Superintendent Series: Edric Funk and Matthew Wharton on the Turfgrass Industry

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fridagg Podcast. Today's episode is a special live podcast from this year's Golf Industry Show. Special thanks to Toro for putting it all together. But I am joined by Edric Funk and Matthew Wharton, superintendent at Carolina Golf Club, and we talk a lot about innovation in the space of turf. So this is obviously a hot topic with sustainability never more present in a lot of aspects of society and really in golf courses as we look to the future. So we talk a lot about the innovation coming from Toro with the autonomous mowers, as well as the you know, different hacks and things that Matt has done over his career at Carolina Golf Club to innovate in his own way. Without further ado, here is the podcast with Matt and Edric.

00:00:56
Speaker 2: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset what I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:01:01
Speaker 3: And when I find my.

00:01:02
Speaker 4: Ball in a brid egg Friday, Egg Frida, Egg Fridagg.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.

00:01:24
Speaker 5: Thank you everybody for coming out to this and UH special thanks to Toro for setting this up. It's really exciting to uh interview Matt and Edrick here. Uh. So we got Matthew Wharton from Carolina Golf Club master greenskeeper, former president of the Carolina's Golf Course super Attendents Association, and then we've got Edric Funk, who is the director of the Center for Technology Research and Innovation for Toro. So we're going to talk a little bit about turf, probably a little bit about life and uh innovation in life. So it should be a fun conversation. So to kick things off, I think, Matt, you're in the Carolinas, you get a wide range of weather, and I'd love to hear a little bit about the unique challenges you face as a superintendent in the Carolinas.

00:02:20
Speaker 4: Well, Andy, first and foremost, I won't say thank you for doing this and thank you to Toro for having me. It's an honor and a privision, a pleasure to be here. I can't believe we've actually got folks out here watching us right now. But you know, the Carolinas is in what we call the transition zone portion of the United States. It's not really an ideal climate for growing grass.

00:02:42
Speaker 3: Twelve months out of the year.

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Speaker 4: You can grow cool season grass, you can grow warm season grass, but it's hard to grow both. And that's what I do. I got cool season greens. We have bent grass greens at Carolina Golf Club, and then everything else is warm season grass are teased fairways and rough and we get a wide range of weather extremes, lots of rain, lots of drought, and we had both of that this past year. I mean, twenty nineteen was our second wettest year in my fifteen years at the club, with almost a foot and a half above average rainfall.

00:03:16
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we went fifty days without a drop.

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Speaker 4: At one point, we were ninety nine degrees on October the second. So it's you get it all, you get it all.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, It's just that transitions down in the country so tough, as you alluded to, with the different grasses and the constraint. If there was one part of the country you're most envious of, you know, you look and say I wish I could I was growing grass in that area. Say not like you were looking to a job, but what zone of the country would you most ideally envious.

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Speaker 3: Well, there's two answers to that.

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Speaker 4: I'm always envious of the parts of the country that don't have humidity, because that is our biggest challenge by far in the Carolinas. But the nicest weather I've ever experienced is when the golf industry shows in San Diego. I went to San Diego over the first time in two thousand and four, and I kind of jokingly said to my wife, I was like, well, you know, we could live out here on the streets if the rug ever got jerked out from under us.

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Speaker 6: So Edric playing off at you have a job.

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Speaker 5: You're creating innovation for different industries, but then specifically in the turf grass industry, you have superintendents that are applying the stuff that you're making for you know why, different problems that they face. How when you're going about the innovation and product development process, are you considering how superintendents in different parts of the country and different parts of the world are using the product.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, no doubt about it.

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Speaker 2: And in fact, it's one of the things that as I started working for Toro now more than twenty three years ago, one of the things I love most is how much our engineers, our product managers, everybody in the company really wants to understand the real challenges that our customers face.

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Speaker 7: And our company certainly has a long.

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Speaker 2: History in turf grass management and with golf course management, and we truly and I really mean this, truly view our superintendent customers as partners as we try to figure out how to bring.

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Speaker 7: Those innovations and solutions out to the marketplace.

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Speaker 2: And on one hand, you asked Matt about some of the unique challenges that he faces as you go from property to property, region to region. There's certainly our differences, but there are other people that share some of those same challenges, the transition zone challenges that Matt talked about, the humidity challenges, there are some of those common and unifying things that ultimately, if we can bring solutions to help one, there are probably more that benefit from that same technology.

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Speaker 5: For sure, it's you as singular as a problem. You feel like I run into this all the time. It's like I feel like sometimes I'm the only person in the world with a problem.

00:06:02
Speaker 6: It's not true.

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Speaker 5: Everybody's got probably you know a lot of people have the same problem.

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Speaker 6: Matt.

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Speaker 5: You tweeted yesterday about robotics and you said you scoffed twelve years ago at the idea of, you know, robotics in turf and I'm curious over those twelve years, like your perceptions obviously changed with it, but you know, what were your initial thoughts about robotics and how have they changed.

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Speaker 4: That's a great question, Andy, and so I'll tell you the story.

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Speaker 3: I was about a dozen years ago.

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Speaker 4: I got invited to sit in on a little focus group panel to talk about a robotic fairway mower, and I just thought, that's the craziest thing in the world. How is a mower going to know if there's a stick in a fairway or a riser from a sprinkler head is you know, stuck in an elevated position from overnight. I just couldn't wrap my head around how something could be out there without an operator.

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Speaker 3: And I just scoffed.

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Speaker 4: I didn't even participate in the focus group. I just was like, I don't want any part of that. But you know, you look at the way technology and innovation has progressed over the last dozen years, societal changes. One of our biggest issues right now in the business is labor. And that's not just in the transition zone. It's not just in the United States of America, it's globally. It is very difficult to find young men and women that want to work out doors, especially when they didn't really spend a lot of time playing outdoors. And that's just the generation we're kind of looking at. And so I think there's a lot of potential with these autonomous mowers. And I had a conversation with my Greens Committee chairman last year because labor was one of our biggest challenges last year. Despite the weather, the labor was the biggest headache. We had a lot of difficulty. I hired ten new people on the staff last year and I think only three remain and I didn't terminate anybody, and some only lasted a month. But so he's asking me, He's like, well, you know what I hear about these robotic greensmowers, And I'm like, yeah, you know, they're They're there.

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Speaker 3: There's a few courses that have them.

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Speaker 4: But I said, it's really going to take the major manufacturers putting these types of machines on the trade show floor in their booth before the market as a whole is going to start to buy in and you're going to start to see it now, are we going to see that mower on my golf course, you know, next year, probably not three years from now. I don't know, seven years from now, it's probably would be a strong possibility it's coming. And for me, it was just an exciting moment to think, Okay, that's to me, that's a major milestone.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I think one of the things I've I've kind of heard from across the industry is the idea that these robotics are going to replace jobs. But to me, it seems like it would be more of a shift, Like how would you envision your staff being you know, different roles and responsibilities if you had a you know, machine that took care of the fairway in the rock wall.

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Speaker 4: Well, it's funny you should ask that because I actually had this conversation with my Green's chairman as well, and I haven't really shared this thought with any colleagues yet, but I think you know, you know how you always hear the term what's old is new again, and you think back to how we used to maintain golf courses, say, like back in the seventies and eighties, you know, staffs were much smaller, equipment was much larger, I mean, heck, I grew up on fairways with a tractor that had seven cutting units as a white swath, and we're starting here in the last year or two to see some of that come back, you know, some bigger, wider units. And I think maybe in I'm gonna say, within seven to ten years, the modern day golf course superintendent, it's going to be a little bit of a hybrid. I think the staffs are going to be smaller, it's gonna be fewer people. There'll be some autonomous equipment, but there'll also be some equipment that's much larger. You know, maybe one guy or mo rough instead of two because he's got a water you know, water machine to do the work.

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Speaker 3: And I think you're just going to see a little bit.

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Speaker 4: Of a contraction, but it's going to be highly efficient, technologically savvy. I think that's I think that's where we're headed. I think that's I think that's where we're going. Edric, how about you?

00:10:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, And as you're we're bringing up the question is man talked about, I'd bring up one of the statements that our chief R and D engineer often makes as we're talking about innovation and what kinds of things we're pursuing, and he always says, we need to look at where this technology can work, not get fixated on where it can't. And clearly there are plenty of completely valid reasons that people would have to say I'm not going to use robotic technology or alternative energy products or whatever else. The question is can they do everything? The question is can they do anything? And as a supplement to Matt's team to what his peers are trying to do, we certainly think the technology plays a role. I can tell you certainly from the perspective of the Tora company, our motivation isn't to eliminate jobs.

00:11:21
Speaker 7: It's to help people be more productive.

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Speaker 2: I know one of the hot topics here at the show this year, there's been discussion about work life balance and mental state of mind and stress and everything else. And I think if Matt had the ability to quickly and easily know where all of his equipment is, what jobs are done, is my irrigation system running or has it turned off when it's supposed to having to not wonder about that and worry about that, or make a special trip to the golf course, I think has an opportunity and with the autonomous mowing side of things. Different people are going to have different opinions as to where that has a fit and when. Reference often the quote attributed to Bill Gates where he said something to the effect of we tend to overestimate how much things are going to change in two years and underestimate how much they're going to change in ten. And I think the comments Matt just made are right in alignment with that. It's not that the world's going to completely change over these next couple of years to where all of the products are going to be autonomous, but I could virtually guarantee you a decade from now some of the things that people are scoffing at are concerned about will somehow find a way to be commonplace and operation.

00:12:30
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:12:30
Speaker 5: I was with a transition zone superintendent last night. I knew we were talking about autonomous motors, and one thing he pointed out was that when you the ability to start mowing earlier in the dark is like a big, big advantage because of the sense of like it's really rough on the later holes when because it can get so hot that you're mowing at a time that's not you know, I'm owing my lawn in the mornings, or you know, when I'm owning the in the middle of the day in the summer in Chicago, people are like, yeah, that's really bad, you know, yeah.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you're right.

00:13:06
Speaker 4: I mean, mowing is stressful on the turf, and uh, if you're if you're mowing at a time of day, that's less than ideal.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: You know. Typically with us, the only thing we're.

00:13:15
Speaker 4: Mowing after lunch is rough you know, we get all you know, obviously, greens are done first thing in the morning. Fairways takes us about four.

00:13:23
Speaker 3: To four and a half hours. And yeah, the goal or the.

00:13:27
Speaker 4: Objective is to get out ahead of play and stay ahead of play. And part of that is also it's just so I'm my team and I were preparing the course for you and your enjoyment, and so you know, we want you to start you around on the first hole and play the golf course, you know, perfectly.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: You know, manicured for your enjoyment.

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Speaker 4: And you know, sometimes singles play fast and getting get in front of the mowers, and once they stop, you know, once they stop for one group, it seems like they're stopping for others.

00:13:59
Speaker 3: But you're exact you're right. I think I was.

00:14:01
Speaker 4: One of the comments somebody made last night when I was kind of scrolling through was you know, I wanted to just say, you folks are missing the point. But you know, someone said, well, you know, how are they going to avoid golfers? And I'm thinking they'll never see them.

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Speaker 3: You know, could start your.

00:14:15
Speaker 4: Mowers three am, and you could probably integrate it with your total irrigation, so it's not going to be on a hole where the sprinklers are running.

00:14:27
Speaker 7: You know, I think that's right of the money as well.

00:14:30
Speaker 2: We I talked earlier about looking for where the technology can work, not getting fixated on where it can and we know there are things that are very repetitive for our golf course staffs, things that need to be repeated. The automating some of those processes has a chance to improve quality, to get the consistency that people are looking for. What the robots aren't good at is judgment and anticipation. And as much as we may offer criticize some of the lack of common sense we see out of operators, they're making thousands of little judgments a day that are difficult, at least in the present day.

00:15:09
Speaker 7: For the the robots to do.

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Speaker 2: So, we want to make sure that we can free up the good people, the intelligent people, the artists that are taking care of the golf course, to use their judgment and use the robots for the jobs that people don't need to do.

00:15:24
Speaker 4: So yesterday Andy and I were having a little chat over here, and he was talking about how he thought put in a guy on a fairway unit. He's you know, he thought, well, the poor guy, he's going to spend the next four to five hours just kind of you know, and they're probably listening to the Fried Egg on their earbuds. Andy, But yeah, but I got on careful it might be a cannibalized in my audio. But I told him, I said, but the funny thing was that we were staying with two other superintendents, and I said, I guarantee you all three of us will tell you the same answer.

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Speaker 3: You know, when you start off in this business and.

00:15:58
Speaker 4: You're the low low guy on the pole and you know your jobs to run the string trimmer, et cetera, you look at those guys that go out every morning on the fairway units and you're like, I.

00:16:07
Speaker 3: Want to be that guy.

00:16:09
Speaker 4: You know, nobody ever wanted to be the guy that mode rough. Everybody wanted to be the guy that mote fairways. So it was kind of instinctual as you progressed up the ladder in the business that you start to look for your better operate. You're better guys, you're sharper guys. They the cool guy's got the fairway mowing job. You know it's and so, yeah, if I could take two really sharp guys or three and have them do something else, it's going to be a tremendous improvement to.

00:16:40
Speaker 3: What the team can accomplish.

00:16:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Curtis James on the podcast. He was talking about how much he loves project work because and one of the big reasons was from a management standpoint, he gets to break the monotony of his guys days where it's not like every day we're just getting on the mow or and mowing, because you know, day and day out that can kind of become groundhog day. And he loves doing project work because it gives them an opportunity to really, you know, do something new and and I you know, finding new skills that they you know, didn't even know that they were really great at So, you know, in terms of managing a staff, obviously we've talked a little bit about the the labor struggles that you have in terms of breaking the monotony day in day out.

00:17:30
Speaker 6: What what type of tactics do you have?

00:17:32
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you're exactly right, and you use groundhol day as the analogy. I'll just show my age. I always refer to the old Dunkin Donuts commercial. You remember that Edric, you know, the guy coming in out of their time to make the donuts, and and I use it with my staff and sometimes in our morning meetings, I'll be like, guys.

00:17:49
Speaker 3: I get it.

00:17:49
Speaker 4: You know, it's you know, what what do you what are you going to do tomorrow? The same thing I did yesterday? It does, It gets monotonous, very monotonous. But you just got to keep the mood light. You know, if if I was a football coach, I'd probably be referred to as a players coach, mainly because I want to keep the mood light and keep it fresh. We're going to have fun. Yeah, yeah, We're gonna go out here and do the same thing we did yesterday, but we're going to keep it we're gonna have fun. And you're exactly right. On a day when we get to do something out of the ordinary. Oh yeah, you can see it in you know, their faces light up, the energy levels up. Yeah, that's why I like tournament golf too. Turna golf can be a grind, but at the same time, it's it's a little different because you're taking what you do on a daily basis and you're just amplifying it. And so yeah, that kind of gets produced, is flowing and it's probably rewarding.

00:18:41
Speaker 6: You know, like you got to see it. You know, you see how.

00:18:43
Speaker 5: Good it looks and how it's playing, and people like really enjoying it. So both of you guys are are big problem solvers obviously super intendents. You guys are solving new problems every day. I'm curious in your managing team that's trying to solve really big problems. So how do you guys go about you know, when you have a problem figuring out solutions, like and is there a process that you guys have on the innovation side, And then you know, is there a specific problem that you've faced that you've come up with a really unique solution that might not have you know surfaced right away.

00:19:18
Speaker 7: I'll chime in on that first.

00:19:19
Speaker 3: Andy.

00:19:19
Speaker 2: You the nature of your question, talking about problems is exactly the focus that we try to keep in our R and D team, and we rally around the motto or the mantra of we work on problems, not on products. It's really easy when we work for a manufacturer that has all these products we see on display here in the trade show booth to get fixated on just making those products better. But that can be missing the point. And so, as I said real early in the discussion, today, we try to make sure that all members of our team are plugged in with the customers, that we go out and spend time in the field, that we employ ethnographic type research, where you're out there trying to develop that empathy with our customers, and it leads to better solutions. And it might not be making another version of the kind of products we make today, it might be looking at something completely different.

00:20:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, it reminds me. We had a company I worked for a few years ago. We had Ben Horowitz, one of the great venture capital guys in the world, and he talked about how you know, ninety five percent of your time with problems should be identifying the actual problem, and only you know, once you've actually identified the true problem, then five percent is focused on the solution. And when he said that it was just something I thought about a lot. Is like, you know, actually finding the real problems oftentimes the toughest thing.

00:20:43
Speaker 7: It's a great point. And I'll add to that.

00:20:46
Speaker 2: The other thing that's really key for us is to not too quickly get fixated on one solution.

00:20:52
Speaker 3: You know.

00:20:52
Speaker 2: We typically when you're ideating about things like this, something emerges as a front runner and it's tempting to jump on it and really get into the details of solving it in that one way. And we try to make sure we're generating lots of different ideas, lots of different concepts. Will routinely test those with our customers to make sure that we before we really dig in and start working on that that sort of five percent, that we were working on the right five percent.

00:21:19
Speaker 4: And sometimes they make improvements that I've been known to call that man right there my sales re up and tell him you need to get over here because this isn't working. You know.

00:21:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've done that before.

00:21:31
Speaker 6: So do you have any examples, you know, I think you guys have.

00:21:34
Speaker 4: They made some improvements a few years ago to the old Flex twenty one Greensmore and I was not happy with some of the changes and modifications. And did Helmet come to that? Yeah, when when Helmet shows up at your shop, you know you're you've you've probably you're a squeaky wheel.

00:21:51
Speaker 5: But in terms of like a solution in the just you know a problem that you face Ted Carolina, that you've come up with a unique solution that maybe you've struggled with for a couple of weeks or months, and you did something different than your initial.

00:22:13
Speaker 6: Fix.

00:22:16
Speaker 4: Well, I've been very fortunate and very blessed with the relationship I do have with a young man name is Brent Miller, by the way, with Smith Turpin Irrigation. My first day on the job at Carolina Golf Club was made the sixteenth, two thousand.

00:22:28
Speaker 3: And five, and he was there. He was there to.

00:22:31
Speaker 4: Say a low and introduced himself and I looked at him and I said, I'm glad you're here because we're going to become best friends and we're going to make some changes.

00:22:38
Speaker 3: Because I had.

00:22:39
Speaker 4: Inherited an equipment fleet that was a little bit of a hodgepodge and we didn't really have all the equipment we needed. And that's really how I've solved my problems is working with him in the team at STI to our solutions are finding the right piece of equipment. Sometimes sometimes my problems stem from something that is lacking or missing. And you know, uh, we got a few guys from the UK sit in here, and I know, I know they always refer to it as a piece of kid. It's about finding the right piece of kid. And uh, we're a good team.

00:23:12
Speaker 5: So Matt, you're a You're a known Heckory enthusiasts, Heckory golf enthusiasts. I've played a little bit with Heckory's and I'm curious, how does playing golf with that older equipment change the way that you approached turf or has changed the way.

00:23:32
Speaker 3: It was a little bit of an evolution.

00:23:33
Speaker 4: I mean, I've you know, we hear the term firm and fast thrown about a lot, and I can tell you that it's Kirohana gop glove has not been firm and fast very much in the last two and a half years, just because of all the rain.

00:23:47
Speaker 3: But uh, and I even had a I had an older member one time tell me, uh.

00:23:54
Speaker 4: He said, Matthew, I know you like to control the water, but it's never looked dis good when you're in control. And I said things, it's the nicest thing you could ever said to me. And there is still in the US golfers like green that's just the fact of life. But who doesn't enjoy fifty yards a role? And I mean I kind of got into Hickory golf by accident. Literally it was I saw a segment on the Golf Channel Charlie Ramer was interviewing Tad Moore and the reason they were interviewing him was Sandy Lyle had just recently won his second World Hickory Open.

00:24:34
Speaker 3: And so I watched this.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: Segment and I just thought, well, that sounds kind of interesting, grabbed my iPad and went on Tad's website and I just thought, man, these things are beautiful. They're like works of art. Hit the contact button, send him an email. He called me a couple of days later, we talked for forty five minutes. The next thing I know, I had a set of clubs. And for those out there that think, oh, well, you're playing replicas, and that's not authentic. I'll just say if they're good enough for a too, you know, a former Open and Masters champion.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: They're good enough for me, you know.

00:25:08
Speaker 4: But uh, but but to Hickory Golf, it's you know, uh, it's a lower trajectory, a lot of ground game. And that's the other thing is, you know, I'm fortunate Caroline Golf Club was designed by Donald Ross and it's got a lot of great features and topography where the ground game uh.

00:25:27
Speaker 3: Comes into play, and it's.

00:25:28
Speaker 4: Nice to go out there and experience that on occasion. I still play, you know, with modern clubs. In fact, I just got a new set. Uh Tyler's t two Hunters by the way. But but I really enjoy the Hickory Golf and I've I've taken my clubs and played some other places. I took them to Pinehurst once played mid Pines and Southern Pines would be cool. Yeah, Southern Pines with hickorys is really cool.

00:25:50
Speaker 3: And so it's midpounds.

00:25:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's uh gives you more of an appreciation for a lot of the features and a golf course and and how they come alive. Rick with you guys having such a long product line, I oftentimes look back at stuff and I'm like, God, you know, I used to do things. Really it was like, there's almost like a simplistic brilliance to it. And I'm curious with your developing innovation. But you've had products forever. Do you ever look back to move forward?

00:26:22
Speaker 7: No doubt about that.

00:26:23
Speaker 2: In fact, you'll have conversations here at the booth where somebody will reference some product from the past and say, there was never anything quite like that. And sometimes it's a conversation like that that causes you to look at what made that product so good and you use the simplistic, brilliant sort of statement. At the same time that we're talking about all this modern technology and everything, we need to make sure that we're not making things too complicated that it doesn't make it difficult for our customers to use the product, to maintain the product. And I know some people may question from time to time, are you forgetting that? But I can tell you without a doubt that were not, and we've got people very much focused on that. I'll also tell you there are cases in our R and D team where people have worked on concepts and maybe fifteen twenty twenty five years ago and sometimes they've gone on a shelf for their stuff in the back corner and inspirational hit and some of those things will come out and find that those old ideas are actually the solution to the modern problem that happens all the time.

00:27:26
Speaker 5: What's your favorite product that never got out there?

00:27:30
Speaker 2: Of course I can't talk about that because I just told you in twenty years you might see it.

00:27:35
Speaker 3: I had to ask, you know, curious, that was an awesome question.

00:27:41
Speaker 5: Matt about you started a public off course as an assistant superintendent, looking you know, back and refined, like, what was the biggest challenge you faced on the public side that's different than the challenges you face on private side.

00:27:57
Speaker 4: Well, that's a great question I used to I was the assistant at Augustine Golf Club in Stafford, Virginia for two years under Rick Owens, and Augustine was built in the early to mid nineties. It had the reputations being known as the grandfather of the upscale daily fee in that sort of Greater DC area. And when I was there, we were doing about thirty nine thousand rounds a year, big time you know corporate outings, and some of those were you know, a full course shotgun, and sometimes it was a you know, maybe you were there with twenty four guys and Ederck was there.

00:28:38
Speaker 3: With forty eight. And you know, we.

00:28:40
Speaker 4: Had a manager that was this master at figuring out how to work.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: The t sheet like a puzzle.

00:28:46
Speaker 4: But it was just a major challenge to figure out where are we even starting prep this morning. You know, we had great communication with the golf shop. Steve Loomis used to be the head golf professional there. He kind of spoiled me. And but yeah, each day was a unique challenge because maybe we're going out and starting on eleven because where the shotgun was, all these backwards shotguns.

00:29:12
Speaker 3: It was.

00:29:14
Speaker 4: But I always knew that I wanted to be at a private club. I'd grown up. First course I worked at actually was Lake Bonaventure Country Club in Virginia. It was a nine hole course, but it was a private club. And so that's kind of what I have my own. And when I left Augustine, I went to a swan point Y Gochden country Club.

00:29:35
Speaker 3: It's an issue Maryland, just south of d C.

00:29:37
Speaker 4: Round on Potomac River, semi private, so again we're dealing with the public.

00:29:44
Speaker 3: You know, we had a we had a.

00:29:46
Speaker 4: Marketing director that was always trying to generate corporate outing.

00:29:51
Speaker 3: Business, et cetera.

00:29:54
Speaker 4: Uh, but you had a you had a component of members. But I was fortunate to to land where I did. I couldn't be happier.

00:30:04
Speaker 6: You know. Something that just jogged my memory.

00:30:06
Speaker 5: It just came into my thought is like with the private club, it's nice because you get to know your members, you get to communicate with them regularly. They know almost what to expect when they come out given times of the year. One of the toughest things with public golf has got to be like you don't know which customers are coming out and they don't know what to expect from you.

00:30:24
Speaker 4: You're exactly right. And I mean, the single biggest reason why I started Twitter in twenty thirteen, I think it was, you know, most private clubs had a newsletter, and printed newsletters are pretty much ancient.

00:30:45
Speaker 3: So then I just started doing regular emails.

00:30:49
Speaker 4: And I didn't like the platform we were using, so I created a mo own blog page on Blogger, like in twenty eleven. But so about twenty thirteen, I'm having a conversation with the Greens Committee chairman. You know, we Carolina Golf club is a unique club.

00:31:04
Speaker 3: We're right there close.

00:31:05
Speaker 4: To the heart of the financial district in Charlotte Old Classic Golf Course, and we were turning over about twenty members a year, it seemed for a significant time, and all the new members that I was meeting were younger and younger and younger, and I thought, well, maybe this is a platform that they would gravitate to. Had a conversation with the Greens chairman.

00:31:28
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we should do that.

00:31:30
Speaker 4: So the whole point of what I put on Twitter for the most part, with the you know, with the exception of kind of being down here kind of helping promote the industry and the show as a whole, is.

00:31:41
Speaker 3: It's so andy. You wake up, You've got a tea time at the club at ten o'clock, you.

00:31:46
Speaker 4: And your your buddies, and hopefully you'll see something that will kind of give you an insight as to what to expect today, because I think at the end of the day, golfers that are unhappy, they're unhappy because the golf course didn't meet their expectation, whatever that expectation was.

00:32:04
Speaker 3: So if I can kind of.

00:32:05
Speaker 4: Help sort of give you the right context and to where you'll maybe set your expectations at the right level. Then you're not going to be disappointed. Hopefully you'll come away pleasantly surprised. You know, if you see something on there like, oh well, we we vented and top dressed on maintenance Funday, and you're coming out on Tuesday and you're thinking, oh well, and the greens.

00:32:31
Speaker 3: Are better than you expect.

00:32:33
Speaker 4: You're you're coming off the course with a smile on your face.

00:32:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, that's you know, expectation management is like the biggest thing for golfers in general. You know, when I get in trouble with myself is like when I expect to play well and I.

00:32:47
Speaker 6: Play like crap. You know, I think that's like the crux of every golfer, all of us.

00:32:51
Speaker 4: You know, my best rounds are always when I have no expectation of performance.

00:32:55
Speaker 2: I've just been so impressed by what Matt and others have done. You talk about using a platform like Twitter to communicate to the membership. I remember years ago seeing people trying to hide things that can't be hidden, and if instead of hiding them, you're open about it, and you explained a bit about why.

00:33:11
Speaker 7: You're doing what you're doing.

00:33:12
Speaker 2: I think you're reatt in the money in terms of people being more accepting of that.

00:33:17
Speaker 7: The other thing you talked earlier about.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: Matt's comment twelve years ago, I didn't think robotics had a place, and now I've changed my mind, and Matt shared that on Twitter yesterday and it turned into a bit of a firestorm of all kinds of descending opinions. But I think that's valuable too. A lot of these things need some debate and discussion, and it helps us all to think about things differently. If we're open minded to the different points of view, we educate one another on how things might work. And I see that not only in this topic, but lots of other exchanges between superintendents.

00:33:52
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that's such a good point. I think everybody.

00:33:57
Speaker 5: Everybody's got blind spots, and you know, the way I look at the something is completely different the way other people look at stuff. And one of the best classes I ever took in college that it was a small, five person discussion class and the professor, you know, I had to go, which was a big thing, you know, because it's small, and he was like, listen, the first thing you need to do whenever you're examining, like something that's important. It was an urban planning class and he was like, is you have to remove yourself and your biases from everything. And that's something I think that is so great with Twitter is that, you know, it allows you guys to share information, to show what you're doing, and then you know, other people to weigh in on what they think, because they might look at at an issue that you have or something you're doing and think about it completely different.

00:34:44
Speaker 4: Oh, definitely, and the information Shaw. You know, the thing is I started it to communicate to the membership. Ah, then what I discovered quickly was how many of us in the industry were also using it. You know, we kind of call it uh turf Twitter, and uh, you know the next thing, you know, you've got more followers that are industry related than you do from your club, and we're sharing information and sharing ideas. And I've implemented a couple of things on the golf course that I saw for the first time on Twitter, phrase Moen being one of them. We phrase mode our range tea a few years ago. The range tea was it was built in O six, so it was like, uh, after eleven years of patching davits.

00:35:34
Speaker 3: It just you know, it really wasn't leveled anymore.

00:35:37
Speaker 4: And the costs to strip all the turf off of it re laser level, laser level it and regrass.

00:35:47
Speaker 3: It was was going to be significant.

00:35:49
Speaker 4: And I was able to phrase moe it for pennies on the dollar and grew it back in in twenty one days. And I mean it was a it was a huge cost savingsm what's phrasebo Hey?

00:35:59
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:36:01
Speaker 4: I think of it like, think of it like a wood plane. You know, if you if you've ever put a board through a planer, and how it takes all that material off, So you're you're going to remove about a half inch of material in one pass and what's left behind is all perfectly smooth, and you can make multiple passes if you needed to. And with warm season grasses like Bermuda grass, it'll grow right back.

00:36:28
Speaker 3: Now, I'll be I'll be honest with you.

00:36:30
Speaker 4: You watch it, you watch the little videos of it, and you're like, Okay, I want to give that a try, and that when you do it for the first time and you're looking at it, you're like, what did I just do?

00:36:40
Speaker 6: I imagine you like, I really hope that this better work. Yeah, yeah, that's gotta be.

00:36:48
Speaker 5: I have that fear all the time. It's like what am I doing? So we talked.

00:36:54
Speaker 6: A little bit about sustainability. How do you know when to water and how much to water?

00:37:01
Speaker 4: There's lots of different ways. Moisture meters have become a huge I mean there's something that I think I got my first one in twenty twelve, so you know, within the last decade, there's some technology that has come along in an advancement where we can actually measure precisely what the volumetric water content is in the system to determine if the turf needs water or not. But there's other ways as well. You can take a soil probe and test the moisture. Your eyes can tell you, your feet can tell you, your gut can tell you. There's lots of different ways to tell. But I mean, that's that's what we do. We learn our golf courses in and out like the back of our hands. But by and large, I would say, you know, moisture meters are the biggest, biggest way we do that nowadays, and that allows us to water more precisely and use less water.

00:37:56
Speaker 5: I imagine that's a focus of yours on the research and innovation.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: Side, absolutely, and hearing Matt's description of that is music to my ears. I use the term artists earlier, and there's no denying there's a balance of art and science in what Matt and others do, and it's not as simple as only looking at data. On the other hand, bringing more science that provides the artists, the decision makers, the managers with more information that they can put into their decision making process, we generally think can only help, and I think soil moisture meters are a great example of one where think of it andy as in, if you're driving your car, you look at your fuel gauge to see when do I need to fill up? And you don't every day pull into the fuel station and put in ten gallons and let half of that spill out onto the surrounding area. You use that gauge to tell you how much you need and when you need it. And I think the turf managers that are using tools like that are much better informed to make decisions that that are going to make good use of the water.

00:39:02
Speaker 4: Well, when I got my first one in twenty twelve, it was it was you know, it was new. We were kind of playing around with it, still trying to figure out how to implement it. I guess you could say I've got four of them now. You know, we use them daily. When I say daily, we're not really use them in the winter months because we don't even irrigate in the winter months. Oh, we can't get it to stop braining at Carolina Golf Club right now. But but yeah, every morning in the summer, we are taking readings on every green and then we're making our determinations. We're sharing that information, me and my assistance with one another, and then it handwatering.

00:39:36
Speaker 3: As a as a data helps us.

00:39:39
Speaker 5: I imagine that's another thing where eventually we're going to be in a place where there's enough information in the system where it could become much more automated.

00:39:50
Speaker 7: No doubt about it.

00:39:51
Speaker 2: And you know, that's another topic that will elicit some some differences of opinions. A lot of people would say they don't want that decision making and so forth taken away from them. And I look at it a bit like the thermostats in our home. We all might have a different opinion as to what temperature we might be and that's left to the person managing that room to.

00:40:13
Speaker 6: Decide what scient disagree about it.

00:40:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, But once you've made the decision about where you want the temperature, I think we all see the value in having a system that's automatically applying heat or cooling to get to that set point that we want. And I think irrigation is the same way. I don't think anybody needs the satisfaction of pushing the button to turn the water off or having a scurry back to turn it off. If you're able to put in the parameters that say this is the range within which I want to control, then let the system help out and keep you freed up to do so.

00:40:46
Speaker 4: That's a great way to describe it, Edrick, because the thing is, you know, before the moistumeters came along, we use things like a soul probe. You also would just kind of look at the dew patterns in the morning. You'll start to see when the turf is getting dry. And these were the things that you would do in the mornings and use your experience and use your gut, and you'd go out and you'd say, well it's going to You've looked at the forecast it's going to be this warm today, so the plant's probably gonna need a bount this much water, and you're out there applying it by hand to this spot in that spot because you're like, I don't want that spot to wilt this afternoon. And then as we started to implement the soil moisture meters, it's really about narrowing down and figuring out what range does the turf perform best.

00:41:30
Speaker 3: You know, if it's above this, it's too wet, obviously we don't need the water. And if it.

00:41:36
Speaker 4: Gets below this, we're going to see stress in the afternoon. And so if we can just maintain it throughout the day within the optimum range, we see less stress, we use less water, and the turf performs better, it's more consistent.

00:41:51
Speaker 5: It's interesting because at the golf course level, your turf might be just a touch different than the golf course down the stream, and your optimum based off of you know, also based off of membership, you know, what they like might be different than you know, say the public course that's seeing sixty thousand rounds a year.

00:42:12
Speaker 3: Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah.

00:42:14
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of things I share on Twitter, but one of the things I don't really share is sole moisture meter readings because the numbers at my course are irrelevant.

00:42:23
Speaker 3: To anybody else else out there.

00:42:25
Speaker 4: You just have to find out what's best for your course and manage your course accordingly.

00:42:30
Speaker 7: And there's no denying. Even on a given course.

00:42:33
Speaker 2: Sometimes things are different on one end of the property than another, and those are the kinds of local know how that require that judgment, those managers decisions at the turf manager that's on the property.

00:42:44
Speaker 4: Sixteen always takes less watercleuse sixteen goes into shade way before any other.

00:42:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll kind of wrap it up there, but thank you guys for coming and being part of this, and thank you Toro for setting this all up.

00:42:57
Speaker 6: I hope people enjoyed it.

00:43:00
Speaker 7: Enjoyed the discussion.

00:43:00
Speaker 4: Thanks any Yeah, thank you Andy, thank you Rick, thank you Toro for doing this so it's been fun.

00:43:07
Speaker 6: People can find you on Twitter. Yeah, the word find me, Edric. Are you on Twitter?

00:43:12
Speaker 2: I am, but I'm I'm a follower because I can't broadcast much of what we're working on.

00:43:16
Speaker 5: As you can imagine, you're you got classified information secrets.

00:43:24
Speaker 6: He's just reading everything, of course he is.

00:43:27
Speaker 2: I sometimes put out those little red hearts that Matt's not a huge fan of.

00:43:32
Speaker 4: Bring back the Star of Twitter exactly, all right, thank you so much, guys, Thank you