Top 10 Golfers in the World Going into 2024 and a Chat with the Grass Whisperer

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball.

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Speaker 2: In a Frida Egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida Friday Bride egg.

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Speaker 1: Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the up course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. I hope everybody has had a great holiday season. It's been nice to unplug a little bit, but uh, I wanted to get this pod out for the end of the year, for for that final holiday commutes, you know, different travel schedules, and uh yeah, I hope everybody had a great year. And and thank you to everyone for all the support this year. It's been an awesome year here at Friddack Golf and we wouldn't be able to do it without you guys. On today's podcast, I am joined by Steve McDonald. Steve is the founder, the CEO I guess, the guy that runs turf Grass Disease Solutions. And you might be asking what is that. Steve McDonald is a turf grass consultant. He works in the Northeast and he consults at just about every prolific great golf course in the Northeast. He works everywhere. So this guy is kind of an expert that the best superintendents in the world go to for turf grass help. And it was awesome to chat with him and kind of get his perspective on a lot of things. He is a great guy, golf nut, and really happy he came on the podcast. So before we get to that, I wanted to do It's the end of the year and something we've done, you know, throughout the year is kind of top ten's going into majors, top ten players in the game of golf, and I wanted to do a check in as the top ten players in the world right now. According to me, this is just you know, this is just my thoughts on who's who's the best players in the world are right now. I think it's nice to do it right now because we've had a little bit of space from professional golf. We haven't a real tournament in a while, and it provides you a little bit more perspective on the year and kind of what's happened and you're not caught up in, you know, what happened last week you're looking at more of the whole body of work. So I wanted to do this top ten. I'll start with I'll start with ten and go to one. Number ten Ludwig O.

00:02:49
Speaker 2: Bear.

00:02:50
Speaker 1: Obviously, this is a newcomer, young gun rookie this year. Just he was in college this time last year. He's been super impressive in and I want to be very upfront here a super short and small sample size against fairly weak competition. I mean, this guy he hasn't played in a major championship, but he's got two wins since he turned pro. He had a good showing at the Ryder Cup. And I think the thing that I'm very big on is the driver talent. This guy might be the best driver of the golf ball in the world. He could be. And with that, this guy's a limit for Ludwig. So this guy, he's in there at ten. I mean I kind of threw him in there. You could you could just you could put put them lower, you could put them higher, that's up to you. Number nine. This is a big comeback story that obviously people probably aren't talking about because not a lot of people pay attention to live. But you know he's playing on tour that nobody really watches. Bryson had a big, strong comeback year. I think if you read into some of the quotes, especially after the PGA, he talked a lot about just like getting back to trying to play good golf. I think like the game of golf is better when Bryson Deshambo's playing well. He is a fascinating character. You can you know he's polarizing, but I think it's he's a fun guy to have playing well. And one of the things that gets him on this list at number nine is his ability to play really big golf courses with narrow fairways and long rough This is a kind of a standard stock setup for at least one or two majors a year, which is going to make him a big factor. That is the type of golf that him. Brooks Koepka plays that type of golf really well. So I have him at number nine. Number is seven and eight. You could put in any order. They have to be best friends, Xander Schoffle and Patrick Cantley. As for Cantley, I have him at eight. He was the best player on the US Ryder Cup team, but we're still another year into his career. He's done very little at majors. He's here, he's such a well rounded talent. But him and Xander, I don't think they're cracking the top five until they get into major contention, win a major. I think, like the thing with both of these guys, I'll just cover them both here. One question I have is Xanders is his best years of golf behind him. We've seen that. I think like Jordan Speed's a good example of that. You know, where his best golf might be when he was twenty two, Xanders might be when he was twenty five, twenty six. I think like one of the things with both these players is they are both two of the best all round players in the game of golf, but they are not at the quality of the guys in the top five. Your Sky Scheffler's, your Rory's, your Rom Brooks, those guys are just a little bit echelon higher in all around talent. You know, these are these two guys are above average players in basically every statistical category, and that's really rare in golf. And you know we've seen, you know, justin Thomas's greatest year as a player happened when he had above average putting right, It's not a coincidence. Then he had this supreme talent in every category. Xander and Cantley are those guys, They just I don't think they possess like the truly great talent in anything, like a sublime talent. And that's the key characteristic of everybody above them on the list is you can look at him and be like, you know, they might be the best in the world at something. So up next is Klum Morikawa. He's number six. It's been a down couple of years, but I think the thing with more Kawa is that iron play. You know, driver has been catching up in terms of importance, but iron play is still the best weapon in all of golf, and I don't know if there's a bet iron player in the world than Colin Morricawa. He obviously has two majors. I think that we're going to see a kind of a bounce back year from the last couple of years from Moricow. He hasn't been terrible, but he just hasn't been that level of play that we saw a couple of years ago. Number five, Victor Hoveland, he's been I think like a lot of people would put him higher here. He's been the most impressive golf for over the last six months, between his play and the majors, the FedEx Cup run which saw him win the FedEx Cup, and then the Ryder Cup, which he was sensational in. I mean this, this guy is arguably the most improved. I think, like you know you have, it's it's hard to improve as much as Victor Hoveland did. Like, the better you are at golf, the harder it is to make big improvements. And Victor Hoveland has has targeted his weakness and short game. He's gotten so much better. He saw that he wasn't as long as some other guys. He has gotten longer as player, and like I think, the thing about Hoveland has always been that super like above average is his accuracy. He's always been such an accurate driver of the golf ball, great iron player, and that short game getting so much better. It seems like he's had a lot of fun improving the short game, and I just think we could be talking next year. He might be two or one on this list. He's number five right now, but he might not have been top ten last year. That's one of the reasons I wanted to start doing this just to keep track over the years.

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Speaker 2: All Right.

00:08:35
Speaker 1: Number four, we got Brooks Koepka, he won the PGA, almost won the Masters. He's got the most majors of anyone on this list. You know, he's not there week to week like He's never going to be somebody that wows you with his week to week consistency. But when it comes to major championships, you know, I think this is probably where he falls. He probably falls four, He might fall three, might two. You know, you could These four, I think think are interchangeable when it comes to picking majors. They they work everywhere. You know. I don't think it's unrealistic to think that Brooks could get to seven or eight majors by the time he's done. You know. Especially is the big questions always gonna be health? All right? Number three another the newest Live player, John Ram Number three, and I think that's gonna be the big question with twenty twenty four with John Rahm. How is he going to play in majors now that he's a member of Live. We've seen it go kind of both ways, Like Brooks has been relatively unaffected, right, but we've also seen a guy that is a notable absent absent tea on this list is Cam Smith. Like I couldn't. I would have been hard pressed to think he would have been off this list this time last year. But he looks like a completely different player since his big payday. You know, to me it you know, you see some of the pictures of him at the at the Australian Open, it just doesn't seem like golf is the number one priority in his life right now. But I don't think I'm gonna be worried about Rom's performance dipping. So I got Rob three. I think you could you know, you could have them one, You could have them too. I don't think there's a wrong answer really with these top four, but I just have them three. I think the reason I have him three real quick before we get to the next two is that with Rom we have a little bit more variability in major performance. And obviously he's he won the Masters, that was a great win, but like we still have these majors where he's a little bit of a no show, Like you know l a c C this year, PGA, he just wasn't really a factor in either of those. I know that L a CC finish looks better than it was. And then obviously, you know, he had he had a rough start at at Liverpool, but then he came roaring back. Number two is Rory McElroy. We're waiting for the Major. Everybody's waiting for the Major. I'm sure Rory's waiting for it more so than anybody. But the thing that has him too here. Even though it wasn't a great year by Rory standards, He's got seven top tens in the past eight majors. That level of consistency that Rory's had in the majors is unmatched by anybody else in this list, and it just seems inevitable for it to break his way soon. You know, He's still got that supreme distance and talent off the tee that is going to carry him. I don't think that's going to change. I think, you know, there might be more guys that are close to him than ever before, but it's still such a huge advantage over almost everybody. I remember watching, you know, at LACC and the guy that I have ahead of him was Sky Scheffler, one of the great drivers the golf ball. Rory's just I mean, he's like twenty five yards past. It's insane. He has gotten longer. That's one of the under talked about things is how much Rory McElroy's improved off the tee in the last two years. He has got to be twenty yards longer than he was two to three years ago. His driver talent is just unbelievable. Number One Scottie Scheffler. I think, like you know, we're going to look back on twenty twenty three. It obviously was I think probably a frustrating year for Sky Scheffler. He had statistically one of the greatest ball striking years ever. T De Green was just at a level that only had been reached by Tiger Woods in the in the modern stats era, the putter was really bad. If the putter comes back to something average and he hits the ball somewhat on a similar trajectory, he's going to win five, six, seven times in twenty twenty four. I'm in bet on that, you know, Like I think, putting's really variable. It can go up and down. I'm going to bet on him figuring it out. I think that we are in store for a big Sky Scheffler year. So he's my number one. So that's my top ten players in the world right now, I think like obviously a person that I think like a lot of There's some exclusions here, you know, Speeth, JT, In Max Homa, and they're all at different different stages. I think of those three that Justin Thomas has the best chance of coming back in. I really hope that JT makes it back in. He is one of the most fun players to watch in the game. It would be great to see kind of a comeback in the way that kind of I don't think it's in all the depths that Jordan, Speith or Ricky got to but I think JT of those three has the best to be into this top ten next year. This time, he's already been there. Everything's there. He's just got to get hitting the ball better. He's just got to get back to his old self off the tee and with approach play. So that was the top ten players I think going into twenty twenty four. Let me know what you think if you disagree with how you feel. And before we get to Steve McDonald, let's take a quick break to talk about our sponsor Toro up and down Ham and Egg to the list of great golf pairings, we can now add the Toro Workmen MDX and Electrification. For more than two decades, the Workman MDX has been the Superintendent's trustee sidekick, a rugged utility vehicle for whatever the job. And now it's the same except the Workmen MDX. Lithium is powered by Torro's proprietary Hyperceell lithium ion batteries, meaning the chargers on board ready to be connected to any standard one hundred and twenty volt power outlet whenever, wherever. Less time checking batteries and more time getting stuff done with the same power and durability. That's another great golf pairing, a win win. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. Now let's get to Steve McDonald. All right, Steve, I was with a superintendent it probably about a month and a half ago. He's a retired superintendent, and he was he was telling me about how I needed to get you on the on the podcast, and you know, I had long thought about having you on and just probably hadn't asked, you know, that was that was the thing. But his impetus is his declaration of why you needed to be on the podcast was he told me that he extended You extended his career by ten years. He said he was struggling. You came in and added ten years to his career. So how would you describe what you do as a profession.

00:15:40
Speaker 2: So I'm an agronomis that visits you know, to one hundred and fifty twound and fifty golf courses per year, So I get to see the full gamut of you know, impact of cultural practices, fertility on playability. But the biggest challenge I think you know many superintendent's face as they kind of get in the last stage of their career is the kind of get you know, complacent or what they've done for the past twenty years has worked really really well and why should they be open the switching up you know, various practices, programs and products. So I look at it from a holistic approach as an avid god for myself and an agronomous that tend to look at you know, overall programs and from a holistic standpoint. But yeah, that was a pretty nice compliment to be made for sure. There.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're a turf grass consultant, What what does that entail?

00:16:29
Speaker 2: Right? So I can install for every major aspect of turf grass management. So, for example, last Friday, I was at a club that we we went through the gamut through the greens committee and the superintendent talked about aerification, timing and aerification methods, then past control for greens, tease fairways, drainage, it needs to be installed in faaraways, and putting greens tree work. So it's really all comprehensive for turf grass management. My background is actually in turf grass pathology. I have a master's degree in figuring out why grass is dying? See on that. You know, basically past twenty years i've been self employed. I've realized that golf course super intense are going to ask you every question under the book, from you know, average greenspeed to wedd and agent applications to you know, how does the size of our driving range compare to other clubs in the same ballgame? Right, So I get many different questions over the course of a year and really kind of prepares you to be more of a generalist as far as golf course caregoes.

00:17:26
Speaker 1: So, yeah, how did you get into this field? Obviously you studied why grass dies? Was it always with the vision of doing this.

00:17:38
Speaker 2: So it's a long story shore I'll give you the reader's digest version. But my grandfather was a World War Two veteran and I actually had a grenade took in his leg in D Day and he still played golf. So they he died and as a young kid, took me to a local municipal golf course to play. I never forget the carts still had the wood wood panels on the side of them type of place. And I fell in love with god Off at the age of like eight or nine, and really just kind of realized that gofs what I wanted to do and never was going to be good enough to be a pro. So I basically started changing cups at a local public golf course and realized you could make a living, you know, taking care of a golf course. So I decided to go to a small EG school outside of Philadelphia called Delvau College, and then I went to University of Maryland for graduate school. And it never was sold on being a superintendent, you know. I realized when I was at Philly Country Club as an intern as an assistant, that you know, to me, I wanted to see a lot of things and you know, driving up the hill and see in the third and thirteenth green every day for this, you know, for a long period of time, was not what I wanted. So I got a master's degree, and I was really unsure what I was going to do. It was going to go back into academia get a PhD in turf grass management teach, but I had a lot of people pushing me to start my own consulting in business. And it's been almost twenty years. So basically two thousand and five I started the business. And when I got done graduate school, and I still dabbled, you know, working on some golf courses early on in my my independent career. But really it's been a lot of fun the past fifteen years.

00:19:02
Speaker 1: You know.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: I get to see warm season grasses, you know, and then cool season grasses and problem solve And the biggest part of my job is to assess risk for a golf course, right really, you know, why are the green struggling or why are these fairly struggling, and what can be done within that budget to potentially reduce that risk of turf loss or winter damage which happens every few years in the Northeast, for example, but really just it really comes down to looking at those challenges and then trying to get a solution for them.

00:19:30
Speaker 1: What would you say is the biggest reason that grass dies?

00:19:35
Speaker 2: Too wet is probably the biggest one. It probably goes too wet from rainfall, poor drainage, then shade, then excessive traffic or play, combined with you know, excessive demands for quick and these have changed. Andy, I'll be honest with you know, look at some of these hundred year old greens that are out there that have forty years of straight sand top dressing and through verification, and look at those greens and they're good. And people will say, how do you make that green better? And then you say, well, drain it. We'll bring an architect in look at you know, the undulations in the green, but still draining the green. But the reason why the drainage has been so beneficial for a lot of these older golf courses is just water conducts heat, heats up, and it can kill brass. So I would say too much water is probably the biggest thing. Our fungicides that we use currently for disease control, for fungal growth control are phenomenal. We have we have some really good tools for golf course superintents out there. So I wouldn't say it's always disease related. It's more so environmental related. And then the diseases come in secondary and you know a lot of these problems you can't you know, spray for right, it's something you can go to the local pharmacy and pick up a prescription for a physical ailment. Right, it's a challenge.

00:20:48
Speaker 1: Right.

00:20:48
Speaker 2: So same thing on the golf course landscape with.

00:20:51
Speaker 1: You visiting you know, hundreds of courses and you, as you laid out earlier, you kind of meet with all the stakeholders and at these whether it's the Greens committee that I imagine, the board, the head pro the superintendent's obviously your your main point of contact. How do you curtail your messaging to the different stakeholders? Do you do you have strategies and do you notice different aspects of golf course maintenance really appeals to different stakeholders. Can you share any kind of broad you know, I don't want to make it stereotypes, but like broad conclusions that you've come across the different stakeholders at a golf course.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: And it has a really good question, you know what I try to do with my consultant is when I meet an individual, I try to really kind of understand what they're interested in. Right now, golf pro may be interested in getting access for more people, or or agreement. Remember, could be interested on I had one a few weeks ago where the guy was insistent that everybody takes three divot mixed files with them. They fill in every divot on the golf course. Right, So he was really interested in divot recovery. So I'll discuss, you know, certain things that he or she may be interested in, whereas a GM is really interested in the bottom line sometimes, right, what's just going to cost? Right? What's the cost to put range into a green? So I really kind of retail my my communications with his individuals very directly and to their interest. And superintendent, we all know what they're interested in, right, Yeah, producing the best golf course possible right hands down. So with them, maybe have more technical talks with you know, GreenSky members, even god professionals. I think it's important to ask them what their concerns are. You know, their concerns could be well, if we verify this day, will the greens be ready for this event? This day? Right, and so yeah, And many times a lot of these acronymic questions I tell people, I say, listen, if I could really answer that question, I wouldn't be standing here today, be on the beach in the Bahamas. Right. A lot of this stuff is so unpredictable, right, you can't control the weather. You know, if there was an app out there that you could open up your phone and they say, hey, if we verify the greens this day, they'll be complete healed by this day. There will be no art in this. A lot of what we do on the golf courses art, for sure.

00:23:05
Speaker 1: I feel. I get questions like that from random friends, like if a course is verifying this day, do you think it'll be in good shape by this day? And I'm like, ah, I don't know. My general real thumbs, Like three weeks is that would you say that's a good general real thumb or is it more of a month?

00:23:23
Speaker 2: Well, it's all depending on the time of the year, right, exactly. For the Northeast, right, A lot of golf courses historically run out there the first warm day in March, you know, when the greens aren't frozen and they punch a hole and there's no leaves in the trees, there's no growth, and it could be four to six weeks, right, or if they wait till May, which mays a really good kind of play golf, it could be two weeks. So it all depends on suittle temperature daylyth right, Like we're entering our shortest days of the year here in late December, right, And even if you're in the Caribbean, it's still gets dark at five o'clock in the afternoon. It's not like it stays light even though it's eighty degrees right. So there's a lot of factors on why aerification recovery can be a really what it's a it's a challenge every golf course, right, because we know the benefits of verification, but there's no good time to airfis bottom line.

00:24:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's because I feel like if you do it at the end of the year, then just shuts everybody down for like those like little like great days that you get. But like at the end of the end of the line, Like at the bottom line, it's like it's not that bad to play on airfied greens. Like people, I think I want to get into this a little bit later, but like, it's a complete like expectation thing with golf and where it's gone, and some of the expectations are completely out of whack. But if you were gonna describe just from a turf side, right, we've talked a little bit about these different stakeholders in golf. If you were gonna if you were gonna say, like the high performing clubs that you consult, are there any common characteristics with their leadership and the way they make decisions.

00:24:59
Speaker 2: Yes. One of the biggest challenges for stakeholders any club is they have a personal commitment that they really want the golf course to be the best it's going to be, right, So they get highly involved, right, And sometimes that's good or sometimes that's bad. But many times you have turf professionals or even golf pros that are very well skilled at at their discipline. So you know, there's certain instances where people need to be hands on and there's other instances where people should be hands off. And a question I've asked the people more recently is, you know, they'll bring up a tough task and I'll say to them, are you here to help the club or hurt the club right, and they'll get offended and taken back by that question, and I'll see, why do you answer that? I say, well, you know, I think the plan that you're superintendent or even a god professional have in place is a really good one. And without the input then but really strong leadership, you know, leadership that's really ready to stand up to the ninety nine percent of people who enjoy the club right and be with them and then also enjoy the club right or the club golf course, whatever it is. I feel like many times, you know, a lot of these these these concerns get brought up and people are rightfully concerned, right, they love their golf course, so they care about it, but they're also looking for concerns, right, so looking for issues when if you you or I go out there, we're just you know, grab our sticks in the first hole and go and chat and nice shot, great shot, Like we're not going to nitpick the fact that the bunker on the back right of to agree and has you know, a footprint in it. Right. So there's a lot a lot of good leadership out there. The biggest advice to have is, you know, watch the number of people involved is a big one. You know, many times there's too many voices in the room that you're not going to be able to focus on the really the big task of hand. Uh. But as well as letting the urk professional or the god professional do do what's what's in the best interest for the club.

00:26:44
Speaker 1: You hit on concerns and like things that people should be concerned about. What's the example of like a innocuous concern, like one that just you know, not really important, versus something that you should be concerned about, like, you know, just like like if you could to describe one as like a frivolous concern, like something you shouldn't be bringing up to your turf professional or someone on the staff, versus a concern you should be bringing up if you're just a golfer.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: I got two, I got two good ones for Andy Edges a cart path where the cart path meets the grass. It's number one of my books. Number two is Number two is the Appearance of Bunkers.

00:27:29
Speaker 1: Right.

00:27:30
Speaker 2: Appearance of bunkers Right, the appearance does not impact how they play. And you begin to talk to people about you know, you're spending more per square foot to maintain bunkers, which are a penalty area that you are own puttingredients. It becomes a very eye opening topic to talk about. But the cart path ends or an easy talking point for me, very difficult talking point for people to understand. When you say, hey, what percentage of your rounds walk and golf course will say maybe twenty five percent. So how many rounds you do last year? They say twenty eight thousand. So I say, okay, twenty four thousand carts travel the exact same spot off that car path edge right, plus your maintenance equipment. I'm not sure if you have a beverage card or not, but you have to realize the volume of It's like seventy five carts a day when you're open for play. And when you say that the people they get very eye open, like there's like if you had seventy five carts running through your front yard every day, how would it look? Right? So it's a good topic. May times I've been saying this more and more as I say, how many golf balls get hit from that spot? Because within the rules of goth I think you get relief, right, the rules take care of that issue already, or else say I think you have other itlumes you got to focus on besides them, those are my two kind of my you know ones. I get a lot of questions about, you know, the appearance of bunkers. As you know, right, a bunker can be black and off color and play really well, but a golfer will walk by it and see, you know the appearance of it, and it's like, are you playing out of that? So it's it's it's a fun, it's fun conversation when that does come up.

00:29:02
Speaker 1: I think, more so than maybe any feature in a golf course, the the the thought of a bunker, like in what it represents from when golf architecture and golf was starting to what it is today. You know, like if you take CB McDonald's quote about you know, I want I'd rather have like a thousand elephants run through a bunker than like it, you know, like the idea of like it being complete hazard, like don't hit it in there to today where like every club, like I think like the you know, and I'm sure I don't want to offend any any club that you consult at this is my opinion, but like the shipping in this this sand from like way far away to make sure it's perfect, and like uber playable, like that disconnect is just it's it's never been greater. Like I I don't know. I found I was playing at a golf course this this fall, and like they had a different sand. It was like heavier and it was you know as a native sand, and I found it like was more challenging. It was just a different challenge. But like after a couple of days, I figured out, oh, I got to use like a different wedge that has more bouts, and then all of a sudden, I started to play well out of the sand. It's like that's a skill. Like this is we're just deskilling the game if everybody's got the same sand bunker maintenance is insane. And then it even goes down to like the idea. And I don't know where you stand on this, but like I think it's crazy that we're putting some some of these liners that we're putting in have like a lifespan. It's like, wait, you're putting it'd be like you know, putting in It's like when you put machinery into your kitchen that has a ten year lifespan. It just means you're gonna have to spend that money or more than that money in ten years. It's like, if you don't absolutely one percent need it, what are we doing with with machinery?

00:30:59
Speaker 2: Right. That's why it's so critical for any any big restoration, renovation or even small project to make sure that infrastructure is exactly as the architect intends. And I see this quite a bit. Or people are even taking the time to say they're gonna relevel a tea box. I look at it. I say, well, that tea box actually should be looked at by an architect, right, I'm not an architect, I'm an agronomous So mix sure it's in the right spot. And the like why it's been here for thirty years. I'm like, well, you're gonna take the time to put new irrigation on re level of tea. You want to make sure it's in the right spot because you could be redoing that tea in ten in twelve years. Yeah. The bunker stands is a really interesting one. The other one that really kind of frustrates me Andy is is we have a lot of architecture going back to the way it was one hundred years ago. And when you look at old golf course photos, do you see really healthy grass and bunker surrounds.

00:31:48
Speaker 1: No, it's kind of like a mixed bag, right.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: And so the expectations now are that we'll restore you know, whoever the architect was. And these big old slopes they face the sun. I mean, is fine turf really designed or engineer to be growing at a you know, a significant slope facing the sun right now? Most turfs do best on flat surfaces, So there's a big, you know, stressful point that you know that we're going back to those. So there's a lot of things about trud on bunkers that can be a big challenge.

00:32:17
Speaker 1: I think about like some of my favorite courses from the sense of conditioning, and they embrace like I you know, maybe the best highly traffic golf course from a conditioning standpoint is Pinehurst number two in the sense of its edges, right. Like, what I love about Pinehurst number two is the way they they approach the edges of the native in the fairway, right. It is a living, moving target, right, and it as you get to the edge of the fair away, which is like where you when you hit a T shot, you know you're you kind of like gasp, especially at Pinehers number two, and your ball gets near an edge, and when you get near that edge, that surface gets a little bit more irregular, it's a little bit more baked out, and the ball tends to run into the native, right, And like this idea that that native you know, I think like if you go to a club, and I don't want to stereotype all the clubs, but like you go to a club and it's the idea is like this is our fair away line and it can't deviate from this right. It can't you know, move out two feet, It can't move in two feet. But that golf course, which is hosting a million US opens, I love the nature of like this is a living organism and some blow out, some come in, but like that idea of allowing the golf course to live just resonates so much with me.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah, it's a challenge a strong you know, commitment to do that right. So that's that's the challenge you know, Friar's had, which I've worked with Bill Jones for a number of years. It's the exact same way where that the dunes on certain holes are just moving and that they're not going to move those right. So it's similar in that regard that creates a very unique feature relative to a cut and dry fairway rough edge that you mentioned. And the other thing too is it's unpredictable. Right, you might hit like you saiy, you might hit a ball down there. The first question you asked is your caddy or your person you're playing with. I think that's okay, right, and you get down there ends up being in a little bit of a hard pan sandy you know, kind of wiregrass type live many times. So yeah, I agree. But that's also you know, a big commitment for for any club, right, they have to be you know, committed to that. Right. I see both ends of the spectrum. I see, you know, does that fit or a landscape or not fit the landscape? Yeah, from a maintenance standpoint and the old appearance, that definitely makes some sense.

00:34:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just think like as you move off the center line of the fairway, not it's not like the native and the wire grass there. But I think as you move off the center line of a fair way, the situation you are presented should just become more and more unpredictable in general, right, right, And like that should be an overall philosophy. I think like a lot of what turf represents is the overall philosophical change in golf right from where it was like a you know, especially in the early nineteen hundreds, it was just a you know, overcome any obstacle because it was so out in the wild. The form of you know, the expertise of agronomus, you know, in the in the green keepers and the superintendents was so much less than today. Like it's almost as the science and the expertise of the professionals have advanced, the mentality of the of the golfers has shifted to this real like fair or not fair, everything has to be perfect, like it's interesting, Like, you know, the overall spirit of golf has been lost as turf professionals have gotten so good at their job.

00:36:05
Speaker 2: Right. That's why I use that example as a car path edge and andy, because I've had that interaction many times that people are like, let's go look at number sixty's what's going on sixteen? Oh, the car path edge is thin, and I'm like, we're looking for perfection. I get that. I understand your concerns, right, I totally understand it, But at the same time, like, yeah, it's a tough scenario, but superintendents themselves not doing themselves any good many times because their expectation is perfection as well as you mentioned, right, I mean, I know where I'm going each day. The expectations are going to be very high, right, so many times, so it's important to really get all that in front of you, and then you know, ask but what are the big concerns? Right? And then if the concerns are, like you said, perfection or graduated rough for outside, it's a little little rougher them the inside. But yeah, it takes commitmenty their way to do that.

00:37:03
Speaker 1: All right, Let's take a quick break to talk about Toro and the Toro Vista. Moving people around comfortably and efficiently is an important job for any golf property and for other sprawling places like campuses, events, spaces, and municipalities. The new Toro Vista is perfect for all of them. Available in gas or lithium ion battery, four, six and eight passenger models, this powerful people mover works as hard as a truck, but rides like a limousine, sure to impress guests no matter the venue. Its polar white body makes customization a breeze too, so the Vista can pull double duty as a rolling billboard while getting folks from point A to B on point. Visit Toro dot com, slash golf and reach out to your local Toro distributor for more information. All right, let's get back to Steve McDonald. All right, so we hit on a couple things you shouldn't talk about. Uh, you know, what are a couple of things that should be brought up if you see.

00:38:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the big items you mentioned. Some of this is that, you know, almost everything in a golf course landscape has life expectancy, right to think about You're going to put miles of pipe in the ground and run water through it, and then every November in the northeast or the central you know, even other parts of the country, you know, put pressurized air and blow it out. Right. The irrigation system in particular, right, the irrigation system is the lifelong of any golf course. And a lot of people will ask me from time to time. They'll say, Steve, how do we improve our rough at the golf course? And I say, well, the green steas and fairies must be really good if you're asking me how to improve your rough, right, kind of it's a kind of a joke. My next question is how's your irrigation coverage and the rough, And many people will say we don't have irrigation in the rough as well, rush probably as good AS's going to be without irrigation in there, right, So irrigation is really critical thing we have. We have some really good technology with some newer you know, HDP piping, some newer heads are more efficient, some spacy methods. So irrigation is number one in on most golf course infrastructure. Then drainage. You talk a lot about over the year's tree management, and I follow that in detail. It's awesome. People have to understand that trees on golf courses grow so thirty or forty years ago, the trees were probably half the height they are now. Trees on golf course landscapes grow quicker than trees and forest because they are you know, they're open to at least one half, they have more sunlight and more competition. And then also trees are are at the end of yeah life expectancy as well. They can get hit by lightning, they can be blown over by a big windstorm event, right, so you know there's challenges with trees. The big big three things I talk about Manytimes. I call it course infrastructure, and it's challenging for many golf courses because they get so caught up in their annual operating budget that they don't look at the big ticket items like the irrigation, drainage, share flow and equipment. Right, So there's a big capital expenditures that people ask me all the time, how's our budget compared to this budget? I say, we can talk about this, folks, but we also have to look at about the big picture. Like what do you mean big picture? I'm like, here's a good example. Anybody could probably afford to buy an NFL team. You could pay the price right, take a load out and buy the NFL team, But can you afford the pay to players? Right? And so there's two ways to look at that, right as far as like okay, buying the golf course or annual budget, but then paying the players right, So keeping everybody happy, keeping the equipment up the date, keeping the infrastructure to where it needs to be right. So, really, those are the big things that most golf courses should be looking at.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: It's like it's like buying buying a house, but not being able to afford then to put furniture in.

00:40:38
Speaker 2: It, right, exactly exactly so by by my first house, I said to my insurance sales rep. I said to him, I said, why am I insured for this so this much? He says, Steve, if you lost everything in your house, think about even the towels in your bathroom have to replace, like yet buy all this stuff, right, And so it's a good comparison. Like a golf course is any big entity, and it takes some big ticket items. You know, you're going to put a new roof on your house every twenty or thirty years, right, A golf course should know that we're probably going to put in irrigation every twenty to thirty years at the longest, right. So that's probably one of the biggest challenge facing many many of the golf courses. And realize many of the bigger clubs have been, you know, are well conditioned and have the infrastructure in place. They've planned for this five and ten and fifteen years out, and so it's very difficult for many clubs that haven't been having the foresight to look at those items to plan accordingly.

00:41:31
Speaker 1: All right, So what would you describe as ideal conditions?

00:41:36
Speaker 2: So, Adie, I'm probably different than most. I go to a golf course for two reasons, one to work and then entirely just to go enjoy myself. Right, and so people ask me, They'll say, Steve, how do you separate work and plas I don't even think about grass, and I'm thinking about hitting an eight iron one hundred and sixty two yards into a right to left win. I don't even think about the grass, right, So my ideal conditions would be, you know, obviously, you know fairways four hundred tis four hundred greens rolling about ten and a half eleven and a half feet. I'm not a great putter, so I tend to like greens that roll out pretty well, but not you know, have a ten foot you know, comeback putf I miss a par right, So, and I also really enjoy looking at architecture. Right and slower greens typically allow you to use more cupping locations, they break more, you can have more created creativity. And slower greens and faster greens. People ask me, say, Steve, why do people like greens fast? I think faster greens can be easier to putt for a number of reasons. Right, once you get the golf ball online it's not going to stop short of the hole. And then two, if you ever seen a short putt go in, right, you have to get the golf ball to the hole for it to go in. And the quicker the greens are more that that tends to happen.

00:42:50
Speaker 1: So, I mean, that's an interesting You just made something click in my brain. Is like I think that golfers in general, they probably hate one thing on a green more than anything. And and there's probably like some level of like shaming over decades that has gone into short leaving puts short.

00:43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And the faster.

00:43:13
Speaker 1: The greens are, the less likely you are to leave leave a put short, which might totally might explain the whole fascination with like super fast greens.

00:43:24
Speaker 2: It could could be a big part of it. Yeah. I had a caddy years ago, really good caddy, and he said to me, he says, you ever see a sure put go in? I said, Tom, that's really interesting. The guy was in the sixties, caddy forever and I've tiken that with me for a long time. And the other thing that you know, a lot of the greens I play in you are slow from front to back. Yeah, So our first twenty five to thirty five foot puts typically uphill obviously, so yeah, I mean typically yeah. I mean as far as conditioning goes, I don't spend a lot of time looking at it. I'm not usually at the golf course. The play golf course is to have fun right up with some buddies, you know, kind of just hang out, So I'm not looking at that agronomics all the time.

00:44:07
Speaker 1: Do you think maintenance expectations have gone too far at the high end clubs?

00:44:14
Speaker 2: Do I think maintenance expectations have gone too far? No, because people are willing to pay for them, and people are willing to get the time the big, big separation. And I struggle with this as a consultant because I'll have a golf club that will say to me. They'll say, Steve, why are we verifying? And I think about, well, XYZ, which is ranked top ten in the world, which is an hour away, they also aerified. And I'll have a golfer turned me and say, well, I didn't join that club, Steve, I joined this club, right. So the cultures amongst various courses and clubs oftentimes dictate what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. Right. So, for example, we know that many of the top ten golf courses in the world, they close their greens for a minimum of thirty days per year, right, so they tarp them, they cover them. In the Northeast, they're closed for you know, January February March most years. Well, if you're talking to a golfer who are looking to play golf at least twice a week in the winter time, you mentioned like hey, x y Z top club in the area. But as what I'm saying about, they give the time and the resources to his clubs to be that.

00:45:15
Speaker 1: I mean, so like a great example of this is in in my neck of the woods, San Francisco area, the course that's just like I mean, I think nationally known for their conditioning, Cal Club. We live. I live in a twelve month a year golf place, and Cal Club takes two weeks where they shut everything down, you know where they do like heavy, heavy maintenance for two weeks in a time when everybody can play golf, right, And I'm sure it's frustrating, but they know they need to They need some time off to deliver the day to day expectations. You know.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: Yep, that's a great example. An Yeah, so that's why I was getting as far as the time and the resources, right. So it's a challenge, right because you know, maintenance budgets have gotten to a point where they are getting very high. I think it's important also keeping back people's minds that between sixty and seventy percent of most annual operating budgets on golf courses is labor. So you think about there's only thirty to forty percent of other expense that the equipment fuel, right water. This is this is a generalization, right, but so labor has gone on quite a bit for every industry, right, So as these budgets have gone up, and a golf course is not an easy thing to take care of, right, So you have a lot of handwork, manual labor. You have a lot of just tedious task on golf courses that take a lot of time. And I think think in the future, with some of the autonomous mowers and some of the technology coming down the pipelines, maybe we'll see this this kind of plateau right where some of that stuff maybe won't get terribly more expensive once that infrastructure is in place. Now, there'll be some nuances with some of the other equipment issues but I would hope that you know, the technology is coming to the turf market to make it a little more kind of plateau to speak. I don't think it's successive. Andy. You know, now, you guys follow professional golf and some of these persons that the pros are playing for, and they want to play these top level golf courses. I mean, I think it's well warranted to give them that that type of condition.

00:47:17
Speaker 1: You mentioned labor as a you know, kind of a challenge of the turf grass industry faces. What are some of the other big challenges that you see in the industry.

00:47:28
Speaker 2: So beyond labor, our biggest challenge is would be public perception of pesticide use on golf courses. We're seeing that really come to the forefront here in New Jersey where there was recently an insecticide ban of a class of insecticides that was used pretty successfully on golf courses. So public perception. If you type into chat gp T I did this last week for one of the classes I was teaching. You say public perception of pesticide use on golf courses and list eight things, right, And it's pretty interesting to think about. You know, our standards in the US, which differ incredibly from the UK and our you know, visual assessment of putting greens and fairways and tea's is very different. So if you take you know, golfers to the UK and you show them greens that have no fungicides on them, fairways that have no herbicides on them, it's the UK right. Well, if we continue to have you know, major pesticide restrictions in the US, we're going to have to change our level of expectation because you're going to see some diseases on putting greens, You're going to see some weeds and fairways perfection level that we currently have. So second in the labor it would definitely be you know, the public perception of pesticides and we need to stay ahead of this as an industry. You know, every applicator certify to go through continued education. Many golf courses are covering their drains up. They're using pesticides according to the label, which is improved by the EPA. So it's more of a perception than it is a reality. You know, the class of insecticides just got banned in New Jersey. We have I personally have not seen any be concerns on golf courses with that class. Now there is some environmentally, but your golf courses are an area where bees generally are not feeding, right, They're not exposed to the insecticide. And many golf courses within the state of New Jersey have bee hives on the golf course and we're using that class of insecticides with no issues. So it really really comes down to, you know, as an industry, staying ahead of these concerns, educating people about what we're doing. That same class of insecticide is actually used for dogs and cats, right, They put on there for fleas and ticks, right, So it's around people very carefully in their households sometimes, so public perception of that would be probably number two. And then that goes hand in hand with water, right, and what the water concerns you know, long term, as you know out west, are going to be more regional, but eventually they'll be you know, countrywide concerns over water use.

00:49:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's one of the things I've started to notice, and yeah, I think I'm just a little bit more conscious of it being out here. But you know, you start to go to Texas and you're starting to see water concerns. You know, there's golf courses that can't be built in Colorado because they haven't got secured water rights, and it's just you know, it's just a matter of time before it works its way across the country, and I think, like I think you could be a little bit neat naive to towards it until you see it firsthand, right where you are either at a club that's purchasing water and you see the bill, or at a club that you know doesn't have enough water to keep the grass conditions to a certain level. I'm sure that you've you know, superintendents are are such an interesting group of people, and I think they are extraordinarily resourceful. I'm curious if you have some examples of like the best innovations or makeshift solutions that you've come across at different golf courses where you're kind of like, wow, I can't believe that they figured out how to do this.

00:51:07
Speaker 2: So it's a it's a good question. Probably some of the most innovative things I've seen are with labor, right where somebody's either a really good motivator and they can get a lot done with few people, or a way where say a person goes out to mow greens, change cups and ray bunkers at the same time, and it's really increased the effectiveness of the labor they have in house, right whereas some golf courses will send one crew out the you know, rake bunkers, one crew out the greens. So that's probably one of the biggest things is how they motivate their staff, because it really comes down to is it's labor intensive. As far as innovative things, we're starting to see some interest in things like mentioned the Alzheimus mowers, and that's going to be the future, I think as far as some of the peripheral aerials go. But really bunker raking, we're seeing a pretty big change and less raking and more firmative bunkers is probably someone that saves a lot of labor. And also it's a challenge to communicate that to golfers because the bunker may not look the same as it did when it was raked, you know, entirely two or three years ago. But that's probably one that we call it the Australia method. It came out of Australia where you moved.

00:52:20
Speaker 1: The faces where it's like you notice it because the bottoms are just raked right exactly.

00:52:26
Speaker 2: I've had goffers tell me they say, our bunkers are gunn kept, and I'll say, well, you know, I was here last year we discussed going to this method. They try to firm the edges and maybe rake the bunkers less, and the less you touch the faces, the firm and that sand may play and the ball should release to the bottom. So that's one that's kind of been well adopted by a lot of golf courses a lot of different regions. It's actually been pretty innovative and save some some some time. And I think that question to more thought, to be honest, that's that's a tough one. I'm sure there's some examples out there.

00:52:55
Speaker 1: With regards to, you know, getting a club to implement something. Is it is cost always the biggest motivator or what are what are some other motivators too, you know, kind of convincing a club to undergo a change, like like say that bunker change.

00:53:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest one is, uh, access, how's that gonna impact me? It's a big question, I get, right, Like.

00:53:20
Speaker 1: Okay, every com.

00:53:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, your greens aren't training. Well, you know you're superintendent, can't go the greens for two days after you get two inches of rains, so your greens aren't training. I would advise putting drainage in there. So how much is that going to cost? Question? And how long is it greening to be closed? For the two biggest ones you'll get right, So access and then cost right and that you say, you know, you draw out on pieces of paper you say this is hollow. Install the drainage and think them about a day day and a half the green to be playable, and then what's that cost? Right? So just as as one example, But yeah, I mean I think a lot of clubs are really realizing that it's all about the access. And I have a funny joke. I question people from time to time and say, hey, have you ever readne your Kitchen? And like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, when you even did your kitchen? Did you eat dinner in there every night? Or maybe you ate out a lot, or you put a microwave in the living room? Right, And I'm like, well, this, this golf hole is like your kitchen. You're gonna enjoy this with your friends and your family. Perpetually once it's done, right, we're gonna get this work done. Is give us the space and then you know, you can cook whatever you want to and have you know, host through parties in here, right. And it's a golf hole, right. So sometimes I'll depend on who I'm with, I'll give a dollar number and they're like, what they spent on the kitchen, you know, as a comparison to the infrastructure improvements are going to do with the golf course. But it goes hand in hand, right, And I've suggested, you know, but reciprocity or the neighboring clubs, and people will say, well, you know, that's good or bad, depending on who they are. But the biggest thing I think is for any big project would be and the architecture probably tell you this too. We had a funny scenario this past year where a club was going to renovate their fairways, so they were going to spray a non selective herberstyle and the fairways and kill them, then recede them, well, they're going to do night holes this year and night holes next year from a disruption standpoint, And come to find out that the club is going to host a huge wedding, a big profitable wedding, Like the week after the fairways were going to be dead, and I got a phone call about, you know, Steve, what do you suggest? And so the club ended up actually painting the fair the dead fairways green, so that from the back terrace of the club people taking pictures of the wedding, there was no dead grass in there, right, And so there's a club that has definitely thought through the process of given the members the best golf course I aernomica they can. They're updating the grass, going to a new bank grass in this scenario, but then there was still the access issue from a wedding, right, So pretty eye opening when you deal with that that scenario and the paint looks great from the back terrafs, you would never know that the club they went out and they did it and wasn'tn issue.

00:55:49
Speaker 1: The amazing thing about photos at a golf course, so like I've noticed this having photographed like a lot of golf courses and growing, is that when you get far away from grass, it looks really good at like an early stage, but when you're up close, that's when you notice it's like patchy or thin, but like when especially like if you take the drone and the drones up you know, one hundred and fifty feet, you're like, oh, that looks playable, you know, and it could be very thin like you know, and you're walking on it. It's it's fascinating. So the paint strategy there's there. I feel like there are a lot of stories about whether it's influential or high priced. Influential members kids' weddings or high priced weddings, like they like rush jobs on different things, needing to be accomplished in order to get it done. You know that analogy that you made is so good because it's like, you know, it applied Like the house is always a great way to I feel like to relate things to people. Like if you were getting your bedroom renovated, you wouldn't be staying in your bedroom. You'd like pick another room of your house. And it's like, you know, if you data in the bedroom, all you're gonna do is make the bedroom getting back open a longer process, right, totally.

00:57:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're in the way, you can't get the project done. And that's a talking point I use at many clubs. You know, our courses even is you know, are you guys gonna when you're closing, And they'll say, well, we're gonna try to phase closure, or they're going to work on one, two, we're gonna play you know, three through eighteen. That's said, So you're gonna ask you, superintendent to maintain sixteen holes and then also oversee this this huge construction project. So they're basically in a construction mode as well as a maintenance mode. I say, it's a big challenge, and they they'll say, what do you suggest, and like realize, you know, if you can focus on just the big project, it's a big, big, big thing to talk talk about. So, yeah, the access is a big A lot of clubs face that that's probably the cost is not always the main issue. I mean, it's a big issue, but a lot of times I'm fine. It's more that if people always want access to their course, and I totally understand their concerns with it.

00:57:56
Speaker 1: You talked about autonous mowers a little bit and that being a big thing in the future, or I'm curious, I think, like I've heard a lot about grasses and the innovation there. What have been are do you see that from your side where we're seeing new grasses come on the market that are you know, much more sustainable or provide you know, huge benefits to the professionals maintaining them where they can maybe allocate resources differently or use less, use less, you know, applicants. What's going on in the actual grass evolution.

00:58:32
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on. I want to preface this by saying that in every different region there are pros and constant grasses. Right where I happen to do most of my work, you know, basically from Richmond through Boston or Richmond through Philadelphia in particular, that transition zone, we don't have an ideal grass species.

00:58:48
Speaker 1: Right.

00:58:48
Speaker 2: You'll see golf courses in the same thirty minutes growing rye grass. We'll see bank grass, We'll see some Joygia grass fairways, You'll see some Rita grass fairs, all in that same region. Right, there was a perfect grass out there, every golf to be growing it right in that region, we just don't see that right. Because of that, So there are various climates, like maybe you're in out west where Bermuda grass is definitely you know, the go to, but even within the Bermuda grasses, we're seeing more heat tolerant ones. We're seeing some drought tolerant ones right and where you can actually, you know, look at these grasses and try to water them a little less. Now they still don't need water. You can't not just water.

00:59:23
Speaker 1: We know that there isn't a grass that doesn't need water yet.

00:59:27
Speaker 2: Not yet. So but in the Bermuda grass is, yeah, we see a lot of that. Now in the Joysia grasses, we're seeing better texture. We're seeing more green color retention, say into the fall and earlier into the spring, which is a big knock on a lot of these wormses and grasses because most of the country at some point they will go dormant once they get hit by frost. We'll go straw color. Which I don't mind that at all. I mean, the Joyshes we have today are definitely not like the older joys Is. They actually have more texture, the ball will ste up a little bit better. And the biggest things with the bent grass is that we're and so these would be the newer bank grass is the past you know, even five to ten years is they have better disease tolerance and they have some some heat tolerance as well as good texture. So mcgoffer. You know, looked out on a fairway or a tea or even a putting green, that the texture will be finer, the ball roll should be more consistent when they're when they're young. Uh. And then within the bank grasses, we're seeing some ones that are more competitive with Poeania which love it or hate it. Poe is going to be there in Masonario. Isn't going to get into the poa bent grass debate today because it probably take up a whole pod. But realize that many of these newer bank grass is year two, three and four. They're very competitive and they tend to be so dense, uh, they prevent Poenua from filling in. So there's a lot of good at.

01:00:45
Speaker 1: Is that what happens with invasion? Is it just the competition between you know, like effectively like Darwin, you know, the competition between species and the more dominant species, you know edges. The other one out is that what happens when you get contamination.

01:01:01
Speaker 2: It's a big part of it. Andy. So there's a lot of reasons why poe Anua is extremely competitive, but the biggest one is as a huge seed bank. Most golf courses are more than thirty years old, especially in the northeast. If you kill an area with a herbicide, don't do anything to it, and let's sit fallow for a year, it'll turn to one hundred percent poanua. So there's tons of seed in the soil, and then you know, traffic will thin the bankgrests out, and then poe of flowers and produces more seed. It's very competitive, but you're exactly right. What happens in a golf course landscape. This is very difficult for many golfers to think about, but basically it's evolution happened in front of us, right, and the mower. If you think about a mower, it is actually stop an evolution. Right. If evolution by ecology terms, was really happening, you would not be mowing it and it would turn it into a forest over time. Right, So by cutting things as low as we do, we're basically preventing that from occurring. So yeah, it's kind of the science behind it. There's other reasons why, you know po aan it can be very competitive in golf course landscapes. It's very it's very diverse. Down south, there's a lot of resistance issues with poe where they just don't have any herbicides that kill it. And that's once against you know, the ecology of it.

01:02:10
Speaker 1: I guess, like that's something you know that you know, you golf course, you you renovate it, you open it up, and it's in this state that everybody wants it to be right. And from that moment you're kind of fighting nature and evolution. What's the right balance of like worrying about you know, a you know, how something's changing or weathering or whatever versus you know, kind of like knowing, like addressing an evolution right, like you know, I imagine that's got to be a hard thing for Superintendent.

01:02:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, and that's why we're seeing I mean, we're seeing a lot of clubs in the Northeast. I'll name a few, but like wing Foot, for example, where they balt a straw, where they picked the poet ut bancrass sot up and put it back down. Those were instances where the members, in my opinion, we're not unhappy with the surface. They wanted to change more of the architecture right.

01:03:08
Speaker 1: For those those instances, they took the grass out of the greens, planted it and then brought it back in right.

01:03:17
Speaker 2: Bingo, bingo, Yeah, So I call it turf recycling. So you're basically going to take the turf off the top, create the changes architecturally with the soil, and add you know, US shade specification of greens, and then put it back down. That's a scenario where they're basically embracing the previous one hundred years of ecology, right, so they know that grass has been adapted to grow in that environment. So we're seeing both ends of the spectrum here where some golf courses are starting fresh with all new grasses, which is going to be more uniform, more defined. Now, maybe that grass was bred to be growing in full sun and you have some shade issues, right, and that first year or two could be tough. We've all seen that with grasses that are immature, especially in the shade, they take a lot of time to mature and eventually maybe you cut more trees down, right. Whereas some of the courses have just embraced the grasses that they have and they've recycled them. So now this this is once again not a uniform suggestion. Right, There's very few times that you would recycle the same grass. Generally, that's when people are pretty happy with the grass, but they just want to change the architecture out. So but yeah, the other big challenges too, Like grasses take time to mature, right, So greens will typically mature like two and a half to three years after their planet for ben grass screens now Bermuda can be closer to a year for sure in the southeast. But to think about you know, these grasses, they take time to acclimate in their environment, and that takes the superintendent and their staff some time to figure out how best to mow them, roll them, spray them right. Like you know, most of the major championships that you see on TV, they aren't playing that US Open of June. After that they just rebuilt the whole entire golf force to the previous fall. It's usually two or three or four years. This year Oakhill was on his fourth year when it was open for the PGA Championship, for example. So there's a big talking point there I use many times is that these grasses are perennials, right, They survive year for year and it takes some time, right, So there's a lot of expectations every generally speaking, the architecture and the grassy lines are all where they need to be. It's a skin i grass to mature. You know.

01:05:21
Speaker 1: I never thought about like how things become irregular at a golf course. I'm per personally and this is I think a very much a taste thing. I'm very much a fan of. Like when you go to an old course, having a hodgepodge of grasses right, like it just makes it feel a little bit older than the uniform approach that's become quite popular in renovation. But one of the things you said, like, you know, you got a shade area where the where this grass isn't growing well, and it's like, oh, then the superintendent throws down some fine fescue that grows well in the shade, right, And that's how the process of getting a hodge podge of grasses starts, right, because it all started from one you know, one seed, right even one hundred years ago, and they just eventually evolve. Right, someone tracks some poa on their shoe onto the green and you start to get that process right. So that's an interesting way to think about. I know that you do a lot of consulting with clubs on how to prep for tournaments. Yeah, how do you what is like the ideal approach for you know, getting your golf course to peak. I always, like, in my head, have imagined this as like a swimmer getting ready for a race. Like where you hear about their like tapering protocol. What's it for the golf course? Like if you were if you're laying out a golf course to get it ready for a let's just say a State Am, which is more realistic for a lot of golf courses than a US Open, But like, what what are you doing and what does that look like to get a golf course to peak?

01:06:56
Speaker 2: Right? So a look at this at every level. So local you know club could be hosting their you know June member guest or what that is, or like a local public off course could be hosting the Philadelphia publics. Right when's that biggest happen in the year, right, whatever it is, So I look at every major aspect like you said swimmer, right, So like I like a swimmer, like tapering their diet, packing their bag, everything is in their bag, where their air buds are, They're listening to music while they wait, right, So I'm working with a club right now, or we're actually fine tuning their festew mowing programs to have the fest. You peak next September, right, so they're actually going to do some spring cutting.

01:07:34
Speaker 1: So whenever the biggest it's different because of FESCI would normally peak like what June.

01:07:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, middle what June usually, so we're actually going to do an extra spring cutting and they try to keep it a little thinner going into late summer for example. But whenever you have an event like this, it's important for the whole entire committee or people involved to really be focused on that event. Really you might switch up your verification. People ask us they's gonna peak in June, when were they last airfied? And I was like, well, they probably weren't airified this calendar year, right, So if you want to peak for that event, let's talk about peaking for that event, maybe be airfi in September October the previous year. And then will you have the ability to go back in after the event in airfy or you're gonna be hosting an event right next.

01:08:16
Speaker 1: Day, right, members probably want to play it right after, you know, they want a couple of weeks right after that exactly.

01:08:23
Speaker 2: So those are all just big It really comes down to planning, to plan that goes from greens tea's fairways rough to everything from staffing. You know, I have a lot of friends that have been about with major tournaments and I'll ask them, I'll say, you know, what's the key to this is going off without a hitch and they save good planning. So the same thing I do with talking to the golf courses about that would be just a plan. You know, if you want the fescus to be a little mame or playable, maybe you spray them extra time emil extra time in the spring. For example, feste areas are a big contentious point a lot of places for tournament play because they speed up or you know, can slow up play how you play them right as you know, So generally it's not the greens season fairways. It's it's peripheral areas that come more into these type of discussions and what else. So yeah, and then also you know, if they have some problematic greens teaser fairlies, why are they problematic? Let's try to address these issues before the big event.

01:09:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. The out of play areas is an interesting one because what makes a lot of people's favorite out of play areas where you can find a ball quickly where it's you know, you can play out of I can see the flip side of people in tournament golf wanting to inflict pain and penalty in those out of play areas. It's a bit of a kind of push and pull to what people are want for day to day play versus what they want for tournament play. Yep, it's all right, Steve, Thank you so much. I mean we could talk for hours here, but how do how do people find you?

01:09:54
Speaker 2: The easiest way to give me a b on my website, which is Turf Grass Disease Solutions dot com. I could do it simple. Google search probably get me as well, Steve McDonald. Turf the Website's probably the easiest way to do that. And I'm happy to.

01:10:07
Speaker 1: Are you any Are you on social media?

01:10:10
Speaker 2: I am not very active though, so it might take me a week or two to get back to people on a platform on social media, So not veryacted there.

01:10:19
Speaker 1: All right, Steve, thank you so much and have a great holidays. Look forward to chatting with you more and seeing you up in the Northeast sometime this year.

01:10:27
Speaker 2: And thank you for having me. It was great.

01:10:39
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