like, I'll either watch seventeen or eighteen. I mean seventeen so historical, you know, something's gona happened. I'm like, nah, I go to eighteen. Yeah. I heard the roar yeah, of the putt being made. Yeah, that that was a big regret. But my job was to get the pin off eighteen after the Ryder Cup. Yeah, I got two hands on and Fluff said, nah, you're not taking that. He's yelling in my ear, and I said, yeah,
you can have it. And I got splashed with champagne and there was people all over the place and it was great. It was There's definitely time in my lifet.
The you get to experience the plate of the golf journalist at an event where you're just constantly trying to guess which groups are gonna be the right crewery at the end of a Yeah, tournament, it's the worst.
It is. It's the worst. That roar. I can still hear it like it was yesterday. It's just it was so like awesome. But I was just like I was supposed to be there and I have this all access pass and I could have been literally standing nah now I got eighteen. Yeah yeah, wrong, But it's cool. It
was a great time. It was. It's funny. What a lot of people don't talk about what tournament office is Monday is when I was had to go back to Philadelphia to my superintennis shop and I walked across eighteen and the bunker lip was broken down from all the traffic, and you see the trash and all the stuff, and you're like, now you got to put it back together. And I was like, see, yeah, I.
Gotta go so and then you take that take the grand stands down and yeah, it's just like it's not sexy. Well, and then that stuff I remember, I was, I can't. I was maybe at Conway a couple of years after, and you or not a couple of years, like you know, like nine months after and because they do like a fall event and you see it like then in June and it's like, oh, you could still tell that there's a grand stand here.
Yeah, because the soils are so compressed that it just takes so much time to loosen them up. See, we were it was a I had done a lot of other tournaments as a volunteer. It was the first tournament that at night time we went out and spread seed everywhere where there were crowds and anywhere there was grants. We just kept throwing seed.
Out at the country class.
Yeah, all every night they tread see and I think it worked. And I never would have thought that because everybody's feet are pushing the seed in, so you see contact, that's the best way to progress.
What So you're in Philly, Then where'd you say? You know, where'd you start in Philly?
After you left Brookline, I ended up being superintendent Jericho National up in New Hope, Washington Crossings. It was a Hurstand Fry design. It was. It's an interesting course. It's very different. Hurstand Fry do a lot of like weaviiness and it's just a big, massive piece of property. But I only did like two years and then I always liked Lanark as a kid, like it was always the course that the old superintendent Marian Golf Club, mister Valentine said it was a sleeping giant. It just needed to
be woken up. And I was like twenty eight years old. I was like, I'm going to be that guy. You know, I was so like, oh I got this, Yeah, I got it. It took a long time, but I have The membership has been great. Leadership has been awesome, and if they've put a lot of money into it and for them to let me shut it down and fumigate it was a pretty big leap of faith. But then to do this renovation again. But it is it's a it's a neat of course. You get here two thousand.
So you've been here for twenty one years.
This is my twenty first season.
Yeah, a long time and.
Yeah I'm a cal Ripkin of Lantar Country Club. Yeah, it's consecutive starts. No, it's been great. It's it's uh. I'm very fortunate. You know, I grew up up down the street. You know. It's uh, it's it's a great it's a great little piece of property. It's uh, it's been fun. It's been really fun. It's come. It was a neat course. You got to remember it had a hell of a lot of history. In nineteen fifty PGA like that.
Was the first was it the last? No, first player, the first stroke, first striplay, Yeah, Franker said, right, Dowdlph.
Fister he's to come here. He's pretty old, but he's super great guy. Super great guy. I mean, uh, Byron Nelson won a seventh of eleventh here in forty five, the golf professional in nineteen thirty one, that when the British Open. So it's gotten that. I can't remember his name, so they got some it's got neat history.
It does have a lot of history. Yeah, and when was it originally built?
That's a great question. So it's been a lot of different names over the beginning, but now they've found some research that actually the ground was started in eighteen ninety five. Then it was I think the way the history you have to read off the website, but it was it was Delaware County country Club, then it was bel Air Country Club, it was Philadelphia Athletic Club, and then it got incorporated into Lanark Country Club, I think in nineteen oh one.
And then this has had many different designs here right.
Well, it was twenty seven holes until the Second World War and then they sold off nines they could weather the storm and that's when they did some more design work.
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local tour distributor to schedule a demo. Now back to Brendan Byrne, who is so you take over? You go through a stephen k renovation correct all eighteen holes, all.
Eights and holmes, fumigated, every tea fairway.
And grand shut down. The course was completely shut.
Shut down August seventh, opened up like that May twenty seventh, I think the next.
Year, and then most recently, you guys Brian Schneider came in did nine one years ago, two years of twenty nineteen nine last fall right. Talk about the difference between the full shut down from your end versus the nine and nine.
It's really almost impossible to compare because we're fumigating on the first time. The first time in fumigating is the totally different world. I mean, here you are, you apply a product that you need to go into your souls for seven days, pull it out and then see wait till it's completely clear. So I plant lettuce in the fairways and wait for the lettuce to so germinate. That would tell me that I could do the bent grass.
What did you do with the lettuce? Wants it would germinate?
Cut it out?
I didn't move it.
We didn't give it to the kitchen. No, we didn't. We got rid of it.
Seems like a waste.
It was a waste, I guess. So when you seed it, you have all these acres of dead grass and you're looking at seeds. So I would come in in the morning at like four in the morning, turn my headlights on my cart and just look for seedlings to pop. And then as soon as I saw a couple of seedlings, it was fine. So once they started Germany, we were
mewing seventeen days later. The second time we did a renovation, we were just sodding most of this stuff, you know, doing extensions and doing bunkers, so the majority of the stuff was already grown in and doing nine holes was I think easier. The difference is you had architect like Stephen k who did drawings and that he would paint it in the field, and you'd have a shaper where Brian's of that generation now where they don't really want to do that much drawings, but they go out and
do all the shaping. So it's a totally different operation.
Do you think the club knew really what they were? Well, how quirky and like, you know, I love this place because it's just it's so different than everything else around.
That's the and it's still true to itself. I mean it's still it's still landmark in its way, but yeah, it's totally different. I said to Brian, I go the old I don't want to be married. We can't be married, we can't be ironomic, we can't be wrong great. I'm not saying that they're like, we're not a good enough club. It's just let's just be ourselves. And I said, you got room to do it, and we looked at old pictures and that gave us some opportunity to do some stuff that had gotten really lost.
What was the member reaction like when they came back and saw, like, you know, was it across the board. I imagine some thought it was really really cool.
I would say the overwhelming majority. I would say as high as ninety percent love it. I think other people and it's this is not land Eark centric. I think it's any club when you remove trees. And we roomed a good amount, but not a ton a good amount, especially for members who've been here a long time. You're racing their old course, so they have stories about how they hit that great shot behind that hole or that tea or that that tree, and you've taken out all away,
so you've ruined their stories. So I understand that the course they grew up on, I've tinkered with it hard. So there's always a little bit of like, you know, everything seems better.
In the past, any run into with the fair police, No, no, no, no, nobody saying, oh, I've gotten this bunker, couldn't get out.
All right? I ticked that back that way. There has been because the faces are so steep, So there were a couple of bunkers that I end up cupping them a little bit on the edges so they would roll back in a little further and that kind of solved it. But it is a hazard.
The last time I checked, yeah, yeah, And so then you know you're you're doing the next nine, the next next year. How did did your approach to the next nine change it? All? Like? After you did nine, you get like kind of I feel like you you're in this creative process, you're doing the work, you know you're doing all this, and then you have time to like reset reflect. Did you did anything change about the way you approached the next nine?
Well, with Blake and Brian, who are fabulous architects and shapers, you had to get to know their personality and they are both a little bit quirky. They're very talented, but quirky, And at first when they started, I was like they would not talk as much as I would like, and I was like they would just do stuff and I'd be like, Okay, what do you think you're going to do next, And they'd be like, well, we'll find you'll
see when we're done. Like I'm a control freak, so I would be like, well, I kind of like would like to know because I have to order materials for all of it, so I kind of need to know dimensions and size. Eh, we'll get, we'll get. But it would always come out great. So that created a little bit of anxiety for me in the beginning. By the time we did the second one, I was like, I just know what they're going to be like, and it's fine. You know, it is what it is, you know, and
they had great results. You know, It's it's easy to trust people when they do a great job. So the second time when they were going to do something kind of like, I was like, no, no, it's like, you know, at the end of it's gonna look great.
I feel like I do that to people that are real like type A, yeah, plan oriented people. I just drive him nuts.
I'm that guy. I'm the plan oriented guy. You have to in Greenkeeper because there's so many moving parts you gotta remember when you're doing nine holes. There's another nine that they're still playing, and I mean we did incredible amount of play. Like I always say that the nine that was being played got hit with COVID too. I mean, because everybody was out playing.
That had to be hard last fall shutting down nine because it was I imagine you were doing record round.
Yes, it was like yeah, sorry, yeah, I gotta go, And it was like but they were great because I think they were so excited and and like we had said before the course became schizophrenic. You had this new nine that was really cool and had these really cool Zoija bunkers and the greens are bigger and they were seeing pots they'd never seen before, and then you had the old nine. So it was like this has gotta get changed. So there wasn't really any blowback.
Do you have a favorite like part of the course transformation like that that you still drive out too and you're like, wow, this is pretty neat, I would say, since like you were out here as a kid and like the course of it.
Like I'd have to say twelve, Yeah, twelve, because twelve was twelve was so severe. We had like two cups on it and it was like it would just wear the grass out, so Brian really it was really, I thought, probably one of the most challenging holes to do it. And there's days when I look at it and it has these two old or three old red Japanese pines or maples there and they're just so beautiful, and it just casts a great shadow and it has great and it's the right side of it's got this great bumping
and stuff and it just gets great shadows. So yeah, I dig that. That's that's really cool. I can make an argument for almost every hole, but twelve is the one. I'm like, yeah, that looks really good.
It's uh yeah, it's a neat neat one.
Fifteen's really good too.
Like the hump, Yeah, all the humps. The humps are so neat. Yeah, that's the the thing like that, I feel like, you know, Philly has so much Flynn, you know, and you know that's a really distinct style. But he brought like a little bit of above ground Travis Flair, Yes, Reilly, which is really.
Which this place needed because we don't have we have our land rolls, the the land rules, but it doesn't like at ouronamic where you see this dramatic like number one Aeronamic. I mean, wow, look at that. I mean that's just incredible. And even Marian, you know, you look at seventeen, You're just like, wow, this is a real sharp We don't have that so much, so we needed some above you know, ground topography. The other thing too is having been a greenkeeper in New England, you see
this stuff all the time New England. So for me it was like, well, of course we're going to do this.
Yeah, we just had an event thirty six holes at Rolling Green in that you know where you start, but that's like a feet of strength to walk that golf course.
Yeah, I used to carry there as a kid. It's a number nine is a slog.
And I mean that's the topography that dominates Philly and why there's so many great courses. You have this dramatic yep, these dramatic properties. You'res a little bit more subtle, but for you know, it's an easier walk, like you could you could legitimately walk thirty six holes here within a day and not feel gassed completely.
I would totally agree with you, and I think almost every member here would say the same thing. Lanark's known for a few things. We really try to keep the course in great condition. It's extremely walkable, it's just and it's a great everyday course. And as long as I've been here, memberships like super fun.
It seems like you guys have a lot of bars.
Yeah, I don't think anything more than anyone else. But I just think they like to have a good time. But they're serious about They prioritized, you know, taking care of the golf course. I mean they redid the clubhouse in twenty thirteen, they make the investment. We're staying here.
What was the decision process of hiring Brian? I feel like from before to after, this is one of the most dramatic shifts in golf architecture of what you had before and what you have now.
Well, first things first, the course was more similar to this back in the probably than earlier. In nineteen ninets, there was two Scottish green keepers here, a father and son, and if you look at their old photos you can see a lot of this type of style here. So then it went into the eighties and then you know the dark ear of golfing in my book, and then.
Which is what most of the members that joined joined correct.
So then Kay did Kay did a nice job he did, but he did you know what he was his interpretation of finlay. But then when we went when what was happening was the bunkers were breaking down. Bunkers are fifteen years. You get fifteen years out of them. The old style bunkers when they would build them, you got fifteen years. So we were right there and I said to the club, I go, you know, They're like, we'll just redo the bunkers.
I'm like, if're gonna do the bunkers, you wants to do a green copocks, you're gonna do a green cop box. You must just do a whole thing. And they bought into that, and then I'm very fortunate. They were like, what architects you want? And when I interviewed Brian, I was just flabbergasted by the fact that he took the time to walk the property with myself and the golf professional who's now the COGM, with myself and really had like a viewpoint of it that Wow, we can really
do something here. And I was like, this guy's really excited. And then I liked what Doak had been doing. And then I went up to see Hollywood and where Mike Broome is who does a fabulous job there. And I was just blown away. But I also said to Brian, I pulled him up to side and go, look, I don't want a wall of sand like you see a lot of these renovations. They want to do all this bunker, they want to have all this sand the flesher. I don't want that. I want Leonard to be distinctive and
I don't want to have a wall sand. And he was like, no, I don't either. And I wanted to be more minimalistic, and I think we accomplished that.
When you finish the project, are you little are you a little sad that you know, like it's back to like the day to day.
Well, I've on four growings, four growings and two restorations, so I've had a good fill of it. I have to say. When they were doing sixteen, which was the last grain, I was a little sad. I was like, it will be the last time I ren av a hole here at Lantar. No, I'm ready, We're never gonna finish. The creeks need to get restored. There's still I always say to any club and a lot of good superinstensus says, and you have to play it for a year and
then you're gonna have to do tweaks. So we're we're not done yet, but we have a Pennsylvania Amateur next year, so we if we're gonna do something, we have to do it like this fall and then you know, then grow it in. So so to answer your question, it's okay, we still always have stuff to do. You know, I would never get bored with just grooming it.
You're the GM here too.
Coach General Magi. Yet for twelve eleven.
Years, how does that balance work? Like? Do you have days where you're inside and you're like, I wish I was outside, and do you have to dte where you're outside and you want to go aheadside?
Now, I got a great co Chris Wilkinson, who's was an assistant at the country club at Brooklyne. Ironically, but he's younger, you know. He he takes care of food and beverage, all the stuff that I want no part of. I'm more of the physical plan. I'm more worried. I'm more dealing with pipes and and blacktop and electric and stuff like that. So it's it's a good diversion. I
have very good assistant superintendents I've been blessed with good assistants. So, but but for the last two years, i'd be I would I wouldn't be truthful to say that I've been on the golf course the whole time. But basically I got we have really good people. We have great tennis probably have great pool managers. So things things are in good shape right now.
You just gotta sit back and let them do.
Their You gotta delegate. You have to realize you have to delegate. But when we do construction around the clubhouse or something, I'm usually heavily involved with it. But you gotta trust people. You gotta teach them, and you gotta you gotta know when to be laissez fair, let him, you know, be hands.
All with with you know, kind of management and assistant supers. And is your style change? Like what are some things that have changed over your say, just twenty one years here, Like how I manage? Yeah, just how you approach people.
Well, I think it's a hard job. So you're gonna go, Hey, I got an idea for you. I'm not gonna I'm gonna pay you to come in really early where it can heat the rain. I'm gonna work you like a dog. And then by the way, I'm probably gonna have to lay off in the winter, but could you come back in April. So it is tough to motivate people, But I think you just did what anybody else would do.
You treat them with respect, You try to teach them, You show them that they're worth something, that they have value. They do. They see little things that you don't maybe see. So I think you have to do as much as you can to respect and empower people.
It's funny I think about like the job on a grounds crew and what once you get past the years of like late night m m, like then all of a sudden, it becomes so so appealing, like now that I'm thirty five and heaving, just like God, that would be a great job, like you get you go out early in the morning, but then like you could legitimately
be home to like pick up your kids from the rightool. Absolutely, you know, like it all of a sudden, like it's a it's a job that becomes like extremely more appealing when you hit your like late twenties.
Yeah, I I would agree with that. It's it's and our philosophy is life balance that I want the assistants to take you know, two out of three weekends we rotate. I think people need to have time off because they've become they come back fresher, they're going to do a better job for you. And also they're not they're less, there's less opportunity for them. They get hurt because most people get hurt when they're tired. So it is appealing. Not as a super you're it's like being in a tourney.
This billable hours. You're always thinking about it. I mean you're you're constantly. I there's not a night I'm not not thinking about Wow, man, I need to start really thinking about that Bermuda encroachment on number eighteen Fairway. So it just comes to you at all times. But it's my vocation, it's not my job. I love what I do, so it's not a big deal. But it is all encompassing. It is at the time of leaving early in the afternoon, it's it's when it's cool around. You're not now like today.
It's it's a slog.
That's the I always tell people that are like, oh, you know, like you know, why is it stressful? Like, you know, if you're a superintendent and I'm like, well, like, do you ever stress out about like your yard, and they're like, oh, yeah, I hate when those week I'm like, imagine your yard being like one hundred and eighty acres.
Yeah, and now pick and let people drive over your yard and take divots out of your yard. And then you have an outing where people who are you know, have seen their golf clubs the first time in two years out on the golf course. My one assistant, Matt Willigan, who's up at a filler's up, I hite a great expression because greenkeeper would be the best job if he didn't have to do it on weekends. You know. It's the weekends are tough and we use the expression around here.
Grass doesn't know what day it is, so it doesn't matter. You have to be here at times to do it.
Yeah, that's that would be the hard thing with especially as the families.
Yeah, my daughter knows the golf course. Well, you got to maximize what time you have with them before they grow up.
How neat has it been to watch just like kind of your network of people, you know, from the industry to grow and then like grow to all these different places around the world.
Well, I would say the most satisfying thing is seeing the assistants get super jobs. I've been very lucky. I think I have like ten. You know, we don't raise them to keep them, so that's probably the most proud we get. It's great for the club, it's great for myself selfishly, So that's probably the most rewarding thing. And I was very you know, again fortunate to have been
interned under a palaterial at Marion. So you have all the I called men of Marion or Marian and all these guys you worked with that have all become very successful, so you can talk to them. And then at the country club, I we had like ten guys that worked with it became superintendents. So it's like, so, yeah, you're right, the I never really thought of it that way. The network has grown like tremendously. But I've also seen guys get out of the field.
They get they get into like sales jobs.
Yeah. I just think that it's a grind. It's it's a grind. You know, you you you gotta be better. Love it. You gotta love it. You have to love it.
Your industry is so different than other industries because like you get good people in almost any other business, and you like all you want to do is keep them correct. But you know, great superintendents their assistance become great superintendents elsewhere. Like it's it's such a it's it's more of a it's actually like more of a like kind of like a family relationship where you want your kids to go on to great thing. You don't want your kids to stay in your house or their whole life.
No, you got to kick them out of the nest. And to be honest with you, I barely ever visit their courses because I don't want to, like it's their deal, like it's your job. Like actually, it's funny. One of my former assistants is a super called me this morning about a spray. I'm happy to do that stuff. Like I'll give advice if I can give it to them. But at that point, they don't need me coming over to look at their place. Like they know what they're doing.
I mean, that's the whole idea, is to teach them what to do. It goes back to like being an agronomous I want you to know why you're doing it, not how to do it. You know, knowing how to do it. Anybody can figure out how to do it. You need to know.
Why do you think young supers struggle more with the grass stuff or the management?
I think that the young superintendent's just like what I was like when I was young. You feel like you know what you're doing and you don't. You don't know completely. I always say you know to the assistance is sow you say, you think you know what I do for a living, but you don't. It's different when you're it's very lonely to be the super intent because day it's your call, and when it fails, it's your call, and
if succeeds, it's your call too. But you need to give them enough room to give you it what they think. But you need to teach them. The younger guys, they need to get their fingers burnt. That's the only way you're really gonna learn. You have to you have to kill. There's two types of green keepers, one who's lost grass and one who will so which you're going to be both at some point. So, younger guys, I killed grass, I messed up. I still kill grass.
Is that the worst thing that can happen?
Kill grass?
Outside of like safety somebody, like outside of like catastrophic I would say.
The thing that makes me probably the most angry is when we are dumb and we kill grass ourselves, Like we just straight out kill grass. Like so we have a member guests last week and I'm in a board director's meeting and I get a phone call, which I never get a phone call, and they're like, we have an issue problem. I said, we don't probably have issues. We get hydrouclic on eighteen farewell. So we had to take sod from another fairway, ht it with tull fescue
and put it in. And this is like twelve hours before. Remember, guess it's just the way it is. And the thing is I was driving up to meeting, I go, God, I hope we don't have a hydraulic lea today.
But it happens that something you said resonated with me. Is the loneliness and having to make all the decisions. I hate having to make all this, Like the thing I like, my wife will be like, what do you want to get for dinner? And I literally don't want to make another decision today. Please just pick.
Something and look at what you know. In this business, you have to make a bazillion decisions all the time, Like today. It's like, well, and the thing is, you don't have enough information yet, Like I don't know what's gonna happen this afternoon. Is it gonna get hazy? Is it not gonna get any the forecast? Thanks, nobody knows what the weather's gonna be.
What weather apter you use?
Oh well, every member asked me that or not a lot of members. I always say, I don't have a secret website for green capers are used weather underground, Like.
He got secret seed.
Yeah, that's secret seed to weather undergrounds. I think I look at about four or five of them, but it seems.
Like whether round paunch of them.
Absolutely hundred percent. Now that's the biggest it's the biggest fallacy. What does he know that she know that I have to pay? Like they're just pulling it from n o A.
Anyway, all right, what's the what's the best cheese steak in town?
That's a lot you know what in in around here?
I would say, Will and I are going to go go one well right.
Up the street, uh Thunderbird in Prumol. Oh, yeah, but you gotta get pepperoni in it. I do Pepperoni cheese steak, Pepperoni cheese you never had a pepperoni cheese steak from Chicago.
We have Italian, we have the we have the better, we have a better beef sandwich. We have the Italian beef.
All right, I would say American cheese with pepperoni.
That's the way I got No onions, No onion.
Grow grew up with pepperoni in mine your cheese.
Wwiss guy, No American American?
No, no cheese.
What seems like that's a big divide.
It is that and onions.
With Philly sports, what team does appoints you guys the most?
They're all disappointing God Hockey, the Flyer or the Flyers, they're terrible. They can't even get in the playoffs. Their big gets in the playoffs. Phillies, what are we ten years without a winning record? Seventy six? There's an open dunk, we don't take it. And then, uh, the Eagles. I'm actually kind of pullish on the Eagles. I think they're going to turn it around.
Best time to come play golf in Philly October without a doubt, or April April.
April, because especially if you play like something like that has the bent grass hasn't woken yet. The greens are always the fastest in April because they're dormant still, so you just mole and everybody's like, oh, they're really fast. You really know what you're doing. Dorant.
I love like the fall. Yeah, October days are short, yep, and it means I don't have to get up at like four thirty in the morning to come shoot photos. And then if I want to shoot at night, it's not nine o'clock.
I have a countdown in my calendar right now. We're seventy four days from September tenth. That's when things start to really go. See.
That's the funny thing about the industry. It's like, when you're a golfer, this is Midsummer, when the days are it's light till nine is the greatest time ever. But if you're in the golf industry, no.
You know, we were celebrating the other day, were like the longest day of the year's coing.
See you all right, This was a great conversation and people can find you on.
Twitter bj Burn zero one.
I think you on Instagram.
Yeah, I'm on Instagram, same thing.
You probably you know all your assistants. That's probably changed. What was it like pre and post cell phone like smartphones.
I don't know because it's so funny you say that because we don't. I don't even the rate, Like I carry radio. It's just a turn irrigation. None of us have radios anymore. Like we just do everything. I just text everything that way. I can't forget what I what I text them and they can't say that they didn't hear it. So it's the best. The textings is wonderful. And you can look at radars, real time radars, so
that that's great. People have been I have to say, that's been the cool thing that Twitter is getting super intense from different countries and getting direct messages like when we did the Zeytsia, like I got flooded with like direct messages like what is that? Like, where did you get it? How much is it ascriff? What's it like to grow? Like from all over the place. I'm like, wow, I never thought.
That I'm here to look at that now, right, It's like.
The craziest thing and like just a greenkeeper, you know, at the of days, you know it's we're in Delaware County. That's cool. The temperature down a little bit, but it was like crazy, but like I got this guy, I got people that follow you in like from England. You're like, wow, that's really cool. So I fall back and you learn stuff. It is Twitter is educational.
It's super cool with the superintendent industry. Like one that comes jumps to mind is Michael Vesily out at Culver. You know, he's got a tiny little staff. It's a nine hole courpse of lang from a row that got stored, but it wasn't like restored all the way, you know, And he's at this really neat place that people are genuinely curious about, right, And all of a sudden, like
he's got architects visiting. He's started to talk to Bob Crosby and David Normoyl, great historians, and all of a sudden, like this guy has become He's just like turned the place up like ten notches. And it's all like he he talks to me, it's like it's all because like the Internet, like you know, I just learned so much stuff like and I didn't. I didn't know all this stuff and and all of a sudden, now I'm he's got you know, he gets he talks to you know,
two great historians all the time. About how to find information, how to find old fiction.
They would have never known about it.
Yeah, it's a military academy. So he has like he goes to the archives and finds all these those old articles and all this stuff and old photos. It's so so cool and like what he's doing is now he's just like he's just finding pictures and yeah, and and just in making the changes on his own.
See, that's really cool. I got on social media just as we started the restoration, and it was so funny that I had people that said during COVID like they loved watching the updates because it was like they were like, I didn't even know your club, but it was like just to see the updates because I wasn't going anywhere, and it was like, well, I've seen the course kind of changed, and I want to see how it was like a story, and I was like, wow, that's really cool.
And then all of a sudden they get started getting like architects and like people just that are like into Golfer, Like, hey, can I stop over and look around?
Sure, yeah, that's what your your updates legitimately like made the that was the last time I was in Philly. I was like I gotta go see Lanner, Like, I really want to go.
See that Point Act as soon as it's a cool property. I always tell people, I'm like, you should really come and see it. It's a neat little place.
Yeah. All right, Well, hey, this was fun.
Thank you so much and we'll we'll talk soon. Perfect.
Thank you, Thank you again for listening to the FRIDAYGG podcast, our latest Superintendent series. This episode was edited by Meg Atkins. As a quick reminder, we got major championship golf right around the corner. Sign up for our newsletter. It's free. It comes out every day during major championships and then it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday during the week. Keeps you up to date easily, and Will Knights has some good quick wit in there. So it's a great way to just
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