Superintendent Series: Aaron McMaster on the Renovation of Orchard Lake

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast in our Superintendent series. This episode is brought to you by Toro. For more than a century with cutting edge turf equipment and irrigation solutions, Toro has had your front nine covered and your back nine two. In fact, Toro's always had your back period. Toro is as committed to your long term success as tour pros are committed to their shot. That's down to top notch customer service from Toro and its dedicated local distributors, both of whom are passionate about delivering turf equipment and irrigation solutions that solve real world problems. Follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor today. Today's episode is with Aaron McMaster, superintendent at Orchard Lake Country Club outside of Detroit.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:53
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in.

00:00:54
Speaker 1: A fried egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida egg Frida egggg Frida egg bridegg life, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. That help you as a superintendent, playing every once in a while.

00:01:32
Speaker 2: I mean I used to play a lot, you know, back when I was thirty thirty five, forty, and you could tolerate actually practicing and playing, you know, once twice a week so and I was good, not an old hag like I am now. But I think it's a must. I think if you can't play the game, you don't understand how people think when they're out on the golf course. I'm not really sure how you maintain their turf, you know, So it's it's it's definitely a key. I don't think you have to be good, You just got to. You just got to understand the game and maybe why somebody might be complaining to you that the approach is soft and the greens are firm, or vice versa, something like that. If you don't play, it's tough to understand that.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: Can you ever think of a situation where you had played and you saw something and then you changed the way you guys maintain.

00:02:21
Speaker 2: It, not like immediately, because it's it's pretty difficult to change something other than you know, maybe you went on and you played and you had a few bunkers that you weren't happy with, you know, the quality that would change quickly, but it's more based off of a season long, like, we didn't like how this played this season, and you know, let's start to work on some things to change that. So now, if you have some small things that maybe irrigation wise, you could change quickly to firm something up or something that you didn't recognize right away, Yeah, that can happen, but I feel like most of it is based off of a season long, you know, evaluation of your golf course and then how your membership changes. Right Like, since we've renovated, our membership has changed, you know, quite a bit. We have a lot what I would say is maybe more players, and they obviously want it firmer and faster, and so you can't do that overnight. You can't just go in and turn the water off. You'll you'll have a lot of dead grass. So you you got to work, you know, your your turf and stuff so that you can give them that kind of condition. But it's definitely drastically different than it was ten years ago.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I'd never thought about that. It's that it's not like you can just go out and buy a new rug and change the way your golf course looks like. It takes a lot of time to make a big change on a golf course. It's a it's a long term project for almost all of the all of the changes rather than a short term fix.

00:03:53
Speaker 2: No question. Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's a living system, and if you try to do anything too radical to it, you can cause a lot of problems, a lot of headaches. So you know, you're sort of you know, dancing with the partner that you got when you you know, when you get to like June for us in this area, and you're kind of stuck in that until you get to maybe like September and you can start doing more work on the the way you want, you know, your your sword to turf to perform. Those are the times that you can really get after it.

00:04:22
Speaker 1: When you get to July, it you're at a place where you're kind of because of the weather, you're just kind of stuck with you know, this is the way it's going to be for a while.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: Right, correct, Yeah, I mean, you can you can really try to make some wholesale changes with cultural practices in for us typically late March to early May and then you're sort of set up for a while. You're you're you really don't want to go out and punch holes in the ground or over sand or things like that when it's eighty five ninety degrees outside. You just kind of at that point, you're just managing your system to get you through those stressful months and then you can get back after it again in the fall, September and October and try to you know, get towards those goals of whatever your memberships, you know, expectations are. And that's really what drives us here. It's not necessarily you know my two cents. I mean, we have three hundred people here and you've got to try to balance across that spectrum, right, Like what's what's firm enough for the good golfers, but not too firm for kind of your higher handicaps or you know, seniors, women things like that. So, you know, at a place like this where we have a diverse amount of players, it's definitely a balancing act.

00:05:41
Speaker 1: You've been here for a while, twenty two years, is it so? Orchard like? And you've been you know, obviously through a big renovation, but in terms of being here for twenty two years, how you've changed in terms of your working with committees, Like you just talked about where it's not my but you obviously have a lot of input. But how would you say over the years your your approach to working with memberships changed?

00:06:12
Speaker 2: That is a good question, I would say, you know, I mean I was I was like thirty when I when I, uh got the superintendent's job here. So you know, you think you know a lot, you don't know a lot. You're just you know, I mean, just hair on fire. Hey, I'm gonna, you know, just absolutely blow up the world. Right. But I was fortunate I had a really good Greens chairman for my first four years here. Uh and you know, we we kind of sat down and had like concept for what we thought the first like four or five years would go like, because you really can't do these things like in just a short period of time, Like there's got to be a longer vision. And that's where I feel like the committee as a whole that that's like that that should really be most of their job is what's our what's our vision? And you know my job is to try to produce that on a day to day basis that you know the conditions play the way that they want. You can't have someone down here asking me if I you know, rolled the greens today. You know it's it's it's it's more they're they're there to look at, you know, a broader vision of where we're going, and and you know what our results are too, obviously, I mean, we get evaluated. But I would say I've gotten a little better at, you know, handling the politics. I think probably all young superintendents at some point, you know, put their foot in their mouth says you shouldn't maybe push the envelope a little too far, things like that. Uh So, I so I've kind of gotten better at just you know, navigating all that. And and you know, obviously we have a way that we want to see the turf, you know, be able to be maintained, which requires budgets and capital expenditures and things like that. And that's probably like the biggest difference of what I have a much better handle on now than I did, you know, when I was thirty years old.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: So when you came here, it was it was before you guys did the Keith Foster renovation restoration. I never know what to call them, but.

00:08:16
Speaker 2: Nobody does anymore.

00:08:17
Speaker 1: I know it is blurred blurred lines, but talk about you know what that project and obviously, you know, huge transformation of the club and as you mentioned earlier, the culture, but talk about going through that process from the beginning to the end and just the value of being here and having you know, a relationship with the club before you started that project.

00:08:47
Speaker 2: So I took over in two thousand and one and the club had just renovated all the bunkers in nineteen ninety six with hard hills, and there were some things that the club didn't necessarily like about the way those bunkers had played a lot of balls would roll up to the edges of the grass and things like that. So so when we took over, we decided to look for a new architect, and we settled the committee interviewed. I think it was about five people settled on Keith Foster. Way too long ago now for me to even tell you, you know, why we settled on him, but it was I do remember that everyone unanimously was like, this is the guy. It helped that I had been here, you know a little while before that to kind of explain to him, you know, here's what their issues are with the golf course instead of just me coming in an architect coming in right away and you don't really have a good feel for the membership and what, you know, what are they trying to get done. I think that that's a tough, you know, situation for superintendent and an architect to get put into, as somebody just comes up one day and says, hey, we want to do a renovation. We're hiring a new architect, We're hearing a new golf course, superintendent, and there's no history there. They don't really understand the membership and they just go in and tear the place up, and it doesn't necessarily result in the membership being as happy as you probably could be with a renovation.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: Well, in a lot of ways, you're in the renovation process, you're kind of a bridge, and you spend the most time with an architect when they're out here, so you're kind of a bridge and an extension of the membership and you know what they want.

00:10:30
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you hope you do. So I would say, you know, between you know myself and you know, you hope that you have a golf pro that has a good history of the membership that can also you know, bridge that for you. You know, with us, we kind of we just knew what some of the issues were that we had to get rectified. So Keith came in in O two. We did a master plan with him and it really just involved doing the bunkers. There was going to be maybe a couple of tea placement changes and things like that, but for the most part, it was really just to renovate the bunkers. We didn't get that we in two they had a few other projects going on at the club, so we never actually made it to a club wide vote, so it kind of got tabled for a little while. We brought it back up again in two thousand and seven and actually did get it to a vote. Financial collapse, calamity, whatever you want to call it, all, you know, transcended on us and was probably even worse in the Detroite area than a lot of other areas, and it we narrowly missed. So then it really got kind of shelf just put on the back burner for a little while, you know, you're just really trying to take care of the grass and things like that. And then in two thousand and eleven we decided to bring it back up and fortunately a membership was on board, even though it was still you know, a little risky financially from economic standpoint in the detrade area. But we did benefit from some good pricing on that and it did pass and we uh we did the renovation in twenty twelve. The benefit of that whole thing was being in contact with Keith constantly us implementing some of the things, which was I would say eighty percent tree removal, some mowing line adjustments, things like that. We started to get a little bit different vision of what we thought the long view of the club should be. So had we renovated in two or even seven, the golf course would not look anything like what it does right now.

00:12:38
Speaker 1: How do you think it would have been different had you done it in two or seven versus doing it in twenty twelve.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: I don't feel like that. If certainly an O two tree removal was still you know, highly controversial, by the time we hit seven, we were really only removing enough trees to grow good ben grass, so still not enough to really impact the architectural, you know, look of the golf course. But by the time we reached twenty eleven we were going to vote again. There were you know, mass improvements in memberships, you know, taking to taking out a lot of trees and adding in some fescues. You know, we call them low maintenance areas, but I mean, trust me, there's nothing really low maintenance about them.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: But not that I wanted to talk about later, because I think that's a misconception.

00:13:29
Speaker 2: Complete misconception. So it but it was, you know, we were looking at it from the standpoint of it was going to be more sustainable. We would be using less water, less pesticides, less fertilizer than if it were big green grass areas. And then you know, it adds an enhancement with the color. You know, our golf course was basically just a big green you know patch across the whole one hundred and twenty acres, and now we have some really great contrasts. And I just think it was because coming more acceptable. It was still a hard cell, trust me. I mean we had some people who looked at the plan and when they saw that amount of trees gone and whatnot, I mean they were they were radically against it.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: So how many trees did you guys take down? Roughly? I don't know if you want to give a number, but I know I having seen before it was it was substantial, and I mean I think do you think a lot of members didn't know what was under the trees? In terms of the scale and the unbelievable movement of this property.

00:14:33
Speaker 2: There's no question that the trees blocked the majority of the property. A lot of the trees that were planted over the years were maples, in particular Norway maples, so they're they're low to the ground. Rudy can't growny grass underneath them. I mean, it's should just be banned as a golf course tree, right, I mean, it's just.

00:14:51
Speaker 1: A front yard. Drives me insane.

00:14:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you probably would call me and say how do I grow grass under here? And you know, I'd say, basil pruning, That's how you grow grass underneath there. But it it really due to that style of a tree. You know, they blocked all the property over the years, and as we slowly started taking some of that out even in two, three, four, you know, they people were starting to see it. So it was definitely a radical change for the twenty twelve renovation. But I feel like a large percent of the membership kind of saw the land starting to come out due to the selector tree removal we had already done all total. I'd say we're probably somewhere, you know, give or take one hundred near one thousand removal.

00:15:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of did you feel like, you know, obviously it's always a very hot topic at a golf course was tree removal. And I'm sure this is the same way here as you. Was there a momentum that built with almost like every you know, substantial tree run of tree done in like a winter or you know, I assume a lot of trees people don't even notice are gone. When did the perception start to.

00:16:12
Speaker 2: Change until we reopened. Yeahs a matter of fact, the brutal aspect of our renovation. And I tell guys who call me all the time like you would never do a renovation the way we did a renovation, but we had no choice. It was a similar way it was going to get passed and done. So we literally came in and did eighty percent of the tree removal in January and February, and then we had like the greatest march ever. I mean, it was like seventy five to eighty degrees, so nice. We were letting carts out, we had golf going on everywhere, and I've got like seven hundred you know, dirt patches all over the place, some of which were going to become like a bunker or native and it just looked like a war zone. And we went from march all the way until all this person when we closed looking like.

00:17:02
Speaker 1: That, Well, what will ever saying?

00:17:07
Speaker 2: Honestly, I think I've blocked it all out, like like, like, I know, there were some rough comments, for sure. I'm pretty sure at one point I think we actually got a letter saying that they wished that they could halt the destruction and so on and so forth. So I mean, you know, I always look at it as they do what they do for a living, right Like they're they're doctors, lawyers, you know, businessmen, business women, whatever they do. They're not golf course architects or golf course superintendents or golf pros for that matter, right, and so's it can be hard for them to maybe have that vision of what the end result is going to look like. And unlike say painting your house right where you you know, guys just show up one day and they paint it, and you know, forty eight hours later, you're like, wow, this looks great. You know for us, this takes like, you know, four or five months, so it's it's you know, requires a lot of patients on their part, and as much as we would try to explain, it's just hard until you actually see the product on the ground. So once we did get rolling though, and we had about four or five holes done, even even some of the members who were highly critical early on said, love it awesome.

00:18:21
Speaker 1: So you get the trees out, then you do the bunker restoration, and did you guys do anything with grasses also?

00:18:29
Speaker 2: We did. We metal brom added seventeen of the eighteen greens. The fifteenth green we had little backstep. We had five greens that were rebuilt here in the sixties and those five greens were built out of a two ns sand. Just a really tough environment once you started top dressing with finer sands over the top of them to grow good quality turf grass on. So we I did feel like we had done enough stuff to four of them. Why is that, I'm just curious, why is it a tough environment? Yeah, as soon as you put finer sands over top of courser sands, they it's just about the they just hold water up in the top and it's and you can't get it to move through.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: Because the higher sands percolate faster than the sand underneath.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: It is that no net in that scenario. When they first built the green, the two n s sand would perk really fast. Okay, like you would you would never use that sand for a green now, no chance. But it was like nineteen sixty two, sixty three, sixty four, right, it was probably you know, whatever was the cheapest sand. You know, that's I'm sure there was some philosophy to that, right, Hey, it's sand, just get it, throw it on there. So but it's like to you it would literally look like rocks almost. And as soon as we hit the era of top dressing, you obviously can't top dress with that stuff. So we uh not we but the club was using a finer sand to put on the green for regular top dressing. As soon as you do that, you perch the water table. So now as you build up that sand over the two ns, that's where all the water is going to stay. And so those greens were a struggle. They had moss on them, and you know, they just didn't they didn't play that great. But we had been able to do some things to four of them that were acceptable to put turf on new bancrast turf, and we had put internal drainage in them, a lot of deep time eration of breakthrough that layer, so they actually were draining fairly well. The fifteenth green, however, no matter what we did to it, we just couldn't get that one to the specs that we knew we'd need for ban crass, So we completely rebuilt that green. So we have one totally new green, and seventeen were methylbromided. All regrassed approaches were regrassed, the fairways were regrassed. Really, the only thing we didn't get to do was much rough if it wasn't sodded. We didn't actually have the time because of our small window, to kill a lot of rough and reseat it to a quality blue grass. So we're kind of doing that now with just some some tenacity sprays and overseeding. And our rough's gotten a lot better in the last like four or five years, so so.

00:21:15
Speaker 1: You spray it and then you overseed it in like the spring or fall.

00:21:19
Speaker 2: And rough yeah fall, yeah, yeah. We'll do some overseating again in areas that maybe didn't take so well in the fall. So if we felt like a spot didn't come in as thick as we wanted it, we'll go out punch them holes in it and throw some more seat in there to thicken it up. But it's really been a huge improvement. We had a lot of bent grass and poe in our in our roughs, and when you hit late July into August, it gets dollar spot and it just it's got that you know, from a play standpoint, it almost mimics like cocuya or bermuda, and it's just gnarly to hit out of when you're mowing. Bent grass at two and a half inches, just a terrible playing surface.

00:21:58
Speaker 1: The worst way, especially around the green.

00:22:00
Speaker 2: If it's around the greens, it's horrible.

00:22:02
Speaker 1: You just have no clue how to hit shot.

00:22:04
Speaker 2: None, none. I mean, it's just it's just an awful, awful scenario for chipping out of, for sure.

00:22:11
Speaker 1: So I think the best way is to close down the face and just to like know that it's going to come out hot that way, because you know it's coming out that way. If you try and hit anything else, I feel like it'll just eat you alive.

00:22:24
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I that's I do feel like, you know, guys who carry like the sixty degree wedge, you don't really have to open the face, right, I mean you just kind of lay it down square, make a reasonably decent swing, and I mean the ball almost hit you in the forehead it's going so straight up, and you know, there's no point opening the face. Like I didn't grow up playing golf that way, right, Like I grew up playing golf where you had two wedges. You got a fifty two and a fifty six, and if you needed to change it, you know, you manipulated the thing, right Like Now now you talk to these guys and it's like, oh, yeah, I got a you know, I got a wedge for eighty two yards. I get a wedge for ninety one yards, and then all you do is just watch them chunk it all over the place anyway. And it's just I don't know. There's some aspects of the game that I think some of this stuff has been good for, and then there's other aspects that it's just it's like, let's let's just get rid of it.

00:23:18
Speaker 1: It's this golf course is an interesting example because of the green locations in the scale, where it's it's a bigger scale, and if you're if you miss around the greens, you have a lot of times a big uphill shot to the green where that sixty degree is such a huge advantage around a course like this where you know you're you're having it. That loft is such an advantage versus a fifty six degree. It's being loft ban would be an interesting one because you think about how big of a revolution just the sandwich was back.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: In the day, two thousand percent. I mean, it's it's certainly has changed, like our job, because now if you don't have almost concrete bricks for greens, like these guys can stop the ball virtually anywhere. I mean, you know, I don't know what they go up to now, honestly, but I think you can get like a sixty three or sixty four degree wedge. It's like it's crazy, you know. I mean you can almost sit it just straight up in the air with no spin, and that ball just comes out on a green side chip that it's like dead even if the green's thirteen and you know it's it's super firm, like these guys can still you know, play that shot around the green. So that's there's no question that that's you know what's changed the most since I've been here, right, like, I mean ten and a half and reasonably drag Greens used to challenge the heck out of even the best players, and that's not the case anymore.

00:24:52
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00:26:19
Speaker 2: You are correct? You know, for the first few years afterward, we did field a lot of calls. I would say most of my conversations revolved around what not to do versus what to do. You know, certainly I would never do a renovation now now rebuild all the greens, but we had no shot at that that would be like first and foremost, because you know, we have seventeen greens and in some way, shape or form, Foster touched darn near each one of them. Right Like we knew we were going to be putting a grass on that was going to be faster than the previous turf. That we had going to be firmer, so we had to make some more cupping spaces in certain areas. Even though you know, I mean you've always played the golf course. It's the greens. The most severe greens were rebuilt and they're not that severe, and then the other greens are they're more subtle breaks or they just you know, can't one direction or the other. Yeah, So we had to go into those and just skim like an inch of top dressing off here or there to kind of make that a coupleable area post the renovation. And it's it's a pain to maintain. You know. It's like we don't have eighteen identical soils underneath our greens that we know every day I can kind of manage to say, like eighty ninety percent, and they're all similar in firmness, speed, all of that. We just have, you know, a hodgepodge of all different sorts of stuff. There's in our opinion, and this even went through our committee, like there was no chance if we had stuck to our guns to rebuild the greens. There also was some improvements in technology since we did ours that would have helped on selling rebuilding the greens that we didn't have access to. So that would be number one. I tell everybody the same thing, like, don't do I would never do one of these without rebuilding all the greens. The second is get your fairway turf in as fast as possible. A lot of our seating on our fairways didn't occur until mid September to mid October. We ended up with a lot more poa back in the fairways than I would have liked. Certainly been a you know, an ongoing battle to try to get that percentage down. And then you know, I mean there's a host of different conversations that I have depending upon the level of what they're going to do. But you know what we did. I mean, we spent two and a half million dollars right and probably got four million dollars worth of workout of that project in twenty twelve. I mean, none of these projects go for less than like six seven eight million dollars now, So you know, we're kind of like, you know, the small fig so to speak, Like it's like I wish I got to do that, you know, or you know, heck, yeah, I would you know if I had the seven million dollars budget for that, I would do that for sure. So you know a lot of them have kind of moved a level above our renovation. So it's it's not as uh, it's my phone unfortunately doesn't ring as much as it as it used to, which.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: Is good good good in one way bad. You know, it's nice to talk to people every once in a while.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I mean we still don't get me wrong, we do that. I'm just saying it was for a couple of years, like it was crazy, like you know, what grasses did you guys, Like you know what soils did you use? What bunker sands did you use? And you know, all that stuff is so preferential to the golf course and the and the membership, right like what you know, when we first did our bunkers, we we did a sand called Elite Pro Angle, and it was fifty percent pro Angle and a fifty percent byproduct called sixteen hundred, and it was in comparison like a loose sand. Right, your ball wouldn't necessarily fried egg not to have any pun in this thing, but you need more fried egg eyes. But it was difficult to spin the ball out of right, so it was it was easy to just jam your club in it and get the ball to go flying out of the out of the sand, but to actually, you know, the better player, it was a very difficult bunker to hit out of. They hated it. So two years in we pulled it all out and went to just pure pro angle because, as I said before, we started getting a lot more low handicapped players and they liked to be able to spin it, so they wanted the firmer sand. And honestly, it was quite the maintenance headache for us. I mean, we worked our tails off to try to make that elite Pro angle as good as we could, and it was just a difficult sand to work with. And we uh so we were on board with the change as well. But it was let me tell you what, it was a lot more difficult bunker sand. If you hit in the bunker, it was almost a virtual guaranteed bogie.

00:31:05
Speaker 1: One might say that that's better bunker sand.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: I'm not. I don't want to. I well, yeah, as most people wuld tell you, I definitely have an opinion on everything. I would say that it was probably a little overkill. We went as far as the amount of things we threw at our membership. In one shot that was maybe too much, right, Like they you know, came in playing this parkland tree line golf course, grass faced bunkers and suddenly we're throwing one hundred and twenty thousand square feet of bunkers had at them these intimidating faces fescue we were the bunkers were intended to have long eyebrows of fescue around them, and then we throw this you know, ultra difficult bunker sand in the bunkers, and it was probably just a little bit too much.

00:31:57
Speaker 1: So uh, with the you talking about the greens and rebuilding greens, I just had a quick question, is what you're describing. You kind of have like eighteen greens, each with their own unique personality that you have to deal with on a daily basis, correct versus.

00:32:16
Speaker 2: And there will actually be areas within that green that are unique. Right. So like our tenth green is a perfect example. The right side of it was too steep to put any cup, so Keith literally we went to the half point of the green stripped all the sod off of it. Because when you're metal bromiding, you traditionally don't tear the sod off, You just kill it and then beat the living you know, Jesus out of it. To get that matt down as low as you can and then you just seed right into it. We wanted to be able to create some potable areas on the right side of that green, so we had to core it about five inches down. So like the right half of that green has mixed, that is the exact mix that's in my fifteenth green. That's total USGA spec whereas the left half is eighty years old of sand top dressing and aerification. So they totally react completely different. And to try to get the impact of a ball to match up, you know between that right side and that left side is extremely difficult.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: How do you try and is it? Do you apply more water?

00:33:26
Speaker 2: Moisture management is like the best way. Yeah, and then you.

00:33:31
Speaker 1: Have like sensors that you're able to monitor that or how do we use.

00:33:35
Speaker 2: A handheld TDR probe. That's a little thing, that purple thing that you see probably everywhere now. Guys walking around they hit it, hit the button and it gives you a volumetric you know, water content reading.

00:33:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a cool little device.

00:33:51
Speaker 2: It's it's uh, it has helped and then in some instances it hurts you know, I came up the old school. You pull a core and you see what the core looks like, because you know, you really have the water where the roots are, like there's no point in water and where there's no grassroots. So if you take that probe and you're taking a say a three and a half inch sample of the moisture, but you only have an inch and a half of roots, you know you're not really getting a valid reading to help you grow your grass. And you don't know that unless you're taking a core. You know, if you don't pull periodically, pull a plug out of the green or something and see what your roots look like and things like that, you don't know exactly where you should be watering. So they are, they're very good. I would never get rid of them, but you still have to go out there and manually look at what's underneath the turf.

00:34:40
Speaker 1: We talked just touched on it earlier, the fascue that you guys have, and I mean it's absolutely stunning. I think that you hit on it. The texture and the color that it gives the golf course and the pop and it really helps accentuate the property, I think, but also the playability of it, and you know you're not. I had a buddy and who we used to play a lot of golf, and we would kind of a little bit more crooked than I am, and we go certain places. I'd say, we're just gorse hunting all day, you know, spent my I hate looking for golf balls. I hate it. I don't ask for help looking for my boss because I don't want people to ask me for help looking for theirs. And but you know, you've got your fescue where it looks great and it plays great, which I think the playing the playing great is one of the most difficult things talk about management. And obviously you've had it now for almost ten years. But what you've learned over the years maintaining that that fescue grass that you know is now seems to be everybody's trying to add it in to.

00:35:49
Speaker 2: Their certainly the you know, it's the popular thing these days. For sure. We have learned a lot since we put it in. I would say we thought we knew some things when we put it in, and we probably have learned, you know, twenty times more now than what we did just researching it before we ever started. The number one issue is I would strip any of the areas that you're going to go in and you're going to put fescue in, because if you've been grown grass on those you've got years and years of organic and fertilizer and everything built up in that system. And if all you do is go in and like round it up, scalp the grass down, punch holes, seed your fescue in there, I mean, fescue on fertilizer is nasty stuff. I mean, you can't find your ball, you can't hit out of it nothing. Of course, that's how we did it, right, So it was for us though.

00:36:53
Speaker 1: I think that's how everybody learned.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: I know, I know, well in a little bit of ours, we knew that that would have been the better way to do it. We just couldn't afford it, you know, and we've sort of felt like there were better things to spend our money on anyway, So you know, I mean, nobody gets an unlimited budget, so you have to pick and choose what you still think are the best things that you're going to go spend your money on. Stripping all the fescue areas just wasn't, you know, in the cards for us, and at the time, ninety percent of it was supposed to be really out of play, right, so it was just more an accent. So who really cares if it's not that thin and whispy. You know, you're not supposed to hit ball in there anyway. Well, some of it did start to we as we matured, and more areas got brought in by you know, Keith. We got some areas that they needed to be thin because you could definitely hit a ball in there for sure. And I would say it took us about three to four years to burn the organic and the old fertilizer out of those areas, and we're just now starting to hit where I feel like it's really good. Some things that we learned. We literally scalp the be Jesus out of it. Every fall. We mow it like three times now, and I try to go about as low as our mowers will tolerate. So we go in there with the the industrial zero turns, set them down to like an inch and three quarters not the first time. You got to kind of hack the stalks off and clean that. You know, we backed that up, take any organic material out of it, because anything breaking down will add to that nitrogen system. So then the next hack we get it down to about three inches, and then end of the season we go like scalp level and then we scalp it again in the spring. I mean we're talking chunks of grass flying out of the thing right like, I mean, we're just trying to literally pull plant material out, and then we send a vacuum in and we backed that stuff all up. That's helped us a ton and for a couple of reasons. One thin in the plant out. When we go in with our sprays, you can really get better penetration of your your pre emergence, your herbicides, things like that. Correct. Yeah, you know, technically a lot of these, like the pre emergents should really get some level of water to get them down in and create that good barrier. Well, I mean, the last thing you want to do is turn any water on in those areas, so you're trying to keep as dry as you possibly can. The better you can go in with like a good water volume on your spray, get the penetration because the canoby is just not as thick we've been We've in the last two seasons, we've seen just an immense improvement and weed control. They brought out a couple new herbicides that have kind of helped, and really we're now down to our biggest issue is just controlling some quack grass in some areas. That is, that is, that's the nastiest weed that we deal with without question. And if you if a native section gets taken over by quack grass, you might as well just kill it and start over, because it's you can't find your ball and you can't play out of it. It's just it's terrible. It's a terrible, uh, you know, scenario to have in your native I mean for the golfer.

00:40:09
Speaker 1: I mean you look at some of these and it's such like an ocean of grass. You know, how do you know when quack do you do you? How do you monitor that stuff?

00:40:18
Speaker 2: Like?

00:40:18
Speaker 1: Do you walk through it? Do you have somebody walk through it? Or is that like? How do you know?

00:40:23
Speaker 2: It's pretty easy for us to spot quack grass. Yeah, yeah, I mean if I showed it to you once, you even you would be able to spot quack grass.

00:40:33
Speaker 1: I've got the sweet problem at my house. It's a poke weeded and it's driving me insane.

00:40:42
Speaker 2: How did you identify that? By the way, what how did you identify that by the.

00:40:46
Speaker 1: Way plant snap.

00:40:50
Speaker 2: Does that actually tell you how to kill it? No?

00:40:52
Speaker 1: Well, then I just started. I have to dig it out.

00:40:58
Speaker 2: You got to dig it out.

00:40:59
Speaker 1: It's got these big roots. If I just pull it out, it just like regrows poke weed.

00:41:04
Speaker 2: I gotta be honestly, I'm gonna have to look that one up because I I can't say that my u my weed knowledge is to that level of snuff.

00:41:14
Speaker 1: Holes in our are like mulch bets all the time to get these these big they look like carrot roots when you pull them out. Really, Oh, it's it's awful. I haven't I know when I get home and there's gonna be like five more of them that have grown up. They grow up out of nowhere. It's it's just drives me crazy.

00:41:35
Speaker 2: I'm going to figure out a game plan for you. I'll let you know how you how you get rid of poke weed that you don't have to dig it up.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Well, my wife doesn't let me use for h doesn't let me spray anything anything.

00:41:46
Speaker 2: No, I would just let the poke weed grow.

00:41:50
Speaker 1: Well, it is so it drives.

00:41:52
Speaker 2: If we're all natural, then just I mean whatever grows in there grows in there. Sorry, honey, Well it would drive me crazy.

00:42:00
Speaker 1: So you play a lot of golf in the winter, yep, would have been your your favorite trips and maybe what's what's been a trip that opened your eyes to something about golf that you didn't really appreciate before.

00:42:21
Speaker 2: So, you know, I would say to start at the back end of your question. When I first got here as the superintendent, there was a group of guys that would always go in September and they would play Marion Golf Club. And like around about my second or third year here, they invited me to go and it was like a Friday, Saturday Sunday, So you get three rounds of golf at Marian Golf Club, right, And you know, to that point, I was just some you know, stupid you know, dumb kid had done you know, some internships, worked on golf courses things like that, and you're like, oh, yeah, you know, I think you know a lot. And then you get to go to a place like that, right, and you just see the history and I mean it's just it's still an amazing place to me. I haven't seen it in a few years. Love to go back and see it after the renovation. But I feel like that left a lasting impression on me, to show like, this is what some great architecture you know, can look like, and it doesn't require to be on like a huge piece of land and you know, have trees all over the place and things like that. So I feel like that was a pretty eye opening experience and told me that, hey, I want to get around and see it a whole lot more. There's obviously like a lot of things to see in the world, and not just in Detroit right undred percent, way too many. So I feel like that started it right, and it also caused me to fall in love with East Coast golf, like I still I've certainly played a lot of golf, probably in about every place that they would say are the best of the best of the exception of the Sand Belt in Australia, and I still feel like that's the greatest concentration of awesome golf there is, you know. To give you the best example, I had a trip there once in the fall and we played Garden City Men's Club, National Shinnakok, the Country Club eastward Hoe, and then we got one whole day on Fisher's Island, like sun up to sundown and hands down the greatest golf trip I've ever been on. I mean it was just awesome. You know, it's one of those things where like the weather was perfect every day, the company was awesome, the people we met. I mean, it was just it was a trip of lifetime, right, And to see those just back to back to back to back, right and just study kind of you know what. You know, how did they intend these golf courses to be played, you know, how the guys are maintaining them. It was just it was it was special, right. I just love it out east, Like I just think it's it's the best of the best. I end up in Florida a lot Arizona, California because of the winter. Yeah, and and so you know, not to disrespect anybody on your podcast, but it's like there's not a ton of like great. I mean, you don't go to Florida to study architecture, right, I mean, Semino is awesome. You certainly could go there and study the greens and angles and things like that hundred percent, But I mean that's so rare in Florida, right, I mean that one in like Mountain Lake are my two favorites in Florida. And you definitely can learn some things there, but you know, the rest of them, you just you know, they're they're fun to play, hybrid Bermuda greens are awesome to put on. The weather's stellar and you're not here in the snow. So that's all great. But but I do it more just to recharge the batteries and and stop thinking about, you know, what kind of summer we got coming up for us, and and so on and so forth.

00:46:10
Speaker 1: So when do you start thinking about summer?

00:46:14
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd love to tell you that you never or that you actually do stop thinking about the summer, but you know, you probably get about a good six weeks really where you're where you're not thinking about some level of grass. You know, it does get annoying. I've got to be honest with you at times, like you're just like, got to get that out of my head. So you get about six weeks a break where you know you can recharge and you're like, I'm ready to go for next season.

00:46:42
Speaker 1: And when's the date that you like feel like you're you're in the home stretch of like where you don't have like the big problems of summer.

00:46:52
Speaker 2: So there was an old superintendent here that was around for probably like forty years, right, and uh, I'm not going to say his name because and then he would just like really think he's the top dog. But anyway, it was always April fourteenth, or I mean August fourteenth, sorry, August fourteenth was always the you really can't kill any grass after that day. It doesn't matter how bad this summer is, Like August fourteenth was that cutoff date. And I'll be honestly, he's been pretty accurate. Like once you hit that, you know, the days are so short that even if you have some turf that's a little stressed, like aerrations right around the corner, you know, some lower humidities things like that. I mean, it's life starts to get pretty good by the end of August. National Midwest superintend this day August, yeah, exactly August fourteenth. Now there are some issues with that though, too, Like we have our men's club championship is after that, and if you get rain, it's hard to drive the golf course out in that period of time, right, because the days are so much shorter. So it's it it can have an effect on the playability, but it it from my life of actually killing grass it's it's a lot better. But yeah, you you definitely struggle to drive the golf course out better in late August because of the short days and sun angles. Are you know, vanishing in a hurry?

00:48:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never thought about how it. It makes complete sense, like why rain affects golf courses in terms of firmness so much more in the spring in the fall, It is just because of the length of the days.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean your your top time to really, at least here in the Midwest for US, I'm sure the East coast guys are pretty similar. Best chance you have of providing the best conditions is the month of June. You got the longest days. Even when it's hot, it's typically the humidity is lower, and uh, you can you can really crank on it. I mean you can get some fairways that are just bouncing like crazy, and yeah, that's that's your month. That that and I would assume that's probably why the US Open is in June, to be honest with you, although now we're obviously moving it all over the place. But I mean I'm thinking back in the day when they chose sites probably based on something like that.

00:49:07
Speaker 1: With the you went through the financial crisis and you went through this, how have they been different for your your job?

00:49:16
Speaker 2: What's this? Uh corona? Oh, the coronavirus. Uh boy, that's a that's an interesting question for sure. I sort of feel like I've you know, even though you know, I was still i don't know, not that old when the financial crisis happened. I'd been through like good and bad economic times, right like even growing up, and he kind of recognized. I mean, you know, it's it's a you know, you read things people getting laid off, stuff like that, right, So, I mean I I had a a history to say that lasts a little while and then and then we pop back. Right. So it was bad in two thousand and eight, and certainly some things happened to people that you wouldn't have probably expected. But I still feel like it was something that I had a known, you know, history with this thing is just this is like the craziest thing I've ever had to live through. I Mean, never in my life did I think that we would all have to be, you know, shut in our houses, although you know, we still had to motographs, so we technically weren't shut in the house other than when you got home. I mean, you couldn't go have dinner or anything like that. But I feel like there were a lot more uncertainties. And then it's the you know, it's the era of Twitter and Facebook and you know, twenty four hour news cycles, and you know, people just watch and get on too much of this crap, you know. I mean, I realized that this is you know that Instagram and Twitter, you know, help put food on the table for you.

00:50:59
Speaker 1: But I I have to get myself off there. You can, you just get on there and you start reading. I have noticed in the in the especially when the weather wasn't good. I mean, I'm sitting in my face and I'm and I'm just reading, and it's just like you just get yourself into the spot where it's like God. And I think that's I mean, and that's why we're seeing unparalleled demand and popularity of golf is it's so nice to have something that gets you away from all your screens and away like from the world for a little while.

00:51:37
Speaker 2: I think that's what helped us as as far as I'm sure most superintendents would probably tell you that, Like if I had been stuck just confined to my house, I think I would have gone crazy. So the fact that we could, you know, get outside even though the weather wasn't very nice for us while we were in and shut down here, you didn't focus on that stuff, like I didn't have time to see you know, what they were saying and you know, the news or Twitter or Facebook or things like this. So so you know, to us, the first like week was the strangest thing I've ever experienced. I mean, to be out here working, have no noise, no traffic. Literally this road here, you know, you could walk across and not even look. It was. It was like the zombie apocalypso to speak. And that aspect was really strange. But once we got into our flow and started understanding, you know, what we had to get done every day, it was way more helpful than being confined to your house and just sitting there and just staring at you know what was just the horrible news every day, right, I mean, hour by hour, It's like, man, this is this is just terrible. Even so we you know, we worked seven days a week, but on the weekends it was a lot less. In March and April, the weather wasn't stressful for us, So I mean, if I went home to even turn the news on for like ten minutes. It was like, oh my god, I couldn't do it. Like I just literally couldn't do it. So I would I would not watch that. I would maybe watch a Netflix of something, you know that ILK. But I kept up enough so that I knew what we were supposed to be doing, our precautions that we were supposed to be taken with our staff and things like that. But beyond that, I just I couldn't sit there and like watch Andrew Cuomo give a bringing you know, update every day like that. In no way, I don't want to watch anybody do that. I don't care what the subject is. If I got to watch somebody do the same thing every single day, no, it doesn't work for me.

00:53:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's uh. I mean I think that's like the diversions were the best and being outside and you were probably short staffs, so you had more work than ever before. So that's the other thing. You know, work is a great diversion regardless.

00:53:51
Speaker 2: It is, and certainly when you have you know, eight people on one hundred and fifty eight ers, I mean, you know, every day I'd be looking around there. We're not getting the you know, damn thing done, Like, what's the problem? And then I would look around and go, yeah, it's it's a big place for eight people to try to take care of. I mean, it was, it was. It was an interesting stretch. So I feel like, you know, the the that's the difference is that this was just totally uncharted territory. Uh, whereas the financial collapse, it just was a little more knowledgeable history to having gone through recessions before and things like that.

00:54:32
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well I appreciate the time, and uh, everybody that gets a chance to come see your spot. It's a it's a special place. It's one of the best in Detroit, one of the best in the Midwest. And uh, people can find you on Twitter. You're on Twitter.

00:54:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can find me on Twitter. I don't really I don't really say much. You know, you can get into much trouble these days by saying anything.

00:54:56
Speaker 1: Talk to you though.

00:54:57
Speaker 2: They can talk to men. They can they cannap me for sure. Yes, yeah, I'll I'll respond one hundred percent. But I appreciate that. It's a it's a fun place. It's been a great place to work for the last twenty odd years. And you know, Hopefully we got some more fun things coming