Superintendent Series: Eric Richardson of Essex County Club

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The Friday Egg Superintendent series is brought to you by Toro. Among the countless reasons why we go to the course, communing with Mother Nature, sits near the top of mosless and the company most trusted to responsibly maintain our golf environments, Toro continues to lead the way. Its line of all electric and hybrid mowers and vehicles do their jobs as well as ever better. Actually, because while their precision, power, reliability and comfort remain the same, this new breed reduces engine exhaust emissions, noise pollution, and increases efficiency and ease of maintenance. If only our golf swings were that productive and sustainable. Follow add Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor to schedule a demo. I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:52
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:59
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off of the hut. All right, Welcome back to another edition of our Superintendent series on the Friday Podcast. Today's guest is the director of Grounds at Essex County Club in Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts, a wonderful place. It is the sixth member of the us GA and a fantastic doll Ross design. This is Eric Richardson. He's been there for a while and a wonderful guest of Michigan State Turf Grad And we were out at the g CSAA show. We were actually at the golf tournament which was presented by Toro, so it was wonderful to be out there and mingle with UH superintendents from all over the country. So, without further ado, here is Eric Richardson. Do Boston people fit the stereotype they are? They as angry as they say they are.

00:02:26
Speaker 2: I would say all stereotypes have a smidgeon of truth, but I would call them salty, not angry. But once they welcome you in, they treat you like family. But they have to accept you. It's not you can't force your way in.

00:02:39
Speaker 1: I you know, my first job out of college was a sales job, and it was a trucking sales job. So like shit goes wrong all the time. That sound enjoyable, it's awful. And I had this client he was like the angriest person from Rockton, Massachusetts. He used to call like when I was out and people would be like, how do you deal with that guy? But like when you did a good job, he was like incredibly night like you know, but then if you if you screwed up, he told you.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: But you always knew where you stood right always, and so you didn't there was no interpretation. You always And that's that's actually what I appreciate it most about the people in New England is that you always know where you stand. And being a golf course superintendent, you know, sometimes the politics get a little iffy, but when when you have people that are bluntly honest with you, you know, it's easy. It's easier for me.

00:03:25
Speaker 1: To take You've been at Essex since two thousand and seven.

00:03:29
Speaker 2: It would be my fifteen year anniversary on March first.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: It's a long time.

00:03:33
Speaker 2: It's a long time. I've been doing this since I was nineteen on golf in terms of managing golf turf, so almost twenty four years. And I've been in turf management since I was eleven years old. Pushing a mower around suburban Los Angeles.

00:03:47
Speaker 1: LA to Boston. Are you Lakers fan.

00:03:50
Speaker 2: Diehard Lakers fan, diehard Rams fan, diehard Dodger fan. So and you know, I can't stand Tom Brady. So the people in Boston, I'm sorry, but yeah, you know he went to Michigan. Can't roof for anybody went to Michigan, and and b can't root for the Patriots.

00:04:03
Speaker 1: It's fine. I grew up a huge Michigan fan because of the Fab five and then and then I like my I just have the vivid memory, like when I think about Tom Brady, I think about that Orange Bowl against Alabama.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: And Shawn Alexander's running back.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, David Terrell. I played a hole golf with David Terrell or I was a kid. Yeah, him and Brian er Lecker were in the group behind me and a buddy. We were playing at the local course because they practiced in next to the town, the town next to where I grew up, and we knew they were behind us. There were like three holes behind us, and nobody else was on the course, so we just sat on a tee and waited for him to get there.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: You would it would find I find funny about the Fab five is and everybody thinks they want a title. They lost in the finals both years until you know, the Chris Robbers freshman year and in Is in a sophomore year. But people think they want a title. They didn't want anything.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: So so how how do you get out to Boston? Is it just the way of like the turf life where you just kind of followed the job. Ye?

00:05:02
Speaker 2: So I was guided by my professor of Michigan State to because I you know, originally I was going to do an internship at You.

00:05:10
Speaker 1: Were the same as Kyle Heglund, right.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, same with Kyle and Heglund. Dan Meersman was, you know, part of our So yeah, we had a good group Adam Mickemus, who's the executive director of the Michigan GCSA. So we had a great group of people. Not many are left in turf but yeah, I was dead set and going back to LA to go to l ACC or bell Air for an internship. And then you know, when my grandfather passed and I'm like, well, I don't need to go back to southern California. I want to experience something new, something I haven't experienced at all. And I was in line to go to the country club in Brookline, you know, as a young kid, and I was, you know, at that time Bill Spence was doing He had like eight or nine interns, And my professor, Trey Rodgers told me, like, all you're gonna do is push them around. Go to this cool, little quirky golf course and they're going to treat you like an assistant. I was at my Opia Hunt Club and got to work for David Heronian and really fell in love with old school architecture and just became, you know, a golf nerd and it it ate it up, still eat it up today till today.

00:06:09
Speaker 1: So then how long were you at Myopia?

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Speaker 2: So I didn't I went. I went back there after. So after school I graduated, I was able to go do work as a second assistant for John Jennings at Chicago Golf Club, which only furthered my passion for these old school golf courses. And then Dave called and said, you want the first assistant job because my first assistants leaving. I said, okay, when do you want me to start? Like two weeks later? And I jump onto I ninety in the middle of a northeastern snowstorm and pulling a little trailer in my Pontiac grand Am, you know, and then then I'll found my way to found my way to Boston and haven't left since.

00:06:42
Speaker 1: What a what a little lineage, you know, Myopia Chicago, quick stop in Chicago, yep, and then back to Myopia.

00:06:49
Speaker 2: But you know, it's just, you know, you fall in love with these old world clubs, and you know, and it's not about how lush the golf course is. It's about how the ball moves to the property and just the history, you know, and these old buildings you'll you mean really Yankee clubs where you know, they deferred a lot of maintenance, but sometimes it adds a considerable amount of character to a property.

00:07:08
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions sometimes about really great some of the greatest courses, is that there is some element of being like a little rough around the edges, whether it's like not being afraid to let the rough just brown out, like oh, it hasn't rained in three weeks, like it's brown like that.

00:07:28
Speaker 2: But that's character, that's what that's what defined, that's what tells the story of the property. And you know, rustic to me is perfection. Like it's not like people are gonna hate me for saying this, but I can't stand watching The Masters. I watch it. I watch every bit of it. Look at that take, right, I'm not I'm not shy, I'm opinionated. And everybody realized that after this, there's no question I'm gonna have to do.

00:07:50
Speaker 1: You're a Boston person at heart.

00:07:52
Speaker 2: Yes I am, but but you know, like it lush, imperfect, and the perception of perfection because but Gus is not perfect. It's the perception that it's perfect, Like that's just not.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: Well, that's something I had never walked around there until a few years ago, and my buddy always gives me shit because I was out there and I had my camera and I was standing in tree in a grove of trees taking pictures up because they're like if you go walk through like some of the groves of trees, there's dead trees everywhere, and it's like, well, like, why are there's the dead baby trees. It's like, why'd you plant a baby little tree in a grove of trees?

00:08:24
Speaker 2: Well, I would prefer the dead tree to be on, you know, within the sight of the golf hole. So show some character of property, you know, and that's you know, still core and you know Crenshaw and those guys, they like showcasing those old dead trees on the property. We do that same kind of thing at Essex. But yeah, it's it's the perception that it's perfect. It's not perfect.

00:08:40
Speaker 1: I know everybody, everybody. Every golf course has issues. There is no perfect golf course, like every single one. And I think that's like one of the things that one of my pet peeves is like, how like if you say a bad word about one one bad word about you know, any course, Like, oh, like you know you're you're hating on it. It's like, no, every every course has issues.

00:09:03
Speaker 2: But every golfer is critical by nature, like we all critique every golf course to play and every game every.

00:09:10
Speaker 1: Self critical because there's the only way you could love the game is if you hate your own game.

00:09:15
Speaker 2: You hate yourself fish. Yeah exactly. So that's why I like, I hate my golf course, the golf Yeah, I hate the club because it sometimes the things that we can fix we haven't gotten to and it drives me insane. That's what I see when I see when I play Essex or I'm working on a day to day basis, I don't see all the positives, I see all the negatives.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: What what drives you the most nuts about your golf soft? Like eighteen?

00:09:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, well no, this past year was a you know, record breaker in terms of preset. But you know it's a heavy soil site, so it's either soft or wet. There's nothing in between when you have clay soils, so when it's firm and it's dry, we had twenty twenty. It was a challenge from top to bottom in terms of COVID and staffing levels. But we were in a drought, which made me smile because I can then you're given given a control, free control right and things happen.

00:10:00
Speaker 1: When when that occurs, are most super superintendent's control freaks? Would you say?

00:10:06
Speaker 2: Ninety nine point ninety nine nine percent of them? Yes, And you have to be because you know, it's just it's it's a big piece of property. You're managing the number one asset at the club. Like you can no offense to anybody that operates clubhouses. But the clubhouse can burn down, your club can still exist. Golf course goes away. You know, you're you're not gonna exist, You're not gonna you're not going to survive.

00:10:27
Speaker 1: It's funny because like you say that, and I think some people would contend that, But then COVID and twenty twenty happened, and everybody realized that the golf course the was the thing that mattered the most and really the only thing that.

00:10:43
Speaker 2: It was the silver line of twenty twenty. It brought people back, like golf has been struggling since the recession, and it brought people back, and it brought people back in the right way because we weren't putting people in carts. They're walking, they're taking pull carts. They're experiencing golf and in my mind, how it should be experienced on foot.

00:10:59
Speaker 1: Did you notice like a huge difference between you know, like you're at Essex. It's not like you have like a ton of play, but didn't It's not like you're running rounds like Rancho Park, right, but not having carts. How big of a difference did that make? Even with you know, not a huge cart trap You're not a huge cart traff.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: You No, we have we have thirty golf carts total. So even the eighty five year olds walk eighteen. So it's it's a it's a great culture. But you know, but we were forced to use tea times, like the clubs never used tea times, like a couple of events here and there, but no tea times. But when the tea times opened up on the on the portal, everybody felt like it felt like they need to be filled. So it was like a race to get your tea time. So it's I hated that, but it it brought more people to golf because we have a big rackets program which is very successful. But it brought a lot of tennis players to golf. It brought a lot of young people to golf, brought a lot of females to the golf course. And that's what golf needs. It needs more diversification, not just a bunch of us, you know, middle aged white guys go.

00:12:00
Speaker 1: I want to clarify, I don't hate like golf being popular as a procrastinator. I hate when tea times are the avenue that you have to go, which is ninety nine percent of golf. It's tea time oriented. But it's like I can't I can't make a decision right away. I like like to push the decision off as long as I can't.

00:12:23
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Essex is great cause you come on a Saturday morning and they call it the ball Toss, so it doesn't matter who you are, who you want to play with. They throw all the balls in a hat, they throw them up in the air and you go play with whoever comes, whoever's you know, teamed up together. And it's that's how golf should be. It's about making those connections with people you don't normally make connections with.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: So is Myopia. Isn't there some sort of like relationship with Myopia and Essex that goes way back, Yeah, way back.

00:12:47
Speaker 2: Sister clubs. We support each other, we also want to beat each other, so it's competition too, you know, completely different personalities. Essex is a little more casual, a little more laid back, is like you know, going back in time. So but completely different golf courses too, like polar opposites. You know, Myopia's got these tiny you can fit all eighteen Myopia greens on our front nine, that's how small they are. And they're pitch, they don't have a lot of movement. It's a fun golf course, quirky golf course, enjoyable history. And then you go to my to Essex, where we have a lot bigger scale things, are wider a little more forgiving for the lesser golfers, particularly the beginning parts of the ferry, which is what what Bruce Hevener did when he first started. It was kind of widen these landing zones and pinch them in the right spots for the tougher golf court golfer. So even the myopics that come over and play Essex will begrudgingly tell you they enjoy their round better at Essex, and they do in myopia.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: It's you know, that's I had never been up to Boston ever in my life really outside of like just flying into the airport once before this year. One of the things that I was like really taken aback of by the golf all the way down to George Wright, the municipal was like, how you know how much it of care character and how much it embraced like the golf courses embraced their their natural setting. It was something that really, you know, just like kind of shocked me. As obviously I'm in Chicago, everything's like flat and stuff, but like you go to la and it's like they just like most courses try and like present this this setting that doesn't look at all like La and it's like you have this beautiful setting that you try and stray away from. But Boston, I felt like everything just like really was like, you know, you get these rock out croppings, you've get it's just like a beautiful landscape. Talk about the work that you've done with Bruce Heppner and getting Essex back to that.

00:14:42
Speaker 2: So when I started March first, two thousand and seven, and Bruce had been there since two thousand and one, so Bruce did a lot of work with the moaning lines and so but they they the club lashed on a Bruce because Bruce is great in a room, like he's fantastic with a membership, very positive, gets people to buy in quickly. So the first thing they did was change the mining line. So they pulled all the ball washers and all the extra garbage that doesn't need to be on the golf horse trinkets, I'll use that cart signs, and so we're you know, we went to more of a minimalistic approach on the property, but really white like the.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: Wait people survived not having a ball washer.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: I can't remember the last time I used a ball washer, just like, just out of spite, I won't use it. These things are like, you know, all in like six hundred bucks apiece. It's rather special. Yeah, I mean the top parts about if for a parried one is like three fifty four hundred bucks. Why, I don't know why you can dive down that drave at home, but I have used the ball washer yep.

00:15:38
Speaker 1: And that's Curtis James has these like super old school ones from like nineteen to fifty. No, they're the they're the top, but there's like a wood paddle that you go. They're really cool. They fit the place right.

00:15:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine. Unique, that's fine. I'm good with that. But you don't need one on every tee. You could have one at the pro shop. You know, I might actually run my cart into it if it's there, but you know, but no, they're clutter on a golf course. It just doesn't belong. You know, everybody's got rangefinders, everybody's got their watch. You don't need you don't need yardage markers. We don't need we don't need yardages on irrigation heads. We need less, not more on an in golf. And that's what actually drives up the cost of golf too, is all these extra stuff where are we going six for a piece?

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Think about that at a local level, and it gets passed on.

00:16:21
Speaker 2: But then you're also maintaining that. You're filling it, you're paying somebody to put the soap in it, you know, once a week, once every other week, you're paying for the tea towels. Like there's it is cost to maintain it as well. So it's a complete waste, complete waste of money. We were gonna we kind of went on ball washers and we're talking.

00:16:36
Speaker 1: About okay, so you took all the trinkets off.

00:16:38
Speaker 2: Took all the trinkets off. He enlarged the greens considerably, back.

00:16:42
Speaker 1: To you know, how did you do that?

00:16:44
Speaker 2: Well, he started buster, but they started mowing these things out. So when I say they just start moaning, they just start mowing them out. But when I started, they were I mean the greens were probably fifty percent grass, thirty percent dirt and whatever, twenty percent moss. So because they just didn't have the budget to kind of maintain these and grow them in properly. But didn't take us long to kind of fix that, and so the greens got significantly bigger. We went They went from I think three or two point seventy five acres of green space a greens surface to three point one acres. So that's a significant change when you're talking about green space. And then he changed the monon lines on the ferries, which we still have work to do and we're not there yet, but he's significantly when they added about six acres of fairway and again adding them in the right spots, adam at the beginnings of the of the ferries, where these lesser golfers can you know, duff it up there and still enjoy the round and still pinching the better, you know, pinching a little farther up on the whole. Like the first hole is a prime example. The fairway is sixty five yards wide at the beginning, and it pinches to about fifteen yards contay first shot. It's a yes, it is, and it should be at four thirty four. So after that, you know, Bruce and I kind of developed a relationship, which took a little time because he thought it was just the young kid. I was twenty eight when I took the job.

00:17:50
Speaker 1: That's got to be weird when you come in to club you're twenty eight. All your greens committees like probably averaging fifty five. Maybe you know that you know, and then you've got this architect like and the thing most people like, most people are always like, why aren't there any young architects working well? Like fifty five year olds are hiring this architect and people hire their peers.

00:18:13
Speaker 2: Correct, And then.

00:18:15
Speaker 1: You come in and you're twenty eight and you're the you're the like everybody assumes you know nothing.

00:18:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was, I think as anybody was. Everybody skeptical who you are and whether you have the skills to do the job. But my chairman, this was this December of two thousand and seven, so he made it through the season, made some big change changes agronomically. But then we started the construction work up. My Chairman's like, I want all those trees in between fifteen and sixteen cut. And they were all like plantings like Japanese red woods and some just like landscape trees, and they went right into the what used to be part of a bunker. So I cut them all down and I just looked at him like, man, we need some help here because the skill isn't right. I called Bruce and we flew him out that day. He jumps and escapator the next day and him and I core out the bunker, reshaped the whole area, get it regrass and it opens up, opened up the the spring the next season and it was a rape success. So we kind of built trust over time, you know, by little projects, and they kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of scale. But everything's done in house at Essex.

00:19:11
Speaker 1: I think you like hit on something really big because I think this is I see this with a lot of restorations that are a little restoration whatever you want to call it. You know, who knows what a restoration as all you are is like you take all all these trees, but then the scale is completely mismatched, correct, and you know when you take the trees out what you're doing. And scale is the most overused term, one of the most overused terms in golf architecture. But when you take the trees out, you're making the scale of the hole bigger. And then what happens is the features of the whole are really small for this new big scale.

00:19:51
Speaker 2: But it's not just for the holes. For the corridor they were creating right as fifteen is it's sixteen fifteen two ties into one ties into three. So it's the quarter of golf and so it just you know so and again it wasn't a massive project. It's a big bunker and some shaping was involved. But that's where I kind of learned how to run an excavator, what Bruce's thoughts were on how the golf course should be presented. But that started the train of work of in house work. People think that Essex had made all this big jump because we spent a ton of money and hired all these outside contracts. It's not true. It's Bruce me a chainsawn, an excavator house transpired over the last fifteen years.

00:20:27
Speaker 1: Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Toro. For more than a century with cutting edge turf equipment and irrigation solutions, Toro has had your front nine covered and your back nine two. In fact, Toro's always had your back period. Toro is committed to your long term success as tour pros are committed to their shot. That's down to top notch customer support from Toro and it's dedicated local distributors, both of whom are passionate about delivering turf equipment and irrigation solutions that solve real world problems. Follow at Toro, off on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor. Today, the trend seemingly now for restoration has been like, oh, you need to shut down to do this, you need to do that. But then I see like there's a lot of really like courses now that the restorations are older that get like kind of fly under the radar of great restorations like I think about like shore Acres, Like shore Acres underwent like a crazy restoration that was done in house.

00:21:32
Speaker 2: You know, the way we did it was nice because we allowed the master plan to breathe right. It was like a living, breathing document. So we're not like rushing in and trying to get everything done in a six month period. We're kind of just taking our time and working through the property and making sure, you know, making sure everything we do is a success, and expanding upon that every season. So it allows the club to make smart decisions without having to do a broad change over one season. And you know, and you're not shutting the golf course down for play. People get still going to enjoy their golf course.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: Would you say that it allows you to put more attention to detail also into it because you're taking smaller chunks at a time.

00:22:08
Speaker 2: Correct and we're also learning from mistakes and figuring out what pieces of equipment we need. I mean that may seem minor, but it isn't, you know, especially when you're dealing with hillsides that are built on rock. You know. But it was. It's an interesting way to do it too, because it is the Essex way, because things like Ross was the superintendent, he was the pro he was the designer. He was there for five years. Skip Wogan took over for him, he was the superintendent, he was you know, did some design work, changed the golf course. Phil Wogan took over for him, same thing. So it's always been kind of part of Essex where we're not going to do these big, crazy, expensive projects and kind of try to keep it in house, use in house talent. We have a decent sized full time staff because I always say we have two seasons at for the maintenance department is maintenance season, which is May first through Columbus Day, and then there's construction season, which starts the day after Columbus Day and ends on April thirtieth.

00:22:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first time I posted something about Essex I said something about Ross living there, and I got all these comments about like, oh yeah, how many places do you live? But this was the place that was like extremely you know, important and part of his career. Could you talk through like kind of the history as well as you. I know, you're not a historian, You're just a you know, I'm not a historian.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: You guys are much better at that.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: I'm not a historic Garris the history.

00:23:25
Speaker 2: I mean, there are better historians of the club than me. But I would say he started, he started his work, and I mean there's still a debate on who who built the original.

00:23:32
Speaker 1: Nine, which includes the bathtub green.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: Bathtub Green, which we considered the oldest green use the United States.

00:23:40
Speaker 1: But wait, is that I thought the second green was that that's that's the bathtub green is the third? I feel like I heard that people people.

00:23:48
Speaker 2: Think that's great. I said, it's like, but when you're managing turf, I say, it's like managing turf and a toilet bowl.

00:23:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody has seen this, like this green, it's a huge green that on the left side of it. If there's just like it looks like just like a giant depression. If you're if you're a finer droned before I'd ever see in the course.

00:24:08
Speaker 1: They're just this like giant hole in the green. It's like but it's not like giant. It's like six feet.

00:24:14
Speaker 2: It's just like a size of a bathtub. It's like a claw foot bathtub.

00:24:17
Speaker 1: If you guys ever thought about filling it up and putting somebody in it.

00:24:21
Speaker 2: Green's chair different members. Absolutely, that one's gonna bite me in the ass later. You don't have to edit that one out either, but you know it's not you definitely, there's no there's no turf book that shows you how to maintain turf and a bathtub either. So it's it's definitely a challenge, but it's it's a quirky, cool part of the golf course. And that's like, there's no there's no similarity between any hold Essex, Like, they're all different, even the front nine. Whether the hole is difficult or easy, it doesn't matter. They're all different. And that's the best thing about what rosted was the variety, the variety of shots, the angles, the different clubs, Like you just don't hit the same club that often at Essex. And but he spent four years, you know, four years working on the property.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: And making changes right, making.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: Significant changes, turning the nine holes into eighteen, turning par threes into par fours, like the eighth hole was a par three originally.

00:25:17
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's any notes of him changing mowing lines.

00:25:21
Speaker 2: Oh well, all the mowing lines were the same. I mean back then it's a gang mower, so your mowing rough and fair was the same height. So this is there's some pictures where they mowed their tea's at the same height as greens. I having one picture of the tenth tee with the Curtis sisters, so there's some evidence that they had multiple moving heights. But the fairways were just it's a meatal land area and just big area mowers, so it didn't matter, you know, you know, hei to cut wasn't a big deal in the early nineteen hundreds. You know.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. What got me on that is like, you know, one of the things like you hear is with like Pinehurst and Essex is like the greens close to Ross's houses were always like the most interesting greens because he would tweak them.

00:26:00
Speaker 2: You know, it's possible, you know, but you know the second green is you know, stereotypical turtleback. You know, Ross Green sixteen was an original green, so you played with it, played with the surrounds. But that's an original green with just those little subtle movements.

00:26:12
Speaker 1: So what got me thinking is like you're what you said about Like I like to tinker with mowing lines. I feel like one of the things that happens is like, of course gets its mowing lines, and these are the mowing lines and we cannot change them. But like there's no rule that says you can't try something and then change it back, right.

00:26:29
Speaker 2: I am the person that hates people that put themselves in boxes, right, so you know, you know, and things can change and evolve over time with mowing lines too, you know. But there should be more short grass at Essex and we're working on that. You know. We've gone as far as we can without updating some more infrastructure. But there should be very little mode rough and should mainly be fairly high turf.

00:26:49
Speaker 1: Are you when you say infrastructure, are you talking drainage and irrigation?

00:26:54
Speaker 2: So I did the irrigation. We did an irrigation install in twenty ten and I accidentally laid out all the heads that I needed then, So we don't have that any more heads, So it's just drainage, and it's just because of the heavy soil makeup of the property. So there's certain areas that are just low lying that when it's wet, it's impossible to grow turf there. But we are making significant improvements. We spent some money this past fall and some drainage, so we're working on it.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: With with the golf course, it's got some distinct areas and I imagine all of them have their own little quirks and nuances to them, you know. There. I remember we played together when we were out there and we got to like eight and nine and it was like, whoa, this is like rock, this is like sand, yep, and then you've got the heavy clay and then you go up a mountain on like they talk, are you trying to create uniform conditions or is it you know, or consistent conditions or are you more you know, you like rustic? Are you more just like letting it live however it lives.

00:27:58
Speaker 2: Well, there's a little bit of everything there, right, So it depends on what Mother Nature's given me. Right. Seventeenth is I mean, we can't even erate that fairway because it's literally grass on top of rock. There's there's there's an inch of you know, inch of soil and thatch and nothing but pure ledge. So I go grass on rock, I go grass on mud, and I go grass on on on sand.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:28:17
Speaker 2: The eighth and ninth holes are an old gravel pit. That's kind of what they use to kind of build some of the infrastructure around the club. It's the one area that actually drains halfway decent. I just try to create the firm's conditions I can, but every area is going to be a little inconsistent based on its soil, you know, soil makeup. And that's okay. You know, we can get into a big you know, sand top dressing program of fairies, which would be great, but you know it's you know, sometimes it's okay. It the way it is. You know, we just need to make sure that we don't have What we're working on now is just make sure we don't have standing water in certain areas and that you know, particularly around the greens, the ball's moving. You know, I can't stand when balls just plug, you know, five feet from a grain. That's not golf. That's not the way es six should play.

00:28:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's particularly tough for people they don't like the people that need a little bit more help, you know.

00:29:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's I mean, we have two Our membership is very interesting because they have the missing generation just pretty much, you know, from fifty to what's called it sixty now. So you have some of these older golfers that want the extra role, which is great, but in their mind, we try to create a firm golf course each and every day. But in their mind, firm is it means easier. Yeah, and it's not necessarily easier or harder. It's just more enjoyable and funner and more creative. You know, I'd like creative golf and not just target golf. That's not what interests me.

00:29:31
Speaker 1: I feel like it. Firm can be easier when you're really cooking.

00:29:36
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but you know, if you're moving that ball's move anywhere to the left or the right, you might be in the OA.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, exactly. But when you don't have your best stuff really exactly, it doesn't give you anywhere to hide.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: It's like this, the membership gets like geeked, like when they see the golf course goes brown and they're starting to get rolled. They get pumped and which I love to see because they're not worried about it getting too hard, like too hard to too fast. We always have to manage green space to make sure we got whole locations that are playable and we're not losing whole locations. But they love, love the golf course and they don't want it green. They can't stand green, which I like.

00:30:12
Speaker 1: You know, you see all these golfers, it's like catnip Carnival when they post like their goals for a year.

00:30:21
Speaker 2: You've got I'm gonna use them.

00:30:24
Speaker 1: You've got you know, you guys have an off season. You know, in a way do you guys say, do you set goals for like the year?

00:30:33
Speaker 2: And always always, always we always said goals like the bar is always raised every year, and I know that's you know, just a.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: What are the goals like what you know?

00:30:41
Speaker 2: What well? This year is to make sure the golf course plays farmer? You know we had a significant but that's so subjective.

00:30:46
Speaker 1: Do you have like a you know.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: We're installing drainage, we're top dressing, we're rolling more, we're lower more. We do whatever we take, so we are not I'm not a static superintendent. I don't. Everything evolves and everything can change and everything can be improved. And that's not just a cliche that we truly believe that and we try. That's the goal every year is to be better like I've been. I've been the summer never fifteen years. I've been in this for twenty four years, and I still still to this day have the passion to be better each and every day and each and every year, and we'll find a way to be better.

00:31:14
Speaker 1: So like a goal could be like I imagine, was tree removal for a long time.

00:31:19
Speaker 2: It still is, It still is, still is. Yeah, we're not done.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: Where do you need to you know, like people that would look at photos. Obviously, you walk out there and you've got this giant open field that you play in, you know, the first start and then you go back. There's kind of meanders through this property and there's kind of like this back meadow and then you get up on the gravel pit and then you go you wind around this giant rock out cropping and in there you kind of have forest on one side, rock on the other. So is it mostly in that forest section?

00:31:51
Speaker 2: So what happened? So all those areas you're talking about the rockout croppings. Those were third generation forest just you know, we looked for, you know, some trees that we could be kept, but we there was nothing worthwhile to keep. So those were all dense force that removed removed almost twenty acres of forest. But what happened, what was going on is everybody thought that the front nine and the back nine were not interconnected. So opening those vistas like helped create more uniformity between the you know, the front nine and the back nine. And there's just one area in particular that needs to needs to be cut down and that's between seventeen and sixteen that kind of goes back towards uh fifteen, so that I want to see, we want to see the second green from the seventeenth green, all right. So it just opening up these vistas, these quarters of golf, and that's what we've been promoting for, you know, over almost fifteen years.

00:32:36
Speaker 1: Was there a member pushback when you guys undertook this big tree room, Of.

00:32:41
Speaker 2: Course there is, but you just have some you have some good intestinal fortitude, you know, and if you know you're making the right decisions, you know, we make some. We made some bold decisions. There's no doubt about it, but we know. But we did them in the right way. We did them on the cheap so they couldn't complain about the finances. We made sure that everything was completed by May first, so they weren't looking at construcuction going on through the season.

00:33:01
Speaker 1: Was there ever a time in the middle of one of those and if so, what was it where you're like, I don't know if this is the right decision. Of course, can you give it an example? Can you give it? I'm looking for it. I'm fishing for.

00:33:13
Speaker 2: A Yeah, I know, but you're trying to story get me in trouble, you yeah, I mean we okay, Right, So we're clear cutting, you know, essentially clear cutting five and a half acres between the eighteenth t the twelfth T. So you know, when you stood on the eighteenth t you could not see the twelfth green, the eleventh green, the tenth green, you couldn't see any of that. So we're clear cutting all this. And you know, my chair Seth Romans at the time, who really to just just let me go. It's like, go for it. And I said, okay, we got all the tree removal done in eight days, like significant amount off chipped logs hold off and I'm just looking at this hillside. Oh oh, Now, I got to clean all this up. And we got to get it cleaned up before before the before the season starts. So we're up there on the hillside January February, peeling back the mat off the floor. Can't grow grass on the floorst floor, so we got to peel up all these pinis and I'm pulling all this stuff down. We get it all done, and I work. We work crazy hours in January February to get this done. In the comment, I got all spring long, so we had to water it to kind of get you know, get the turf to establish is that we were just watering the rocks. You know, you can't grow gas, so that's just rock, you can, you know, And you know, eventually we were able to grow some grow some grass and it kind of filled in. But if you look at if you look at some pics of twelve and eighteen, you'll see some of the boulders and the rustic you know nature of that area, that natural terrain, and that's what we showcase. But members didn't get it. Like members have a tendency not to be able to visualize the end product. You know, golfers are pretty good at visualization. But even though you're a member of a club, I'm sorry, you're not always a golfer. And so it was hard for them to grasp it. And so my office is on the tenth tee, so I'm in my office. Everybody would comment while I'm sitting there, all my cure, what the hell are they doing over there? That looks like crap, you know, like it constant until we got the turf to grow, So you know, you just got to suck it up. We knew it was the right decision. We knew it was. It just it took some time to establish. And every time you establish in native areas, it takes about three years to really kind of blend and fill in. We got it to filling in about a year and a half, you know, to look like I was supposed to. But yeah, it was Uh. I wasn't worried about losing my job or anything, but yeah, I had to put some ear muffs on a woman in the office.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: That has to be one of the toughest things about you know, when you do these, when you do changes, is like it's not like any other profession. When you do something, it's like you get this brand new product. Like you it's it's as good as it's kind of got.

00:35:31
Speaker 2: You got members that have been there for fifty sixty years. Oh it's always been this way. Hear that all the time. But and they're you know, not a proponent of change, right, So when you make such a significant change, yes, there's a little pushback. But we believed in what we were doing. We did and it was challenging, it was stressful, but that's also what makes it fun.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: What were what were some of the like you talked about, you know, the mowing out that you know how you've done it on the cheap. What were some of the the most cost effective little things that you've done to save.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: Money mowing, mowing, doing the any well, call them bunker restoration, whatever you want to consider that, but it's all in house. So it's all so the club has supplied us with two excavators.

00:36:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's buying buying the equipment on front.

00:36:18
Speaker 2: You have to have the tools. Now, we push the tools to the limit because they don't make tools to scrape a hillside of rock, you know, force fall off the rock. I mean we did some crazy stuff like chaining excavators to other skids steers so it didn't slide down the hill over you know, popping stumps. But having the equipment, having the staff. It's an investment, but it's not it's not a significant investment, and it's an investment that actually pays dividend later in the season because you have trained staff ready to go once we start maintaining.

00:36:44
Speaker 1: So you're doing you say you're building buckers in house. Yep, you know, obviously I.

00:36:48
Speaker 2: Want to call them building. I'd say just yeah, you know, sprucing them up. I would not. We're not doing building bunk or anything.

00:36:53
Speaker 1: Like how how you know obviously you've got somebody like Bruce who's like one of the best in the world at building. How how much are you guys building something or like sprucing up also use yeah, taking a step back looking at it, do you is it? Like how often is it nailed? Do you have to redo a lot of work? Like keep working on stuff? Like you've only.

00:37:16
Speaker 2: Failed a couple of times. We all everybody fails.

00:37:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously, Like like I try and write something and something doesn't work out, and I'm just like all right, I'm done. With that, I I X out the window and I just forget about it. But like if I if you fail, like everybody, like you know, it's a visible thing.

00:37:33
Speaker 2: Everybody fails, and like you know, some of our you know, te builds weren't that great and we had to come back and redo. But you have I mean, as long as the intention is the right intention, even if it doesn't pan out, at least you take those lessons, you take your lumps, and then you go back and you fix it. But if you're doing things in house, it's not an expensive fix. It's just dedicating the time it takes to fix it. But uh, yeah, I learned a significant amount from Bruce in terms of how to operate a mini. He made that many do things never seen a piece of equipment do, And now I can do it, which is fun because it's you know, he's got his headphones on and he's just you know, he's playing, he's he's shaping clay, which is fun.

00:38:08
Speaker 1: And it's amazing to watch one of those guys operate this huge piece of machinery and just like scrape like the smallest amount and you're like how they're like they're.

00:38:20
Speaker 2: Taking the back of the bucket and you're like tapping the around. Yeah, but it's fun, like it's it's so fun. I buy my own escuator from my house, like so I could actually play. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

00:38:30
Speaker 1: What do you do in your house?

00:38:31
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just reshaping the backyard.

00:38:33
Speaker 1: And how how much space is there?

00:38:34
Speaker 2: I got about two eggars of property, so, you know, taking some trees down and reshaping the property. And you know, I don't sit still. So whether it's at worker at home, I continue to try.

00:38:42
Speaker 1: So are you a superintendent of this guy in an immaculate yard?

00:38:45
Speaker 2: No? God, no, no, no, I don't want to grow grass when I go home. I have lots of construction projects currently open. As I'm always playing, I'd rather go out there and play and build something.

00:38:54
Speaker 1: What are you building?

00:38:56
Speaker 2: Retaining walls, taking trees down? What's the landscape for? We put a pool in, and so we had to put the I had to build a was eight foot tall but one hundred and fifty foot long, retainable out of wood that I did myself.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: I imagine that saves a lot of money.

00:39:10
Speaker 2: Uh not when your wife told you not to do it to begin with. But yes, but yes, it saves money by me doing it, but it also gets me out of the house, which is more for my marriage.

00:39:20
Speaker 1: So she probably likes the pool now, right, she.

00:39:22
Speaker 2: Loves the pool, Yes, yeah, but I got a nice little area where can put a green in a little chipping area in the back she doesn't know about yet.

00:39:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what you got.

00:39:30
Speaker 2: The excavator. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to play. It's fun to you. I mean, that's that's my happy place is actually in an excavator.

00:39:36
Speaker 1: Well, you're maybe you need to just you know, change career or skin the golf. Golf construction you know, no, thank youside.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: I know how to do construction at Essex. I'm not sure I know how to do construction elsewhere, like I know the grounded Essex. But you know, and I have been fortunate. I have to have teachers that helped me along the way too.

00:39:54
Speaker 1: You gotta like do a lot of stuff because you gotta you gotta get along with membership. You have to be part po politician, you know, you have to. Then you you're a people manager, you know, and then you actually have to do like you have to have tangible labor skills.

00:40:10
Speaker 2: You know. We you know, you go to school to learn about turf. Right, you go with the job, and the turf is the easy part, right, it's all the other stuff. You know. Managing people is harder than anything I deal with. Yeah, it is. It is a challenge. You I call it we have a great staff, but I call it the melting pot of America because it's every age, everythicity, and you just got to learn how to communicate with every single individually. It's not a broad brush and it's it's always a challenge, but it's always You're always a group super time. It is always a group that love challenge. Like we rise to the casion.

00:40:38
Speaker 1: What you're you're we're at this? Uh the g C s a show you I'm just trade shows. What what are the big benefits of for you come into this?

00:40:50
Speaker 3: You know?

00:40:51
Speaker 1: Is it is it part networking? Seeing people? You know I've been to this would be this is my second one that I've come to. I'm I'm just curious, like you know, as somebody that's you're becoming. You used to be young, but you're becoming a veteran. You're not old.

00:41:07
Speaker 2: I'm forty three, but you're not old. Old. But I've been in business a long time but turf. I mean, the world has changed. The challenges for superintendents have never been greater. There's fewer people to hire, there is more pressure, and the standards aren't changing, they're getting tougher. So the only way to kind of work on that is to work together. To networking is important. You know, going to get education is fantastic. We're gonna sit through I'm gonna sit through a bunch of seminars on turf related stuff and then getting to the show floor and actually seeing what the new technology is and not just what the two the next wave of new technology is, but stuff that maybe help us reduce our labor inputs, which is most most likely our at our profession's biggest challenge moving forward.

00:41:47
Speaker 1: What would be the best way to do that?

00:41:50
Speaker 2: Autonomous mowing number one. And you know, turf is always like the redheaded step child a bag, right, It's like everything goes to agriculture first, and we got to wait ten years.

00:42:00
Speaker 1: They have like autonomous.

00:42:02
Speaker 2: Everything for a long time. Not this isn't recent technology. So we need to get to the point where we're you know, people say we have too many inputs, and that's true, but some of most of our inputs like labor need to be reduced, like need these operations are not sustainable. You know, it's sustainable for a private club that has plenty of funding, but municipal golf is going to struggle if we don't find cheaper ways to maintain these golf courses.

00:42:24
Speaker 1: That's what I think about Len Curtin like all the time when I think about like challenging turf jobs. He Len Curtin is the superintendent at George Right, and it's like he works for municipality. Everybody has to live in the City of Boston that he hires. He hires something for minimum wage and then they have background testing and drug testing. It's like, I mean, you're making people jump through the hoop for a seasonal job, the minimum wage seasonal job with like manual labor. Yeah.

00:42:53
Speaker 2: No, I'm I'm the incoming vice president for the Golf Course Superna Association of New England.

00:42:57
Speaker 1: Congratulations, don't Cort.

00:43:00
Speaker 2: Actually I feel sorry for me, but but my biggest push is, you know, we a we don't pay people enough. You know, I'm I'm well compensated and Essex has done a great job with my staff, but our business does not support superintendents. They're the most valuable employee at every club. I'm sorry, general managers and pros, you're not. You know, I got a great professional, Jack Davis at Essex, who is absolutely phenomenal buising everything we're doing. But it's the ground screws. We're the ones protecting the assets. We're the ones creating the.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: Said at the beginning of the podcast, if the course is gone, there's not exactly generally, there's no general there's.

00:43:33
Speaker 2: No shirts to fold. People are still playing golf. Right, So now you're now you're coming after the trust. I'm going after everybody on this one. I'm gonna get a lot of emails that it's gonna be fantastic coming GM's your next. But but there there are significant amount of challenges in our industry and it's you know, it's not telling our environmental story well enough, like we don't we a we need to do better, but we haven't done enough telling what people what we do and how we do it. You know. It's it's it's you know, golf is booming and we need to take advantage of this this time because if not, it's a lost opportunity.

00:44:09
Speaker 1: It's you know, one of the things that I learned is that what I think is really ironic is like, in most turf situations, the most like glamorous job is the mowing job. Absolutely, But the mowing job is like the most mindless job in the world. You just sit on a mower and I think about it. It's like, so your most skilled, experienced labor goes to the lead the thing that requires the least amount of skill. It doesn't make any sense.

00:44:39
Speaker 2: People are gonna be shock based. But I hate my own grass because it's monotonous. I'd rather go sat, I said, a golf course. Every day. I change cups every day cause that's my that's my thing. I have a direct direct impact on who's playing that day, and if I want to torture them, I can. If I want to be nice, I can, which is a rarity, but but that's that's fun to me. Mowing does like the art of mowing. There's an art and there's a system that needs to be in place, but that's it's a monotonous job.

00:45:02
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're excited to come back out there. That's the thing I'm most excited about. Course. What what's the thing that you think you pick up what's the thing you've picked up on on the brilliance of the golf course over the years, Like you know how, like a lot of places, you just learned so much more every time you go out there. What's something that you've picked up over the years about estecs.

00:45:27
Speaker 2: With regards to my golf game?

00:45:28
Speaker 1: No, no, about the golf course, Like it could be the smallest little drainage feature.

00:45:36
Speaker 2: I am very I mean what I've gained appreciation appreciation for our improvement on the green surfaces because we have no internal drainage whatsoever. We do now we just put it in now. But to be able to create those conditions on heavy clay through just aer rations and top dressings over fifteen years made a significant impact. Like it's the biggest change on the golf courses, the quality of the greens. I mean was it Jack Nichols always had the bigges change. Augusta was going to bankrafts right, just like at Essex. The biggest change has been the quality of the putting surfaces. And that's what I I mean, that's that's where it starts and ends for me, Like you know, that's what Essex is about, is the green sites. Yeah, and if you don't have good greens and you're just not a good.

00:46:12
Speaker 1: Super intent man'll end right there. You know, that's a perfect way to a perfect SoundBite to send us off. So thanks, thanks for coming on pod. How can if people can? You're on Twitter, you got it and you got Instagram. You guys are an active grounds account great Ground.

00:46:29
Speaker 2: Ecc Grounds eighteen ninety three. Follow us. It's a private account, but I'll let you in if I like it. Yeah yeah, And then e Rich Turf on Twitter.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg podcast and our Superintendent series. As a quick reminder, now is the time upgrade your office. Check out our print shop at proshop dot theffridagg dot com and treat yourself to a print. You know, we have a bunch up there. We've got We just added up Pinehurst to the print shop, so that's a you know, it's a popular resort, but we have a lot of other popular resorts that have prints listed there. So check it out and it's at proshop dot Theffridagg dot com and get yourself something that spruce it up to office. It's one of the doldrums of winter. It'll get you to golf season