Superintendent Series: Tyler Marcotte of Brambles

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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 fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egggg Frida egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Podcast and our Superintendent Series. Today's episode is with Tyler Marcott. Tyler is the head superintendent, the growing superintendent at Brambles. This is a new golf course that's being built in Middletown, California, which is just north of Napa Valley, so it is in Lake County,

On, Thanks for having me.

So do you live now up in uh in the NAPA area or are you living in Middleton? Where where do you reside when you you know, when you take this job brand both, where'd you decide to live?

I'm in Middletown now.

The company actually has a couple of houses that they rent that me and my fiance are staying in for now, and then we're actually in the process of putting some offers in on houses over in the Hidden Valley Lake area, So trying to make it as permanent as possible, as soon as possible.

Man, a lot of shape. You got, you got fiance, you got house buying, you got, you got growing in a golf course. This has got to be a wild time in your life.

There's a lot of stuff going on.

Luckily, I've been in we've been engaged for about four years, coming in October, so it's been put off with a bunch of moves in COVID and all that.

So that's the easiest part right now.

Is the date set?

No it is not.

That's it. So no date set. You're just you're you're in the honeymoon period. You're just that's great. How did how did you get into turf?

Well, I started out back in Pennsylvania.

I was working at a Schoogl country club, just in the pro shop, and then I ended up wanting some more hours shifted over. I was doing maintenance crew and pro shop for a while, and then my time just kind of shifted to more more and more maintenance. So I was working full time maintenance, and I kind of got away from the pro shop a little bit and ended up going to school and transferring from my first school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, up to penn State and off and running from there.

So while you were in that intermix, was it an intentional shift into turf? Was there something about turf that made it kind of resonated with you more than the pro shop?

No, it was actually I just I was in college and high school and I just need a little bit of extra money and kind of fell in love with it and loved being outside and seeing the other side of it, and just kind of gravitated that way and I've been hooked ever since.

Nice talk about your kind of your early experience at turf and how you ended up getting over to Brambles, So.

I started out just changing cups.

I was the only real golfer on the maintenance crew back in those days, so I was changing cups and rake and bunkers and the normal stuff that young guys were doing. And then I ended up once I got to Penn State, I did a couple of internships, so I went over at National Golf Links and then one at Clear Creek, Tahoe. I ended up going back to

Are man talk about a wide range of experiences there. Just like throughout you got a question that a lot of people ask me, is like, is turf a area specific thing, like, you know, if if we're looking for a new superintendent, should we be looking for somebody that's from the area or can you transition to different areas?

I did a brief stint in Florida too, just to round off all the corners.

All Right, you're you're the country.

This job is.

It's lucky enough that there's enough golf courses around. And when I was coming out of school, the assistant shortage was really kind of taking place, and everyone needed assistance and it was hard to get them. There weren't as many guys graduating. So if you know, what you're doing, and you wanted to travel, You had all the opportunity in the world to get around and see different courses,

All of it.

Yeah, talk about that a little bit, you know, from the busy public to the very private. You know, with you might only see a couple of golfers a day, How does that change? The you know, the maintenance crew's job and what kind of like the what the atmosphere is within the team and everything.

It's a lot of efficiency is key in those in those fast paced tons of golf. I mean, there's when I was down in Albuquerque, it was middle of the summer. That first group had eighteen green and there was three groups a hole until the end of the day.

And that was at the middle of the COVID boom too, so it's extra busy, right, Yeah.

So if you want to get something done on the first fairway, some project or anything, you better be there at three am and cranking it out because you're not going to get back to it and you're not going to have time to get there. It's a lot of sitting around the guys. It's hard to find stuff for the guys to do in the afternoon because obviously you want to be weary of golfers and not be too

Was that was that a tough adjustment coming from like Clear Creek, where probably a lot less round seasonal place. You know, Albuquerque, I'm assuming you got golf pretty much year round.

It's year round, depending on the weather.

So they'll close for a couple of days at a time depending on a snowstorm. But if if it's playable, there's people playing.

How how is Albuquerque compared to Tahoe weather wise? Is there a lot of similarities?

Actually there are there more than you would think.

It gets hotter, for sure, it's a little bit more humid, but that the heat is more or less what is higher. The elevation is about the same, so your UV and all that stuff's about the same. But it definitely gets closer to one hundred in Albuquerque than it does in too.

How does elevation have a big impact on maintenance side? This is something that I don't know. You know, I've played very little mountain golf in my life, and you know, I just I'm genuinely curious how what it's like maintaining and mountains.

It can I mean I noticed in Tahoe for sure, once I got out there. I mean you're higher up, you're closer to the sun. Things bake out UV lights a little bit higher. It just a little bit dries out a little bit faster, it gets hotter faster.

What type of grasses are you were you dealing with there?

That was all cool season, So we were a mix of bluegrass fairways and then bent grass, teas and greens.

And then what type of year would you're You're obviously like in Tahoe you got ski but then it gets super hot in the summer and but it's dry. What what was your season like in Tahoe.

So we opened usually at the end of April. I think they just opened a couple of weekends ago. They opened early May, end of April, and then they shut down at the end of October.

Gotcha, So pretty short season.

It's a it's a spread up there, that's what we call it. Some some places are marathons and this that was a sprint.

So then you go down to somewhere where it's pretty much year round. You know, as a superintendent, which one do you prefer because that obviously you know there's it's you know, depending on what part of the country and you deal with the you know where you're going to be where you are now brambles will be a year round thing. But then you know you'll you go to Tahoe. It's just it's a sprint. So which one would you Which one do you prefer? Have a gad experience in all of them.

I think I like the year round. It's just you can't it's easier to get into a groove more or less than that may first hits and bam, you have a thousand things to do and you only have so much time to get it done and get it done properly to provide those conditions that people want. When it's year round, you kind of have that that little bit of leeway where you don't have two months to make something work.

You have a little bit.

Of time and you can find your groove and find your times to do things without having that that really short season to make it work.

I imagine with with the superintendent job, with it when it's in that year round phase. One of the hurdles is is almost like a personal one where you accepting it's okay to be away because I feel like so many people.

Yeah, and you have to surround yourself with the right people for sure.

We've I have here.

I have my assistant Ryan, who's been awesome and he's been fantastic. So if there's ever time that one of us needs to get away, we can both rely on the other one to keep things around and keep things smooth.

It's the same thing we had in Tahoe.

We had a couple of assistants and we were okay getting away for a little while. Not during the season, but we have had enough people to cover what was going on.

Which was always good.

How how's the staffing worked with you? Obviously, Bramdble, it's not open yet and you're you're I imagine in a way you're building your team as opposed to most superintendents kind of go and they inherit teams. What what's that experience been like where you're getting to kind of shape your team.

It's it's awesome because we have a lot of it's word of mouth. I've noticed in the industry. A lot of you people got people know people that want jobs, and you bring them in, you meet them, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. We've been very fortunate. It started off it was myself and my assistant. We came on at about the same time. We brought two guys on

I mean the nice thing too, is that it breaks up monotony right where you can do a lot of different things. I think that's one of the neatest things about being a superintendent is like, you know, it could be a blessing and a curse. Is like you don't know what the day is bringing you when you go to the golf course.

You know, especially especially here when you're growing one in, things change it Things change every hour around here.

Which is it's fun. It's chaotic, but it's the good chaos.

It's not trying to try to fix a sprinkler before that first group's t and off, But it's fun.

Is this their first time growing in a golf course? Yes, tell us a little bit about that experience and you know, and obviously, you know, I think most people look at it and be like, that's got to be a lot of fun. But you know, let us in a little bit about how that's different from you know, your your experience as a young superintendent. You know, you got your first head solo job a year ago and now you're growing in a new golf course.

It's it's definitely fun. It's like I said, it's very chaotic. There's a bunch of different things that you don't that I've never had to deal with in my day to day career that I have to now, whether that be different types of equipment that we're using. We're putting in the electrical pads for the new maintenance shot. Just things that I haven't really dealt with before that I get to do now.

And we haven't had a mechanic here, so.

Learned a lot of mechanics, learned a lot of mechanics stuff in the past couple of months and it's been great.

I'm glad I learned how to do it and know how to do it.

But what's what's fed the what's fed the toughest mechanical hurdle that you've had to overcome, It's got.

To be the old, the old equipment that we have out here. It runs like a dream when it's running, but it wants to break. It wants to break really easily. Now we got the grind, we got the grinders fired up, and it's it's been fun, to say the least.

So the approach to Brambles, I think obviously people think destination golf. They think about like Ritzy, you know, you go you go to this experience and it's you're there and everything is like, you know, beyond five There's a couple of different ways to think about destination golf, right, and one of the ways is you go to this this place and it's beyond five star. The conditioning is is mint. And you know, I think you'll probably get to that with the conditioning is going to be mint.

Well, so right now, I mean, like you said, the word like mint, uh, mint for us is a lot different than than what most people would think of.

You know, it's not gonna look.

As as maintained as I think a lot of places expect. We're gonna we're going for that rustic, that on the brink of death, firm and fast kind of vibe that we want. But for right now, we just got to get the grass in. So it's gonna come in green, it's gonna come in healthy. We're gonna be doing all the fertilizing, all the watering, and then once it's established, we're gonna really really pull back on it and see what it can do and let it bake out, let it firm up, and and let it be firm fast

So that process where you're you know, you're giving your having the grass a lot of inputs at the start to get it to establish. But then once that establishes, and then you're gonna go the complete opposite direction of that growing kind of ethos? Is that challenging it away? Like, you know, I'm not an expert on turf. You know, I probably know just a little too much at this point where I'm the worst person you could have giving any advice. But you know, is that difficult? Like is

It's good in the long run. I mean the more the stronger you can you can make it, obviously, the better it's you kind of have to coddle this this oyser grass and get it going, and it takes a little bit more to get it established it in the ground, but it's a real it's a real hardy grass and it can really take a lot. It can take a beating and take a drought. It's real drought tolerant and we're really gonna see what it can do.

But that's down a lot once it's.

In obviously that I think that's a big part of of where you are. And I think when you think about it, what you you're talking about, we're not going to water it a ton. And obviously you're in the part of the country where water is a is a big deal. You know, drought is a is a and

I mean, it's I think a lot of it was the low input when they made the decision to go with the zoysia, and then we were running Xeon zoysia in the fairways and tease and then greens are going to be a prism zoysia. But I mean the drought tolerance. Just for some numbers. We've been run in about four to five minutes a day total on the eighth Fairway, which is pretty well grown in. It's about eighty to ninety percent covered right now and it looks looks fantastic.

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So I'm going to tell them.

I'm going to tell our shepherd where to take them, pretty much, and that's my extent of it.

Explain the sheep. Explain the sheep for those that don't are aware.

So we have we have about sixty eight sheep I believe out in the pen right now, and the ultimate goal is to try to move them around the golf course and incorporate them into our maintenance practices and get away from string trimmers and rough mowers and all that sort of stuff. So logistically it's going to be it's going to be fun to figure out and see what we can do and what we can't do. But that's part of what we want to do here, and part of our ideology here is we're learning as we can go.

We're going to figure stuff out and.

What works and what doesn't work, but we're hoping to incorporate them as much as we can and not make them so much as a novelty but an actual piece of what we're doing.

So you hired a shepherd, Yes, did you hire?

The owners hired her.

I wouldn't even know to ask her if it was up to me, but yeah, she's coming in and she's going to coordinate with us, and she'll be part of our staff more or less on the golf maintenance side. But when it comes to the health and the well being and shearing and all the stuff that goes into them,

Those native areas.

When we have them in their in their electric fences and their temporary pens, what they do it it looks really cool and it makes for a really cool native area. And if there's anyone that can re create that with a weed whacker, and then they have a job out.

Here, what how's it different. Obviously, native areas, I think are where so many clubs struggle because what happens is they have this idea of this low input native area that oh, it's gonna be great, it's gonna look great, it's going to play great, and we are going to have to put a lot of work into it. And what ends up happening is they end up being the

Like?

What what are we looking at in terms of uh, you know, you said it's a great native, What what does that mean?

So they take it down pretty much. They take it on most of the dirt and spots, and they move around and they leave they leave just these little tufts. It's like those long, those long fescue plants that you'll see every now and then. They just leave a couple of those all over the place, and it's real spotty, and it looks real natural, and it's that natural look that we're going for, where it's not fairway mode rough at two inches and then native outpast that it's gonna be.

You'll probably find your ball. So that's more or less what we're looking for.

Yeah, that I think that's like actually my favorite. I was at the country club last year and some of their native was completely mowed down with a weed whacker, and I kind of thought to myself, like, this is ideal because you have like these patchy parts like where there's grass tough, but then there's the dirt, and your ball could sit up perfectly on one of those grasps tough,

Ud.

I think that's a really cool dimension of golf.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And then the other part of the Sheep is kind of James's whole idea with this, with this property and kind of kind of meshing old the old century and the new century into it. He was born, he was born one hundred and fifty years too late. Everyone jokes about he loves the old style and we want it to look we wanted to have that look, and those sheep kind of bring us back. It's nothing new necessarily, it's it's just older than people get.

It's just old. Well.

I think it's gonna be a big juxtaposition from you know, if you go just down the road to Napa, the golf and Napa is is very lush, and you know, it's it's a lot of tourists that are traveling in expecting that resort golf experience, and you're gonna go over the hill to to your to middle to town and you're gonna be in a completely different place, like it is gonna feel so much more like the area. You know, it's gonna look natural because it's of of that aspect

So that's that's what we have to figure out, and that's what we're hopefully trying. We're going to try to start figuring out that plan this summer and try to find out a way to move them around effectively to where they're getting stuff done and but they're covering enough

And maybe that's the way to do it.

Maybe it's not, but it's it's gonna take a lot of trial and air, and we're excited to figure it out, excited to see what it takes.

I imagine too. Then there's gonna be areas of like where there's a bunch of holes that are packed together. Having been out there, you know there are it's a core crunch Shaw design, So you're gonna have these returning spots of interest where the course kind of weaves all together. There are gonna be areas where, like you know, there's three or four holes near each other, they're gonna be able to knock out a bunch. It's gonna be I mean, And then they just crossed the fairway into another area.

Probably have to do it at night or early morning before play, especially because we're dog friendly out here, and that's our goal is if dogs. If your dog is able to be off leash and and control itself, then it's more than welcome out here with us. My dog

What do you think about maintenance? I always especially when you go to some places, like in my mind, I have like wing Foot in my mind, where you have your kind of smaller strip of fairway grass and then you have just a load of irrigated turf rough that's just rough that's maintained and it's mowed. And I think about all the time that's spent by staff on a mower mowing this grass. That's relatively you know, anybody that's mowed a big yard of grass, it's relatively mindle it's

For sure, I mean on top, I mean for out here, if we wanted to mow all of the the native that you want to call it, where we would have the sheep, if we want to mow that down with machines, I mean we're gonna You're looking at three to four mowers, which is three to four more people to operate those mowers, and the labor hours itself that comes with it.

It's it's in. It's a big amount of money.

I mean over a couple of years, and it's going to get into six figures by the time that we buy the mowers and pay for the labor and all that kind of stuff, and it gets pretty expensive. I think we'll save a lot of save a lot of money if they do work out.

So one question you've alluded to James, and for those that don't know, that's James Duncan. He's an associate for the Core Crenshaw team and a real driving force behind this project. Obviously, Bill and Ben have been heavily involved as well. I'm curious you come from Clear Creek, which is another Core and Crenshaw golf course. What's the approach, Ben like with them? You know, in the design process. Obviously the golf course is really coming to life? Now?

It's been awesome.

So the main I mean, I mean Bill A couple of weeks ago he came out and we walked around the course. Mainly it was trying to figure out all the old where the fairway lines were, or where all the lines were, where all the grass was supposed to be. This past winter, with the rain at a lot of weeds came in on stuff that was previously finished. So since I got here, we were trying to mow stuff down and find some of those old lines and get them prepped so that we can do the grassing this year.

I imagined it was just like kind of like a tour and you know, of like a class on golf architecture in a way.

Right, it was a tour of a place that I've been working for two months, and then things that I had no idea were even out here.

We're out here.

There were some tea's that we found that got weeded out and I didn't know existed. But we made our way through and we're working working to find it back every day.

Was there anything like is do you have a specific example of something that he explained that you otherwise may have not understood and maintained differently than you plan to now.

Yeah, actually I have a good So the sixth hole, there's two fairway bunkers that are on the left side of the fairway. I thought they were in the middle of the of the fairway because there were a couple of heads that got put in that might not have been necessary to the left of those bunkers. So we were mowing it down and getting it ready to till

So that was that was new to us.

But the sheep just got a little bit extra.

Room to rome exactly they'd we pushed them in and now we have a little bit, a little bit of an area for them.

So you're at the springing phase with a lot of holes. You know, walk us through kind of what the next uh, what the next year looks like for brambles or hopefully looks like obviously you're you're kind of at the will of mother nature with a lot of stuff. But you know what, what kind of is it where you looking at the next year.

So this year's fully grassing one hund and then a little bit of maintenance on the We have a couple of greens, teas and fairways that got grassed last year

So what when's the best grass growing time there? It gets really obviously very hot in the summer and it's very dry. When when is the ideal kind of time to grow grass for this summer.

For for this grass, it's in the summer. It's when it's hot, hot and hot and sunny all the time. If it was if we were planning anything else, that would change. If we were doing cool seasons, it would change. But we've really been waiting for it to heat up. We get a couple couple of days where it's seventy five eighty and we get excited and stuff starts popping and we're getting amped up and ready to grow some grass.

But we're really waiting for it.

We really wanted to get into that that hot, hot eighties nineties heat for us.

Yeah, something that was illuminating. I was in San Francisco for a while and I made regular I made regular stops over to like we're said, to see their project. You guys were just too far away from me to make regular stops. A little too far. Hopefully I'll be out there in the near future. But the uh, the thing I noticed is, like I imagine this is part of it is in your role, is that if I went every if I went like two days in a row,

Yeah, definitely. I mean that's where pictures come in handy.

I mean, I stand out on the eighth hole all the time because it's our best looking one, our most successful one right now, and I have to go back and flip through the picture I took on the first day, and it's it looks the same as it did in my head, but when you pull up the picture, it's a totally different, totally different hole, and it was still dormant back then. And the more you're here and you look at it every day, like you said, it doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot.

But when you go back and.

You look at those pictures and you kind of remind yourself what it was. It definitely is moving a lot faster than you think it is.

With you talked about creating kind of like a family culture with a smaller staff. What types of things are you doing to try to foster that as a manager.

Just getting everyone involved in different things and not trying to isolate people doing the same things all the time and working together. I mean, we don't have we're in that stage where we don't have a lot of individual.

Projects to do.

Everything's kind of all hands on deck and team oriented, so everyone works together all the time. No one's really out on an island sitting on a mower twenty four to seven. Everyone's just together and we I mean, we do lunches here every day. They do cost go runs and we cook lunches here for the guys every day, and everyone kind of gets along and everyone's together. But

With smaller crews, who's has somebody kind of risen to the top as the is the chef of the of the group.

It's a little bit different. Every day.

When we are our irrigation crew, there's a team of four guys here that's been doing an awesome job. They have one more hole of irrigation to do, number seventeen, and then the range team, and they usually take They usually take the lead on the grill, that's for sure.

Oh yeah, it's gonna be interesting when they're when they're out of there. Who's gonna I'm curious how someone like you know, becomes it is. Are they gonna just are they gonna just say casually one day I could cook, I could cook today, and and then is it automatically accepted that they're the cook if they do a good job. I feel like it's like one of those things like you never want to play darts against the guy that says they've played a little bit of darts, you know.

Yeah, right, yeah, I get.

I mean it seemed because they were here by themselves all winter long, even before I got here, So they were it was just four guys here pretty much all year, all winter, four or five guys, so they cooked for themselves, and then as we started establishing ourselves and bringing in the golf maintenance crew, they just kind of held on to it.

What's been the vibe of moving to Middleton? Obviously, you're you're just outside, You're in Lake County, you're just outside Napa. You your short drive, what's that been like for year? And your wife like, it's been a big adjustment.

It has and it hasn't. We're both kind of we're not city people in the slightest, so Albuquerque was a big stretch for us. But we've really enjoyed it so far. It's it's nice, it's quiet. We come out usually after work, I'll go home and we'll get the dog and we'll come out and just walk a couple holes out here, and it's it's country living, which is what I'm used to. It's how I grew up in small towns. It's just on the other side of the country. So it's been really it's been really good to us.

That's awesome. That's awesome. I can't wait to get up there and see it. You know, it's been a while, and I probably should send you some of the photos I took because I might have some of those grasping lines you're looking for.

Well, yeah, whenever you whenever you make it up, I'll show you some of the pictures that we have still we have to and kind of where things are going.

I'm I'm excited to get out there, and you've probably got a million things to do. So I'm going to let you go and thank you so much for your time. How can people find you if they want, if they want to hear more about what you're doing you, if they're superintended, ask what I have questions about about your Zootia? How do they get get in touch with you?

I'm on I mean, I'm on LinkedIn and that's pretty much. I'm on LinkedIn and I do have an Instagram. I don't really use it, but that's pretty That's pretty much yet.

So well, we'll see you soon, And thanks so much for coming on, Tyler.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.

Thank you for listening to our Superintendent series, and thank you to Tyler our first time. Today's episode was edited by the wonderful Meg Atkins. Thank you Meg. As a reminder, we are heading we're nearing another major championship, We've got some content up if you have not yet, we just released a really great video on Southern Hills in my mind to step up. We had Gil Hanson was in the video talking about Southern Hills and the unique challenges it will present. It is on YouTube, so you should