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people in the turf industry. He is into golf history, professional golf, golf course architecture. Really he is a golf tragic. He came over from Australia. Really interesting story. So without further ado, here is Stephen Britton. 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 arid egg Friday egg the dread and Frida egg Frida egg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump.
Was Royal Bubber, the first of the great Australian courses. You played grown up, No so I grew up.
I actually grew up about a mile from the front gates of Pinsula Kingswood. You know when I back then it was called Peninsula Country Club. It was always a good golf course, thirty six holes there and it's amazing now Mike Cocking redid both the golf courses.
It's really good.
But I grew up about a mile from that golf course. I used to pick balls there on the range after high school and we would get to play there as an employee.
I would.
I used to pick balls in the range and clean clubs in the backroom, and worked in the pro shop every now and then, and so you would. We were allowed to play and practice there, So that was probably the first. That was probably the first good golf course I played. I grew up playing golf at at a public golf course down the street from Peninsula, right next to the city dump. If the wind blew, the whole golf course smelt like rubbish. The whole day was covered
in seeing goals. All you'd ever hear is the reverse buzzers of the dozers.
Pushing the rubbish over. But it was great.
It was three hundred dollars for unlimited golf for twelve months.
And so I used to play there.
And then when I was working at Peninsula, you know I could as an employee, you get to play there a little bit. So that would have been the first good golf course that I that I played. And then as I got a little as I got a little bit better, we joined a private club which is on the same road but next door to Peninsula, caught Long Island, and that's a good standbout golf course. It was really good. So they was those kind of those courses in that
Frankston area. They would have been the first ones I saw.
That's it sounds like my growing up in goth Our Junior membership I think was three hundred bucks and play all I wanted, except for like Saturday Sunday mornings, like the restrictions, and then you know, I'd play it Norwood when I had playing privileges just from working it, and it was that was the way to do it. But it was so nice the days you get to play the country Club, you know, versus the Muni.
Oh yeah, Like I remember, so the Muni had polar greens and the country Club had bent grass greens then, and I remember going and playing Peninsula and like made of mind that was working there. That kind of got me the job on the range. I remember them telling me like, hey, these are bent grass growing. It's really different than what we've been putting on. And they were
firmer and faster and smoother. I remember thinking, like, I feel like I can hold every puddle on these, like I never That was the first time I kind of ever knew the difference between poe and bank grass.
I just figured they were all greens before then.
I feel like when you're a kid too, when you know you're learning the game, when you switch to those fast greens and then you go to the it's such a huge adjustment when you're a kid, Like you can't get your bearing straight on the on the speed of butts. That's stuff that I just remember, Like when I played fast screens, I'd have so much trouble. Then i'd go back to the media. I'd have trouble getting them to the hole.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. They were the best days though.
That The Communich course that I grew up at had tons of kids my age and.
We just spent every day there.
Would we play every day after school and we'd play skins games and like after school it was quiet, like seven of us were playing like a group of seven and play skins for balls and stuff like that, and it was they were the best days playing golf back then. It was tons of fun.
When did you start working grounds at Royal Melbourne?
Okay, So when I finished high school, I was I loved golf. I was obsessed with golf.
Then I was playing golf a lot, and so I knew I wanted to work in golf, but I wasn't ever going to be good enough to do, you know, be a club pro or anything like that, or work in a pro shop. And so I just kind of decided I wanted to be I wanted to be a greenskeeper, and so that would have That was nineteen ninety four, and so that was like before the.
Internet and emails. I think people will probably email, and then I wasn't, and I sent, I wrote letters.
I mailed them to the ten best clubs in Melbourne, like I picked you know, Rural Melbourne, Victoria, Kingston Heath, Metropolitan, Woodlands, yari Era, Huntingdale.
All those and I just wrote this letter.
I can't even remember what it said, but it said, you know, I'm a junior golfer and I want to be a greenskeeper and I was.
Looking for an apprenticeship.
So they do schooling really different in Melbourne than America.
There.
You get hired as an apprentice after high school and the club employs you as a full time employee, and you kind of go to school one week every month, like so you'd work three weeks and then you go to school for a week and you do that for four years and then after that you're like a fully qualified Greenskeeper.
I kind of like that, Martyl.
It was the best system. Yeah, it was great. I wish something like that was over here.
Maybe there is, but it's really different here, Like why guys at work for me who have gone to college here, you know, greenskeeping is just like one class they take, they're taking all these other classes that they have to do and then they just do a summer internship for ninety days and that's kind of bit. But yeah, we would work and go to school and it was it was the best way to do it. And the club
pays for that. Like when you hired as an apprentice, they pay your tuition to go to school, and so you're make you're making money because you're you're working, but the club covers your tuition. So as dumb luck would have it, out of those ten letters. Royal Melbourne, Jim Porter was the superintendent of Royal Melbourne.
He was like the.
Fourth superintendent of the club's history. And he got back to me and said, hey, we're looking for an apprentice. Do you want to come in? And he put me on like a three month trial and that so just it was just luck, right, Like that's just that was just happened to be the right place at the right time, and he put me on a trial and he hired
me as an apprentice. So they would so a lot of clubs would hire like one apprentice every four years, right, like when you finish your apprenticeship, they'd start to look for another one. And so I was that guy at Royal Melbourne. I didn't even have a driver's license. My mum drove me to the job interview, like I was. I think I was seventeen but just finished high school. And so I worked there for eight years. It was it was great.
It was So after you did the apprenticeship, you work for four more years.
No, so you do your apprenticeship for four years and then most clubs you stay on and you're a fully qualified greenskeeper. So that's that's your full time job then, right.
Yeah, so after the apprenticeship you did four more years there.
Oh, yes, you're right. Yeah, so I actually did.
I did an apprenticeship and then I did more schooling.
I did a diploma class. So the way to think of that for.
In American terms is think of it as like a two year degree or a four year degree. So the apprenticeship would be thought of as probably a two year degree and then if you do extra schooling the diploma course that would be your bachelor's that would be before year degree.
So I did. I did that after my apprenticeship, which was one night a week for two I think it was two or three years now, and it was.
It was every Wednesday night from like three o'clock in the afternoon till nine o'clock at night.
So you're still working, but you would go and do that class in the evenings.
How are your role like when you started, I assume you were doing all the grunt stuff, but by the time you're at the end of the eight years, what type of stuff were you doing for the club and the grounds crew.
Yeah, so when you start out, you're filanteed of its and ranking bunkers and you don't really get to mow a lot. And then but as time goes on, they they'd say, hey, you know today we're going to teach out a maul green, and you know we're going to teach in a mo fairways, and then you'd work your way all the way up until you were spraying, because that's spraying is quite an important thing obviously, and it's
you kind of put your best guys on that. So yeah, by the end you're the one spraying greens, and especially you're hosting tournaments, which we did at Royal Melbourne like that, when you're spraying greens kind of the week before the tournament, that can be nerve wracking, right.
Yeah, didn't Tiger play in that time frame down there? Or was that at Kinkston Heath that he played in that like maybe late nineties?
Why don't so that?
So when I worked there, we had the we had the Greg Norman Holden Classic, that was a tournament that Norman had on the Australasian PGA Tour, and then we had the ninety eight President's Cup, which I was there for, and then we had a couple of Heinekens after that which were kind of European to Australasian two events. So it was an exciting time. There was an exciting time to work there, especially with the President's Cup. That was the first time the President's Cup had coming to Australia.
It's only one we've ever won righth.
So that was it was. It was an exciting time to work at the club. It was great.
What uh, what do you look back on I mean, you were seventeen years old through twenty four. I assume your interest in architecture probably peaked at a later age.
You might have been generally interested in it. But what do you look back on and think about when now, like I know, you go back to Australia and you've been back to Royal Melbourne a bunch of times, but like, what are things that you overlooked about Royal Melbourne that you now look at as you know, head superintendent, somebody that's been in the industry for a couple of decades.
If you grow up in Melbourne and you're playing those courses and I know lots of the guys from Melbourne and say this, and especially the good players that come over America, like you kind of you kind of think.
That that's how all the courses look, right.
Because back then in the nineties on TV, like we didn't have cable TV back then, and so you'd only get to see the Masters and you wouldn't see week to week PGA Tour events in America. So I just remember thinking like, this is what all golf courses were, and this is how they're all mown.
And but it when you leave there, I think you realize. That's when you realize how great it is right and how everything we did there was great.
The way we managed the water, we never overwarded and we were always really lean with the water.
And the way they mowed the golf course every like I remember thinking like mowing everything to the.
Bunkers and you know, mowing short grass all the way to the bunkers around the greens.
I remember just thinking that was normal.
And when I first came to and then when I came to America, I mean, you see what bunkers in the RAF and there's rough all the way around the greens, and you start to realize, like, oh Jesus, we do it really different in Melbourne than to everybody else.
How has Melbourne evolved since the since you worked on it in early two thousands to like what we saw in the President's Cup How how has it evolved in its maintenance practices or is it pretty much the same as the Has the course changed at all?
So like architectually it hasn't changed. I think they've done some stuff right since I when I was there, they really change anything it agronomically, I think it's changed quite a bit, because so when I worked there. We had on the fairways we would have what they called a two grass system.
So in the in the winter time, all this native poer would come up in.
The fairways and the fairways would just turn into power fairways. And then at the end the winter, the poe would fizzle out and die off. Sometimes we'd spray it out, sometimes we just let it fizzle away, and then all this native bermuda grass cooch grass would come up and the fairways would be bermuda fairways in the summer. And it was I think it was unique to Roll Melbourne. I can't remember if all the sand Belt clubs had that years ago, but when I.
Was at Royal Melvin, that's how it was.
You had power fairways in the winter and bermuda fairways in the summer. And so that they got away from that over time because I think, you know, that's a tough transition to transition out from poer to bermuda and you get some.
Bare spots coming into the summer, and you know, it doesn't get that cold in Melbourne.
You can have really you can have good and bermuda fairways in the winter. So they got away from that at some point, which is probably a good thing because it means the fairways are better year round.
And so now the green.
Surrounds now find fescue are around the greens, which when I was there, they were actually mostly power around the greens and some bank grass and the fine fescue that Richard Foresight's is a superintendent there now that he's put in and they're amazing.
I mean they're firm and fast, Oh yeah, I mean great to chip off of the best.
Lies, and and with the fine fescue he can spray certain herbicides to keep the poe out, which will stop the poe getting in the greens, which is really important there.
Ah, that's interesting. So that fascue surround because of the way you can spray it, actually it creates like almost like a buffer for.
The power right they have, so they'll have a program where they'll they'll spray certain herbicides that it's that are really the fine fescue is quite tolerant to some of these herbicides that.
Will help keep the poer out of that fine fescue. So that helps out whereas when I was there, it was power all around.
The greens, and so it's hard to keep poer from getting into the greens.
Would that work in like the Midwest, like say Chicago, because I know, like when the you know, Poe getting into the greens is something common here and I just you know, I don't know.
Like but I mean he's mowing everything. There's my own low and so you'd have to do the same thing. And I don't know, I haven't really thought about that, but it works there because there's no Poe on that golf course at all.
At run I think that might work at col Club too, right, col Club does that.
So yeah, that's really similar program.
Everything's fine fescue, right, fine fescue fairways at Cow Club, everything around the greens is fine fescue. So they have a really good program there to keep it out. So yeah, that's that's a good point. It's really similar to their set up.
So and when I was there. When I was.
There, the greens on the non composite course, okay, they were the original what they were called Sutton's greens that Mick moorecamceded when they did the renovation with Aliston McKenzie and Alex Russell. And then the composite course greens were actually Pencross so American Bank grass that they had converted. I think sometimes in the eighties, I'm not too sure.
And the superintendent that I worked for the club had decided that they were going to try to put the Sutton's greens back, which was hard to do because you don't know, they don't know what grass that is.
Right.
Sutton's was a seed company in England that in the twenties, golf courses in America and around the world would buy just greens, grass seed from this company in England, and that's what you seeded your greens to. And you know, I don't think they never knew exactly what was.
In the mix. So those greens had segregated out to the parent plant.
So those greens at certain times of the year would have purple patches and.
Dark green patches and light green patches. And so they took samples out of each one of those different patches and a company in New Zealand grew the grass and got them to set seed. I don't know that, I.
Don't really know the whole process, but they came up with the closest thing they could imagine to the original seed meeks.
So they recreated it.
They recreated it.
That's what gym started the superintendent that I worked for, and so in my first year, we side cut the twelfth East green, which was the smallest green on the golf course, and we seeded it to that seed meeks and kind of replicated what that those greens were seeded to in the twenties and so it was a.
Really exciting time.
We ended up doing the whole golf course to that and that's what they have today.
Yeah. You know last week we saw wingfoot and I think one of the need things about that restoration was how that they preserve the grass from the greens like the Poea and they didn't go with that brand new great like they you know, they basically used the same grass and roll Melbourn's case, just figuring out a way to recreate the seed to get that same grass.
Right.
Yeah, So that that all happened when I was there, which was really great to be around, and it's turned out great today.
The greens of the greens of Rome Melbourne.
Unbelievable, I think, oh yeah, like not just for the tournaments, they're.
Great every day.
When did you leave Australia And why why'd you leave Australia. Well, you're you're rising, rising superstar at Royal Melbourne. What what got you out of the country.
So in two thousand the so we had the ninety eight President's Cup at Rome Melbourne and in two thousand then had the President's Cup over here in Virginia Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, and I can't remember the exact connection.
But there was a connection between the two clubs a little.
Bit, and there was an opportunity for a couple of us from Royal Melbourne to come over and work that event. Myself and another guy on the staff at the time, we came over to work.
The two thousand Presidents Cup at Robert Trent Jones.
And so at the time, well still then now today Scott Furlong was the superintendent and Glenn Smickley, who's now general manager at Cow Club, he was a general manager.
At Robert Trent Jones and.
I came over and we all kind of hit it off and became friends and we stayed in touch, and I went back to Royal Melbourne and you know, not a lot would change a Royal album back then. Like I said, Jim was like the fourth superintendent in the club's history and the assistant had been there for a long time, and so in two thousand and three, Scott contacted me and said, hey, we have an assistant position to open up at Robert Trent Jones. Would you be
interested in coming over and being an assistant here? And it was the best thing for me, because you know, I loved working at roll Mel when it was great in but I you know, I probably needed to grow up a little bit as a little immature, and so packing my bags and coming to America and taking on an assistant position was in hindsight, the best thing for me, and it kind of made me get a little more
serious about things. And they had already they had the two thousand and five President's Cup kind of locked in, so I thought, wow, this is a good opportunity to come over and see what America is about. And also I'll be an assistant superintendent for the two thousand and five President's Cup. So it sounds like cliche, but I packed two bags and emptied my bank account, which wasn't much, and moved over and then the club hew me get
a visa. So why first I came over on mic O keefs Ohio State programming on his J one visa and then the club helped me, helped to get me a longer.
Visa to stay for six years, and that was it.
Yeah, the club, that club's probably got some you know, they can pull the strings on the visas easier than a lot of clubs.
Yeah, they have, They have those kinds of people, that's for sure. Yeah.
Moving, so you move halfway across the world and you move. I was it more jarring moving from Melbourne to America and get used to the American lifestyle or moving from growing grass at Royal Melbourne to growing grass in the mid Atlantic?
Well, I know, I Well, so I've been away once already. In I left.
I took a year off from rural Melbourne to go to the UK and I worked at Wimbledon at the All England Tennis Club. So I worked at the tennis club and looked after grass tennis courts for almost a year at Wimbledon.
So I'd been away from How you get how'd you get that job?
The same thing? A guy at Raw Melbourne.
Knew somebody who was at Wimbledon and they were looking for kind of seasonal greenskeepers. And I got approached and said, Hey, is this something you'd want to do. And my dad's British and so my dad's whole side of the family live in England. And again I was obsessed with golf
and I'd become interested in golf course architecture. Right that was when, you know, I was kind of one of those early guys on golf club at Lists, and I was looking at golf club Atlists four days a week, and so you start to learn about all these great clubs over there, and I thought Jesus.
Would be a good opportunity to go work at Wimbledon.
But while I'm there, I can go and see Sunningdale and Working and Walton Heath and you know, and go up to Someny Andrews and try to visit golf courses as well.
And so that's what I did. I've went over I.
Worked there in so I went over there before the President's Cup at Robert Trent Jones. I was there for the two thousand Wimoloden Championships. We had the Davis Cup that year as well, so we did we did the two thousand Championships and then we had the Davis Cup right after that.
And it was great.
It was great to learn another side of greenskeeping on tennis courts.
And talk about how is it different, Like how do you maintain a grass tennis court differently than a golf course obviously they're both playing surfaces, or is there similarities and differences?
I mean, so they kind of moan a little bit lower than what I would say is a tea heigh, right, But tennis court you're trying to get a rock hard.
I mean we would we would mow them with.
The same mom as we'd mow a golf course green with and but then we would roll the courts with like a with like a row, like an Ashvelt steamroller, you know, And so we would try to get them rock hard. There's not a lot of turf other than the courts at wimbled and like the whole places to men, you know, and then there's these grass courts.
They have clay courts for the members.
It's a members club, right, the All England have a membership, and there's indoor courts in the winter time, and they have croquet courts as well, and then they have the championship courts.
So but it was great.
I got to work there for the year and visited tried to visit as many golf clubs as I could. That was kind of what I was more interested in, to be honest with you. I went up and I went up to Saint Andrew's.
And one quick question, how how much firmer? Like if I hit a golf shot, and I know Wimbledon grass court, would it just like bounce forever?
Yeah, I mean they crack out right like the baselines after a few days in the tournament, they're cracking open, Like there's cracks in them where you can see, you know, a few inches down. So oh yeah, they're rock hard. Yeah, the ball you'd never stop it. They'd bounce and bounce.
Off the court.
Interesting, and the grass stay is alive and everything. So that's just the the end of the spectrum of of how firm you could get turf.
Yeah, I mean the baselines struggle at the you know, by the end of the two weeks that they're usually pretty beat up.
Because that's why they're run them back and forth.
But it was funny that at the time, So the superintendent at wimbled And at the time was a man named Eddie sea Wood who'd been there forever. He was kind of like a legend in tennis court meetings in England.
He was a really really great guy, really old school, wore a shirt and tied to work more a tire to work every day, and geez, he was just really good at it. And but they're seed mix. I remember asking them.
What what scene they would use back then. It was a secret they and kind of ended their own and they didn't really want anyone to know.
But it was a good place.
But like I said, I was kind of more interested in, yeah, visiting golf courses.
And playing golf over there.
And I went to Saint Andrew's right after the two thousand British Open and I didn't get to play though, because it was so busy then because the British Open had just finished. All the steads was still up and they were just packed that I caught the train up after work and spent the weekend up there, and I think I walked the course like ten times and took photos, went out there by myself and just spent the weekend at St Andrews by myself, just to see the old course.
And it was a good time.
What was your you know, your at this point, early twenties and you're getting into architecture, What were your like, what did you learn over there that you didn't really understand having just played in Australia, which in Melbourne, which is obviously one of the great golf cities too.
I remember I remember thinking, like some of the heath courses in London they were a bit like Melbourne, you know, like because they have heath between the tea, like a lot of clubs in Melbourne will have heath from the tee to the beginning of the fairway, and it's a lot of the courses there would as well. I remember thinking, like Jesus surprised how similar some of them were to Melbourne and the old course.
I remember walking around that I wasn't playing, and so it's really hard to try to figure out what's what. I remember walking it for the first time and not even knowing which way holes were going and where greens were and because you can just walk around it, there's a there was like a seashell path that went around the whole golf course, and I just used to walk around that over and over, and I'd walk out into the holes when there was no play and no groups and.
But that so that was really good. We're really different to.
America, but Yeah, so I'd been away for a year, so coming to America wasn't as daunting because I'd already been gone once. But yeah, really different, Like of all the places I could have chosen to come and work in America, the mid Atlantic and the DC area is I didn't know at the time how it was to grow grass here because it's really hot in the summer and you know, you're only growing cool season grasses. And then greenskeeping was really that was really different than back home.
That was the biggest learning curve, way different.
What was the was there an early mess up? You do something that you just killed a bunch of grass because you just didn't know that it was going to get the way it was going to get, like so hot and humid or something.
No, Because I mean so when I went to Robert Trent Jones, I mean big staff, high expectations.
So I was one of four assistant superintendents.
And so you know, you're like the entry level guy and three older guys kind of say, hey, this is how we do it, and this is how you keep it alive, and you just so you kind of learn, right, like you learn through being there every day and being around.
Those guys, because that's in the suburb. That's what it's about. It's like just keeping it alive, right, It's like number one as opposed to you know, I imagine it's so much different than Royal Melbourne or even England.
Yeah, I mean, it gets hot in Melbourne, but it gets cool at night, and that's the difference here. It gets hot here and it stays hot during the night, and it's so humid here. I mean, yeah, July fourth to labor Dight. Here, it's hold onto what you've got
and just try to get to the fall. That's kind of the raw thumb that everyone in this area goes by because if it gets wet in the summertime and we start to get those storms, and the worst is when you get a downpour in the afternoon and then the sun comes back out and it's blazing hot.
That's when everyone's kind of white knuckled.
And really when summers in DC and when people will have a.
Lot of problems.
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irrigation solutions that solve real world problems. Follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor today. Now back to Stephen Britain. You talked about how greenskeeping was so much different just the generally here and getting that was a huge adjustment. In what ways was it different than Australia.
I mean, so like all the obvious stuff you could probably think of, right, like we didn't we didn't do anything the rough in the middle, and we didn't water the ruff and we didn't even.
Know it that much. But it's a really different golf course.
In Melbourne, they were unsand and native ruffs and so you hit your ball on the sand, you hit your ball on the ruff, and you could be in bare sand or you could be in grass and you never really know. But over here the ruffs are perfect and fertilize the ruff and spray the rough and water the roff, and the roff gets moaned two or three times a week, and that was different. I remember thinking genez is spending as much time in the rough as we are in
fair ways, and I just wasn't used to that. In Melbourne, we just you didn't even look at it. We didn't think about the ruff, so that, you know, that was a surprise. And just the level of greenskeeping was the expectations are so much higher than what it was back then.
I mean it was the I think greens keeping in general, like in the mid nineties, I think golfers expectations not just like pro golf, so much higher now than they were twenty years ago, right, I mean I think Ryal Melbourne back in the nineties really raked the bunkers twice a week. I don't remember hearing any complaints about the bunkers back then. And you know, I don't know what, I don't know how can they rake them now? But I mean Robert Jones will raked the bunkers every day,
and you know it was set up. It was almost like a tournament set up every day.
It felt like some members had it their way, probably rake them in the middle of the day too.
Yeah, I bet there's some courses out there that do that a bet. So that was that was really different.
That was that took some getting used to, just the different maintenance expectations and the different way they looked at things.
And drastically different style of golf too, Like I mean, RTJ, I haven't been out there, but I I've looked at it. I mean extremely aerial versus real Melbourne, extremely ground oriented. I mean about as polar opposite as you could get.
Yeah, Like I remember, they don't do it anymore.
But we used to rake the bunkers all the way up to the face, which I think a lot of courses in America were doing back then. And you know, in Melbourne we would keep all the faces smooth. We never would rake them, and we wanted them to be rock hard and don't touch them. And even some moss or you get like a crusty kind of layer growing on getting on the sand, and we wanted that because we wanted the balls to roll back down. And I remember thinking, like Jesus, funny they rank up the face.
I didn't think you'd want that, and it wasn't just that club like that was the kind of the American way to rake bunkers back then was they just raked everything from.
Edge to edge and all over. I remember coming and thinking, I don't know why they do that, Like I wouldn't think you'd want to do that. And then so.
It was when I got my first superintendent's job. I went back a little bit. I said, you know, I'm not going to rake the face. We're going to keep the face as smooth and we're just going to rake the bottom.
Where was that job at? The first superintendent job was that TPC Potomac No.
I It was a Tom Fazio designed golf course right down the street from Robert Trent Jones, which was great for me because I, you know, the superintendent Scott at Robert Trent Jones, I was right down the street, so I could I could borrow equipment or I could.
That was the greatest place for me to start because.
The expectations weren't as high and I could make some mistakes and it wasn't as much of a catastrophe as it could be at some other clubs, and so I could kind of play around with things and in some ways They let me kind of do whatever I wanted there. I could change brassing lines and I even added some bent grass around some greens to make it a little
bit more like home. Because there were just some swales, right, I said, I'm gonna take the rough out and put grass in here to make a little chipping area, And so I could play around at that place as much as I wanted.
It was tons of fun. It was the perfect place for my first superintendent's job because I could try to figure my own way in.
If I made a mistake, it wasn't it wasn't such a big deal. And I had the guys at Robert Trent Jones right down the street.
So yeah, that's that's a big part of I feel like superintendent's in the culture is where you know, if you work for somebody, or you know, you have somebody that works for you and they get a job, then it almost becomes like you almost become an unpaid consultant for the for that other club.
Right. Oh yeah, And you know, I didn't know it at the time when I.
Went there, but that's what that That's what Scott's program was all about, Like, Hey, you're going to come in and be an assistant for three or four years and then you're going to go get your own golf course.
And so there were there's a big group of guys that have worked at that club that are now superintendents and and then they all talk and they all, you know, we all have a group text and everybody helps each other and it's a really and a lot of them have stayed in the DC area and it's a really good setup.
It's almost like a gang, like a gang of superintendent.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it was. It was a good thing.
And then so I was at that club for four years and then that's when I went to TPC Potomac. Was I went to t CE Potomac in two thousand and nine?
What was What was it like going from a club culture to the tour which you know you're going to essentially like it would be like going from I feel like almost like a startup or mom pop business to a billion dollar company.
Yeah, I mean it was really it was really different, but it was great, Like I wanted to, I really wanted because we'd had tour events at.
Royal Melbourne and I loved them.
I loved working when we would have a professional tournament come to Royal Melbourne.
It was really exciting and I really loved that time.
And so to be able to go to a golf course that hosted events was huge and we and they had the twenty ten Senior Players Championship Market Mira one.
That was the first. That was the first tournament I worked as a superintendent.
That was the first event back for the course since it was you know, it's much the lined opening where what player what players just went off at it call.
It like.
Well, so the old avenue I didn't even I didn't know any So the golf course was rebuilt into as the seven in two thousand and eight. Steve winslof PG two architect did the redesign and I never even knew.
What I knew.
I'd heard of Avanal, but I never I couldn't picture any of the old holes. But Greg Norman gave it a Greg Norman gave it a beating. The ninth hole, he said that they drop a bomb on it and blow it up. There was it was a downhill path three and in the redesign they moved the green up on the hill.
But Greg Norman ripped him apart. I guess when he would play there.
It's a bit ironic that he was the one doing the ripping.
Yeah, I know, yeah, I guess see the ninth hole in particular.
I don't know if something bad happened maybe I don't know what happened, but he said they should drop a bomb on it. So I came in right after they had just reopened. I think they'd only been reopened from for like six months when I started. So yeah, it
was really different. I mean, but it was great because I loved pro all so working for the PGA Tour was you know, it was really exciting because you would, you know, you hear things about the tour and players and then it was great because we'd host I hosted five events in ten years i was there, and so I'd love it when Australians would come to play because I would always go and talk to them and say hi to them, and that was always it was really fun, right like trying to I'd try to like turn the.
Course up a little bit like it was back home, and so it was good.
How does maintenance work? Obviously at a club, you're you're you've got your greens chair, you've got your GM and you've got a management structure and everything, but at the
end of the day, you're you're the expert. I imagine in that when you're working for TPC Tour, there's a whole corporate structure, and I imagine there's a career path once you're you know, in it as a superintendent to where you become somebody that oversees a number of superintendents, right, and so as a superintendent you probably have a lot more checks and balances at the at the TPC courses.
Oh yeah, yeah, so there's a whole So the agronomy team with the PGA Tour, it's kind of split in two. There's there's a TPC group that kind of oversees tPCS and then there's a competitions group that oversees tournaments on the three other tours that aren't on tPCS.
And so yeah, you I would.
Have an agronomist and he would come and visit the golf course kind of quarterly on average, and so he would inspect the golf course and inspect your maintenance shop, and there was a checklist and you would kind of work together and try to put together plans of especially how you're going to prepare for tournaments and so yeah, it's yeah, there's a lot of checks and balance.
Would they just show up on it now so you know when they're covered?
No, No, no, you know.
Crazy of it. It showed up with the checklists.
Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of prep. You maintenance.
Shot might be a bit dirty or gotten a bit sideways, and so there'd be some cleaning going on before.
It almost be better if they just showed up randomly.
That's how they would probably get the truest. They're great guys. They would never do that, but no, they would. They would give you. They would let you know when they're coming.
Did you kind of have like a box that you had to keep the course in where you know where at the at the Fazio course you worked out after RTJ? You could you kind of colored outside the lines so you h some improvisation I med it was. Was it much more frowned upon in the in the the tour a little?
I mean so, oh yeah, well you would have to you would have to get several people to sign off on things.
If you know, I couldn't just go out and change.
The golf course because I decided that I'm going to widen that fairway by thirty yards and I'm gonna I'm gonna rip out all the rough around the green and make short grass all around the green. You couldn't do that, but you could suggest. You'd work with your agronomist and the design team and you would say, hey, in my opinion, I think this whole would be better if we did this, And sometimes they'd say yes, and sometimes they'd say no. But you couldn't go and do it yourself. There was
several levels of approval that you had to get. And then that's the same way when you're having a tournament. You have an agronomist that comes in the week before and you're together every day and you're kind of monitoring the greens and the bunkers, and you know, you start working together on what you think you need to work on to get ready for next week.
And yeah, interested in that. How working with the tour for a tournament, obviously you guys had the you know, Tiger's event for a couple of years in a row. What was it like, what's the run up like? And then as a as a core superintendent, what's the week of and your input levels on pins and week of conditioning for a tournament?
So no input on pins. That's all the rules staff. So it's a tough balance. It's a tough balance, right, I mean, TPC Potomac was a busy club, so you're trying to manage member play but also get ready to have a tournament and make it look like nobody's been there. And our tournament dates were tough because it was July fourth weekend in the middle of the summer, so that
was always tough. But the lead up, you know, we would it was cart path only for a month to keep the carts out of the RAF and but you'd never get you never you don't have a say on where the pins are going. That's all the rules stuff. They'll they'll sign a rules official to do front nine back nine setup, and those guys get to pick how they want where they want the team markers and the pins to go on the front and back nine.
But you would work together with you get an advance.
Official who comes in the week before and so the three of you, your advance your competition's agronomous, your advance official and yourself.
You know, you get.
Together and you kind of pick a target stimp, like where you want the stimp to be on the first day and you know, hey, let's shoot for twelve and a half and we'll ramp up to thirteen or low thirteens by Sunday. So that and that was a tough balance. That was always a tough balance for me because maybe being from Australia and I love golf and I like architecture, and I want the course to play a certain way, and so I was always leaning towards really drying it out and trying to put it on the edge a
little bit. And I feel like we in twenty seventeen Quick and Loans, we I feel like we did.
We did well with that.
Yeah, that was the one that only a couple guys were under par right it was Kyle Stanley was in it, and if I remember correctly.
Yep, Francesco Molinari won the last one, but Kyle Stanley won that one and yep, so eight under one.
It was. So it was tough that year.
But regardless of scores, I just wanted it to play firm and dry and a little bit like it would be back home. And but that's a tough balance because you know, it can look pretty ugly come Sunday when you're.
Doing that, which I didn't care about. I just well, I just wanted to put on a good golf on it.
And but that's tough for the club because so Jeff Obie and I had this conversation during the Quicken Loans once because we were really dry, and he was he was loving it and.
Yeah, he can't put he he was in the interview he talked about it was it felt like he was playing in Australia. I remember that.
Yeah, I love that. That that was that was great for me.
And he said in the paper a bit that week, like it's good to play on greens that remind me of back home.
And so that's what I was kind of going for.
But in DC, doing that around July fourth weekend, that's hard to do without it getting pretty ugly. And there's never any it's not disease and it's not anything like that. It just gets dry and it starts to will and and I was telling Jeff, like, that's a it's a tough balance because the clubs booked god knows how many corporate outings after the tournament, and you know they could
sell it. They could sell a corporate Monday outing for eighty thousand dollars on them, you know, for one day or one hundred thousand dollars or whatever it is, for a week or two after the tournament. And now Steven's just gone and put the place on on edge and it doesn't look so great, and so what does that
do for club revenue? And that's when you know a club manager would get a little worried and they don't want So it's that tough balance, right of like you're trying to prepare for a tournament and you want to put it on the edge. And I personally didn't mind how ugly it got, because I just wanted it to play good m But club management doesn't always want that
because how does that affect revenues after the tournament? How does that affect the perception to members that they haven't played the course for two weeks and now they want to get back out and it's lead up and whatnot.
So that for every superintendent that hosts.
An event, that's always a that's a tough balance, right, especially because half the time where they're playing events, the weather's never especially when they get on the East coast, the weather's never right. Yeah, it's only the West coast, guys, get great weather.
The East Coast guy, East Coast.
Superintendents, it's always hard because you got most of them are in the summer, and you get summer storms on the East Coast.
I think that next year, the one where Moulinari one and Tiger was in it, Zach Blair was in it. I remember that was the infamous one where Tiger was changing sure every every three holes because how sweaty he was.
Yeah, he said, there's the hottest round of golf. The heating next was one hundred and fifteen. And here I am mowing the greens four times. Everyone else in the areas bathing their green. See, I got mow the greens three or four times, and mow of the fairways in the evening. And it was hard, and yeah, I got the I got the rains pulled in a little bit on that second one because I pushed it pretty far in the first one, and so on the second one.
It was because what you do is so they checked, they check.
Moisture, so you stimp. You check moisture, and you check firmness every morning and every evening, right, and they like that data and they write it.
Down and then that some greens are wetter than others, and some greens are dryer than others, and some greens stimp quicker than others and whatnot.
And me, I didn't I would just let it go. Like the year before, I didn't really mind. But that second one, it was like, well, you know, the fifth green is really dry.
I think we need to water that one tonight.
So they kind of have like a box of parameters that they want to keep the course in.
Yeah, a little bit.
I mean it changes depending on the grasses they're playing on and the area of the country.
But they'll they'll pick the week before.
They'll say, hey, let's let's shoot to be here on firmness, you know, let's shoot to be stimping around this number, and let's keep the greens at kind.
Of this moisture.
So they'll they'll pick those three numbers and they'll just try to they'll try to kind of maintain or maybe even slightly drop off from those numbers by the end of the week. I don't really I always had it. As I got a little older, I still wrestle with that a little bit because I don't know, seems to be that it seems to me it'll be okay. If one green is softer than the other, and one green's further than the other, right, Like, that would make the course play a little bit differently.
And it would ask players to answer different questions rather than the same one over and over again. Right, that might make a little bit more interesting golf tournament.
Yeah, Like, it's not there far. I mean, it's a player run organization.
The players have told them that they want consistency, so I don't blame them one bit.
But I just think if you have a green that sits down in.
A hole, like the twelfth at Augusta, right, that green's got to always be softer than the other. The twelfth green in Augusta has to be softer than the eighteenth green and.
Augusta it sits in the sheet all day, right Yeah, And.
So like at Royal Melbourne, for example, the third green on the East course, which is on the Composite course, at least in my time, was always softer than the sixth green on the West course that is on the composite course, right, because the third East green sits.
Way down in a hole. It used to have these huge cypress trees around it, and it was it was just always a tough green to dry out when I worked there, and.
I feel like that's okay, right, Like you feel like the caddie should say, hey, this green yesterday was a bit softer and it sits down in a hole, and you should play this one closer to the flag because it'll probably stop quicker. And on the other firm greens you've got to play it shorter and roll it up. But same with the bunkers, Like they want the bunkers to just be all exactly the same, and.
I don't know, I feel like it would be kind of cooler if they all played a little bit differently.
It's like this pursuit for uniformity and maintenance. When I mean, if you walk around any but any member of your yard, the grass is going to be different in different areas. Like I've got a giant silver maple. The grass is way different there than I'm my parkway that has no trees on it. You know, Like I can't grow the same grass there. And if I, if I, if I want the same grass, I'm gonna have to spend I'm gonna have to spend eight times as much time and money to get that.
That's what happens is so superintendent's are working so hard to get it all playing the same and in Australia we just when I think back again, it was the nineties, so it was a different time, but I felt like we just didn't get us hung up on that.
Like I put this on Twitter.
Mike Clayton and I were going back and forth on Twitter a little while ago, and and this same topic came up, and I used the sixth West at Royal Melbourne as an example. And I don't know about today, but in my time, the front left bunker on the sixth West.
Or All Melbourne was always a boggy bunker.
It always felt like it had more sand than it and and if you hit it in that bunker, there was always a really good chance your ball was gonna plug or you were gonna have an uphill shot. That bunker's twelve feet deep or whatever, and you're out of really boggy sand and behind that green on the back left corner there's this little bunker, and that green was always rock That bunker was always rock hard. It was like you know, hitting off of a hard pan and the green falls away from you there and it.
Was the hard like you couldn't pick two.
More different bunker shots on one hole, the front left bunker and the back left bunker.
And I always remember thinking that, like we would get to play at Real Melbourne as employees, and you kind of knew when you were in the middle of that fair way. You just knew in your head, like, jeez, if I hit it short in the front left one is probably gonna plug. And if I hit in the back one, that's the hardest up and down in the world. I'm never going to get up.
And you just knew, and that was okay, But it doesn't seem to be that way anymore. Like, no matter what bunk you hit in it, it's gonna be the exact same.
It stinks too. I always say that the why golf is the coolest game is because, no matter what, you'll never ever be in the same exact position twice in
your life. Like you could play golf every single day, all day long for the rest of your life, you'll never hit the exact same shot twice because you'll never have the same lie, the same exact wind to the same pin from the exact same yardage, right, And that something that adds to that is having to like getting in the sand and feeling in your your feet and
in knowing. Intrinsically, it almost rewards the experienced player that can analyze all that stuff, and in a way, the uniformity kind of dumbs down the game.
Oh yeah, I mean, so you write a good article.
I think it was last week about the ruff, right, thick ruff versus low ruff, and whether you're going to get a flyer and how much more unpredictable that is than thick ruff, and I.
Agree with that.
I remember we had a tournament once at TPC and the ruff was really thick, and I remember Mark Russell said, oh, look, we got to mow the rough Friday night because it's going to be too thick come Sunday. And again, me being superintendent's always protective of their golf course and Mark Russell, he's a brilliant golf mind.
Like that guy, he's really really smart.
And I remember saying to him like, I don't worry about it, like I think it'll be fine on Sunday. I really don't think we need to mow the ruff. And he explained that that was the first time I'd ever heard someone explain.
It to me that way.
He said, listen, if you have the rough flower and they don't know whether the ball is going to fly out or how it's going to come out to be so much harder for them. And I never had thought of it that way, and he was the first one that explained it that way, and he was right.
He's dead right.
So you know, it's funny like everybody's talking these days about how to set courses up and scoring and you just wonder, like, is that something you know it was a little more irregular. Would that make the that would you know that would change it up?
Right?
The most irregular championships to open And look what it does every year. You know like that that you hit it in the rough there, you have no clue what's going to happen to the ball when it comes out. It could look like you're the easiest lie in the world and shoot sixty yards left And yeah, I think that, And then I think the best part about it is
what you what Russell alluded to. It's like you have a couple that you misjudge, a couple of those, and that that's going to be in the guy's head and that's the best place to be with a tour player. You got it. The only way you can challenge them is to make it feel like it's not a driving range, you know, totally.
Like I remember a podcast you did you said you did with Jeff once and you talked about maybe it was when you were younger or in Melbourne and he hit a drive and it would go in the rough, and that that anticipation or that excitement, especially when you were young and you're playing in a club event and as you're walking up down the fairway and you're walking up to the ball, you're kind of like, oh, please be sitting good, Please be good, and that anticipation or
that excitement of getting to it, and it happens to be sitting up and you're like, yes, I can go with this now for part five, maybe you could get three wooden get there or it's not sitting very good and were jout and I remember he said, you know that's all gone now because you're walking down a fairway and you know exactly how it's going to be lying and it's easier to get those irregular ruffs and those are regular eyes when you're unsand too, and the golf
course is unseand Roff's going to be a little like Pine like it is down at Pinehurst or places. It's easier to get that when you're un sane. It's hard like up here, when you're and clay and it rains forty inches a year, grass grows kind of NonStop. It is harder to get that irregular rough a little bit right.
It seems like you could with that if you didn't chase, you know, that consistency. It seems like that, not knowing exactly, but for a superintendent, that's you're constantly chasing your tail for that consistency. And it probably costs a ton of money, and it might you know, it might some woe. This would be something that every a lot of members would argue about. But it might cheapen the experience of golf. And then it also comes at an extreme resource time and money cost.
Yeah, because I've hosted tournaments before, we would you know, we might be double cutting and rolling the greens right, and we'd stimp the grain and for whatever reason, it's four inches slower than the grain before. So we give it an extra role, you know, to try to get it to catch up.
Yeah, I don't know.
As my time went on, as I got older, I remember just becoming a little more disillusioned with that and thinking, geez, like, it's okay that they're a little bit different.
It could too be like if you stip it in one spot, that's just subtly uphill, right, Like you just stimp it in one place, you could stip differently in another place. It's grass, right, it's grolling. It could be different within a green.
Well, you wish you could say, hey, those two greens over there are really slow. Why don't you get nuts with the pim position on those couple because they're really slow.
But Dean, I mean so Dean Demon.
He used to play at TPC Potomac quite a bit and I would always go out and kind of ride a hole with him and chat with him. And he's a huge proponent of slow greens. He used to even greens would never overly fast.
Remember play, but.
He always used to say to me, like, the greens are too fast, they're too perfect. It's easy to hold putts out here, and why don't you slow him down and put the pins. He was a big one for that. He used to ill but he still does. He he always thought the greens were too fast and.
Putting would be so much harder if the greens were slow.
And he was he was a huge part. He hated the fact that the green speeds had gotten to where they were.
I think I don't. I think he gets a lot of credit, but I still think he doesn't get enough credit for all the stuff he did. And like his general thoughts on a lot of things, like, I mean that guy one of the most brilliant minds golf's ever had.
Yeah, Yeah, really interesting guy. He hated to think rough and he and he hated fast greens, at least when he would he always plays his wife Judy and he'd say, Raff's too thick for my wife, and it's no fun to play out of And the greens are too fast when you get up on the green.
And yeah, being somebody that loves architecture, talk about I know, I don't think anybody would put TPC Potomac in like a masterclass of architecture, mold. What was it like working at a golf course that doesn't really get your juices flowing from an architecture standpoint, it's a.
Catch twenty two, right, Like I think about it.
A bit, like you if you did work somewhere there's a brilliant design architecturally. A lot of the times, those places don't want to change anything, right, They're like, hey, this is kind of the Holy grail. Just mow the grass, keep the grass alive, rake the bunkers. We like it the way it is.
And rightfully so.
On some of the best designs in the country. But as a superintendent, most superintendents always want to tweak with their golf course. So don't get me wrong, it would be great to work on some of those great designs, But at the same time, I think you do want a little bit of freedom to play around with them a little bit and within reason, right.
Yeah, Because if you're at one of the great great spots, your job you're a caretaker more so than if you're at somewhere where the pedigree is a little bit less and you've you've got a little bit more freedom, right.
I Mean, the funnest jobs would be the guys that take over from somewhere that was great a long time ago, and they've got good maps and good aerials, and then they've got a bit of a freedom to stay to
the club. Hey, what don't you know this is how this hole used to be eighty years ago, and the fairway was this wide, and these trees were out over here, and you know, if you're okay with it, I'm going to take those trees down, and I'm going to rip that rough up and I'm going to make the f their way wider, and I can do all that in house, and that would be a lot of fun, right those, I mean, sometimes those are the funnest And we all know people that have gotten jobs like that and got
to tinker with their courses, and sometimes those would be the funnest ones around to.
Be able to look at what you've done.
I mean, like Curtis at Old Elm, Right, that's one
that passed to mind. I mean I was there last year and it's you know, he did so much of that sounds like in house, and I don't know the exact process they used, but how much fun that must have been, and how proud you can be to look at it today, at like what they've done, and you know that a lot of it was him, right, So those but the problem is there's not many of those left because lots of them are being restored, thankfully, and so there's not many of those left these days to stumble upon.
Yeah, you know, Brian Palver, the old superintendent at short Akers I expensive time his office he had he had their old I can't remember exactly what year. It was, maybe twenty nine. Ariel blown up huge. I mean it was the entire wall right in front of his desk
and he would just stare at it every day. And they got everything almost back, and I remember I was in there and he just held just look at the one spot, the one or two spots that it wasn't exactly, and he would be like, that's that's next, that's that's like it like encompassed his life for you know, five six years.
Yeah, didn't they overlap? I think I heard a story. Didn't they overlay the plan on like a Google Earth map or something? And it was almost spot on? Right? Mm hmm, yeah, somebody told me that.
Yeah, And there was one spot where he didn't do it exactly and he was like, you know, really screwed that one up to tell you, just was really upset about it.
Yeah, right, right, I mean, that must be so much fun to get to get something like that.
Right. There's not many of them left.
I mean there's plenty. Believe me, there are people realize, Yeah, there's there's some that have been restored that you go out to and you're like, you know, you didn't restore it. The line's twenty yards off, like what you know, the bunkers in the you know, doesn't cut all the way in and you can just see it because you can
see the land form. That's one of my pet peeves is when you see a great, great fairway land form and then the fairway line is right on the middle of it, and you're like, and it's been restored, and you're like, how do you not see the left half of that? That that land feature that was clearly the fairway. You know, these old architects didn't drape fairways over land features and then cut off put rough on half of it. You know, they wanted the ball to roll off it.
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree, I'm showing. Yeah, you would know, you've you've seen. You probably have a list of the ones that are still available to.
Maybe one of my favorite conversations I've ever had with you is centers around I guess I would call them knick knacks around golf courses. Oh yeah, your pat feeve.
Yeah, like the furniture and stuff like that. Yeah, it gets crazy, right, there's companies out there that's so rubbish bins for two thousand dollars and stuff like that.
Well, I've done it. If bored them. I mean, if you're at a club that.
I've worked at clubs in the past where that was kind of what they wanted and and that's what you do.
But yeah, it's funny how I always think of that. Like, so back in Melbourne they have a lot of the old Samba.
Of courses had these tea boxes, these steel tea boxes. They're not really I don't think you'd really use them for anything now, but they were for.
Back in the day. They were a rubbish spin or.
I think they even might have put seeing them when they were before tea's right and they were using sand tea.
Off of them.
Those things were great. They look Kingston Heath still has them. They looked beautiful. But yeah, over here and they love some furniture over here. At some past clubs I've worked out, they they want a lot of furniture. I mean likely, I'm most places i've been, I've been able to convince them to go back the other way and it's been met favorably.
And but yeah.
There's some places you go to where it's it's everywhere. But yeah, you and I visited some golf courses where get a couple of holes in and.
Well, yeah, you you look at it and you think, God, there's they just spent twenty thousand dollars on something that they didn't need to spend twenty something thousand dollars. And then you go in like the best spots, like the coolest places have this like homemade stuff and like it's completely authentic and unique to them. And and that's that's the thing that it's like it happens where they think, oh, we're dressing up the place, but really what you're doing
is you're you're you're making it more tacky. And if you just went out and hand made something, cut down a tree and and and just chopped up some blocks from the course, you'd make the golf course better and you'd make the whole experience more unique. Like that, I think that's like an underrated part. And I don't know, you know, where it falls, because I'm sure there's like a golf committee or some committee at a club that I don't even know, you know, what the title of
is that dresses these things up. But at the same time, it almost should be in the hands of the superintendent because what it would do is it would it would create a unique feel and it would become it's almost like a culture thing for the club.
Yeah, there's definitely a movement back to it, right, guys making their own benches out of logs, cutting half and making their own team, and there's definitely a movement back to that. But yeah, you're right, Like the best clubs in the country, I don't have it, almost don't have anything ye down on Long Island.
Or clubs in Philadelphia and in New Jersey.
I mean I remember going to one of the best clubs in the country once and their scorecard box on like the second tea, so if you forgot to get a scorecard, we tee it off get another way. It was just in a mailbox. I think this is what you're talking about. And I said to you, if that was at some clubs I've worked out in the past.
We'd have bought a.
Two thousand dollars scorecard box, you know, polished hardwood, looking beautiful. But here's the one of the best courses in the country and they've just gone an old mailbox with the scorecards in it.
It's perfect.
And I went to the GIS show this year. I've walck it around and I've said it all these things. I'm like, how who goes there and buys this stuff? Like you could do? There's so many things. It's like, I don't know. There's the same thing going same thing going out in golf. It's like, you know, people buy sixty dollars alignment aids that are just wood sticks that are you know.
Like yeah, it's like you and I have walked around the gas show that you started almost hyperventilating walking past some of those furniture schools.
Well, it's like it's these are the same clubs that'll say, oh, we don't have money to fix the golf course, and it's like you just spent twenty five grand on useless shit for around the golf course. You could spend that and you could you could expand a green for that much money.
It happens, right, Yeah, it has happened.
I mean, but you hope that's where you get the right people in place, and you can if you sell your vision well enough and you kind of explain it well enough, most most places will be open to most places.
Get it. There's definitely a movement back to that. Back to that. I think a lot of places are starting to go go away from that. Yeah them where it was maybe twenty years ago.
Yeah, it'll be cool. I mean, like, I think the more golf can pull on its history. And obviously there are courses that don't have that history. But you don't make something, you know, it makes something yours because if you make something, then it's yours. Nobody else has that.
Well, COVID's probably helping that out a little bit, right, because a lot of golf courses had to pull everything off the golf course.
That's true, and maybe.
Some places now realize that, well, jeez, you know, if you've if you've taken the ball washers off the golf course, maybe people are like, well, do you really miss them?
Or maybe you don't need them?
Right, It's probably COVID's probably one of the worst things that could have happened to some of those companies that make furniture, right, because.
Ball washers maybe the thing that bugs me the most. And here's the other thing, with the benches and stuff. Nothing's better than just going and sitting down under a tree. That's the best thing to do. Find some shade sitting down on the ground.
Yeah, well you'd hope pay some plays good enough that you don't really you.
Haven't you haven't been to public golf course on the weekend in a while, Steven, Right, Well.
I mean yeah, yeah, it's funny. I know, like a lot of superintendents I talk to, that's a bit of the talk right now. Right COVID has a lot of clubs have removed bunker ranches and ball washers and all the knickknacks, and some clubs are kind of realizing that maybe we didn't need all that, and so there's there's I know, there's a lot of superintendents I talk to.
That's that's what they're all talking about right now, is whether they they can at least reduce some of it, or whether some of it even needs to go back at all.
What are some things on the matenance and like the turf side that you've learned from COVID and restrictions and you know, less staff I imagine, and I.
Mean I'm sure I think everybody having to do trying to do the same with less.
Right.
It seems like players up at most clubs, and which is a great thing. So on the turf side. I mean, there's only there's only so much you can change. I'm trying to think it's it's a hard one. I mean, we've definitely changed the way we most some stuff and trying to figure out different ways to do things. But from the biggest impact I think is that is what we were just talking about, the knickknack thing that seems to be the biggest that seems to.
Be the one that everybody's talking about.
The guys that I talk to, that seems to be the biggest thing that everybody's talking about.
I'll found money. Yeah, my book. All the golf course accessory companies are going to come after me now.
Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna have to plot the way you walk around the GOS show next time you plot your way around Yeah.
Yeah. Hey, it's it's been fun. You're on Twitter, you're on Instagram, big history and architecture dot. I recommend following Steven. He's got he brings a lot to the to the social media world too.
It's been great and thank you Anddiot you do a great job.
And I've been listening for a long time back to when you and I first met at Belmont that was a fun day.
That was the one that was a place where lots of money mismanagement there with us brand new cart pass and then crying poor.
Oh that that was. That was That was a good couple of days that.
Now, thank you for everything you do. And you and I have talked about this before many a road trip. Listening to the pods has got me through many a road trip.
So great job. I appreciate it.
Hey, thanks for coming on. It's a I'm glad we got to do this. It's it's always fun talking. So uh we'll talk soon and thank you definitely. Stager and Plosis appeared Anconada pay Company of Canada