Superintendent Series: Jim Huntoon on Mowing Lines and Myrtle Beach

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Toro. Today's serious golfers keep up their energy levels with healthy snacks and just like trail Mix and water, get us through a round without flagging. Toro's new Workman GTX Lithium utility vehicle is powered by tenacious, long lasting battery. The Workman GTX lithium renders daily battery maintenance a thing of the past. The same for replacing lead acid batteries for a couple thousand bucks every few years. The Workman gtx's lithium battery lasts six to eight years with no degrading of runtime during its lifespan, saving time and money. Let's see Trail Mix. Do that. Follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and reach out to your local Toro distributor to schedule a demo. Today's episode is with Jim Huntoon. Jim is an active member of the Carolina Golf Course Superintendents Association. He is the head superintendent at the Heritage, a public golf course that's part of the Legends Resorts in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We talk about a lot of stuff, including overseating all sorts of stuff in this episode. And he's a great guy, a great follow on Twitter if you if you want to check him out there. And I'm going to stop talking about what we talk about and let us get to the show. So, without further ado, here is Jim A huntun I miss a green. For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a.

00:01:43
Speaker 2: Brid egg Frida egg, the drid Frida egg, Frida egg, fridagg fridagg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: So, Jim, being involved with the Carolina's Golf Course Superintendent's Association, you've kind of become part media man, you know, with the Pollen Weeds podcast.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: I have.

00:02:25
Speaker 1: Has anything you've learned doing that kind of stuff crossed over into the work end of your work life as a superintendent every day.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Not really so much on the production side. Andy obviously listening to the pre releases and sometimes we're listening to them again. I guess, if anything, some of the good advice that's given in those I guess resonates a little bit more. But I can't honestly say that there's a huge correlation between being a turf manager in a part time dabbler and media.

00:03:03
Speaker 1: What's some of the best advice you picked up from it?

00:03:07
Speaker 2: Being a turf manager superintendent can can wear on you at times and it can be difficult, but it's also very rewarding. And one thing I do like about the media stuff, Andy, is it kind of helps me tap into being creative, you know, having a creative outlet. I've always liked to do that. I've always been someone who likes to create something from nothing, out of nowhere, come up with a new idea and just let it, let it grow and see what happens.

00:03:37
Speaker 1: Do you what about the superintendent being a superintendent? Is there any creative outlets within your job that you can think of, like where you can do something really creative or out of the box or trying something. You know, I'm similar. I love new ideas and starting stuff, and to my to my detriment, aren't a lot of ideas that I shouldn't do.

00:04:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you know, that's kind of hard of being in the creative arts. You know, you throw darts at the wall and if one out of ten sticks, you're you're doing well, but yeah, you know, I think being a golf course superintendent, obviously you have control over mowing lines and different things. And you know, erosion is always a constant on a golf course, whether it's bunkers or different things like that, so you're constantly having to either deal with the erosion or change things, or maybe do something in a way that maybe rebuilds something. You know, creating new team grounds is something we're working on right now, which is fun, and there are you know, there are a lot of creative outlets and one of the most rewarding things about it being able to come up with a plan, implement the plan, and then see the fruits of your labor.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: With the new teas. What kind of new tea's are.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: You putting in all four forward tees? Not necessarily the forward most, but my particular golf course gets a lot of play from people that are over sixty five. I would say that don't tend to hit the ball very far. And the golf course was built in the mid eighties, so there wasn't a lot of thought or foresight to build forward tees. So that's something that we're always constantly working on because we have all this back t space that nobody ever plays, and the forward t's are just small and they take a lot of wear and tear. So that's a big focus out here.

00:05:35
Speaker 1: Obviously, with where golf is going and with distance, longer teas are often being built, and obviously that comes with an increased footprint and cost. But in terms of creating shorter te boxes, which I think are very important and needed at eighty percent of golf courses, probably what goes into that and what type of host is incurred on an annual basis when you add teaen grounds with that's within your footprint already.

00:06:06
Speaker 2: Not really much. I wouldn't say, you know, here on Southern golf courses, we don't tend to treat teas much different than rough. Depending on the situation, if there's shade or other limiting factors, you might have to put in some more inputs. But in general, Andy, it's bermuda grass. Turf is turf, and whether you're mowing it at two inches or a half inch or or anything like that, it's pretty similar. So I wouldn't say it's a huge change. It's not like knocking down trees and building new back teas. It's more just kind of changing the mowing height, and you know, after the actual construction and the growing, it's pretty much just the same as it was, maybe a slide increase, only, like I said, the only caveat that would be if you had to use a different type turf like zoysia grass down here, which we use sometimes when we have more shade because it's more shade tolerant. But other than that, it's pretty much the same, so it doesn't really change the bottom line of the budget.

00:07:06
Speaker 1: You talked earlier just about adjusting faraway lines that having Bermuda it allows you to just kind of switch it on a whim, right.

00:07:14
Speaker 2: It does, absolutely, and they change over time for different reasons, and it's important to take a lot of pictures and kind of document where they were for many different reasons. As you know, historical photographs of golf courses have always been important in restorations and renovations, and whether it's one hundred years old or ten years, it's still valuable.

00:07:37
Speaker 1: What have you been doing experimenting with mowing lines? You know, have you been looking at widening stuff or narrowing and be interested to hear the different things you're doing with the mowing lines.

00:07:50
Speaker 2: I like to go wider for a number of different reasons, some playability wise, some agronomically. The mowing equipment that I have for fairways is probably superior to what I have for rough so I don't mind converting areas of that were maybe rough to fairways. And a lot of times they shrink over time for different reasons. You know, the guys don't necessarily try to shrink them, but it just happens. And the way bermuda grass grows so quickly that it doesn't take long for a line to change, but mostly widening, I.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: Have a hedgen. I mean, like for a line to change. A lot of times you're mowing. Your guys are mowing in the dark, yep and it's just the matter of missing a line by four inches one day, an inch one day, two inches one and in quickly you'll get to a couple of yards exactly.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: And you know, nobody wants to be the guy that scalps the edge either, Andy, you know, because then the other guys are got to look at you like, oh, well, he you know, he's the one that messed that up, Jim, That wasn't me, But it happens, you know, and and you know there's some cases where you want to bring things in andy sometimes around trees. Sometimes we temporarily bring things in if an area gets damaged or wear and tear, which is something we deal with a lot right now since the pandemic, with the increased play and cart traffic, sometimes you need to bring things in just so they can be re established at a higher height and then take them back out. So it does go both ways.

00:09:19
Speaker 1: It's like your lawn and at home. You know, if you got a lot of stress coming, you don't cut it low. You know, if there's a heat wave, I know, I don't cut my lawn low at all.

00:09:29
Speaker 2: You know I don't either. No, I keep mine as high as possible, and my goal at my lawn is to mow it as few times as possible in a year. That's really not any different than at the golf course either. You know, we're trying to grow as little grass as we possibly can and still win the battle with wear and tear because it costs money to cut grass.

00:09:51
Speaker 1: You hit on COVID and increase play, increased cart traffic. We're at a year a year since really it hit this year's probably been just nuts for you. Huh.

00:10:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been challenging in a lot of ways. For everyone. Looking back at it, it's been rewarding because it's something that we've managed to get through, and superintendents and greenkeepers and golf course management crews are just adapt at adapting. It's what we do every day, and you just figure it out and roll with the punches. Yeah.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: I think people overlook the fact that you guys have been having to essentially manage a team of twenty or so every day for the last year when so many people are working at home. At first, I imagine nobody was really playing and you were, like, well as being in Myrtle Beach, it's a huge tourism area. So kind of the life cycle of the year, how you've had to adapt throughout the year.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you know, when it hit Andy would be our season, you know, March April May is you know those three months twenty five percent of the year. We probably generate forty five percent of our revenue in those those three months. You know, it's very busy and it's when we charge the most, and so it was difficult. You know, we never had to close any here in the Carolinas. Thankfully. We worked really hard with the Allied Golf Associations to prove that we could do it safely, and we were successful, which was great. But what happened was is, you know, we didn't get any of the out of town play that we normally would get, and that's what we're charging the most money for. And you know, we do a mixture. Most Myrtle Beach golf courses now do a mixture of you know, outside play, member play and what we call local play, and package and group package play, which are just large groups. So we weren't getting any of the outside package play. So the numbers were actually down in those months comparatively to what they would normally be, and the rounds that we were getting, you know, might that might have been forty cents on the dollar too. So there was that whole period and then in the summer, you know, things started to pick back up, and I would say things normalized a little bit play wise, and more people started coming down. And the fall was maybe down twenty percent in outside play, so not as much as the spring, but still down. And then in the wintertime we rely a lot on Canadian play. We get a lot of Canadian visitors here in the Myrtle Beach area, and with the border being closed, we didn't get any of that. So overall, you know, most facilities have talked about increased numbers of play. We probably did less rounds in twenty twenty than we have in many years. You know, normally at this facility we're going to do around sixty thousand rounds, which is a lot. It's not Southern California municipal course levels where they'll do like seventy five or eighty, but it's a lot. But we probably only did maybe fifty two this year, but a lot of We have a lot, a lot of members and locals that have really grown a custom and fond of the single cart writing. They love that.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: Andy with declining revenue, how does that impact maintenance in your budget? Does it correlate directly or is it something you work with your ownership group on or how does that work?

00:13:23
Speaker 2: Yes, it did impact it. I was probably were probably down overall here, maybe ten percent overall, So not dramatic. You know, we had to do some layoffs, which was really difficult. I've never dealt with that in my career and have always worked really hard to whenever I offer a person a job, I feel confident that I can keep them on year round. But it was difficult and we had to make adjustments. Thankfully, I can tend to be somewhat of a pack rat when it comes to fertilizers and chemicals and was able to, you know, take advantage of some stockpiles I had, which helped it was but there, Yeah, there were challenges, and our ownership group was very good about being realistic what we could and couldn't do, because the last thing that they wanted to do was have things become better and then not have the product to to deliver to the customer. So we'd work really hard at not dropping things off too much. But we certainly made cuts and there were certainly adjustments with.

00:14:27
Speaker 1: Less people and adjustments. You know, where are the areas that immediately are kind of like the first things to go in terms of priority, Like if if you've got full staff, you're doing this, but if as soon as you cut it, this is this is the first thing that goes.

00:14:44
Speaker 2: Bunker maintenance, you know, maybe going from breaking bunkers five times a week to rank raking them once or twice or just as we can get around reduce mowing a little bit. So it was kind of the months that I I was down in staff was March April May, which are really not growing season months. Yet I'm not overseateed, so I don't have ryegrass to worry about, so that bermuda is still growing slow, but so it didn't really impact mowing. And then actually by the time summer came around, I was able to staff back up and was actually able to staff up more than normal andy for the summer in the fall because you know, we've got a large food and beverage staff here because we used to run all inclusive type package where we would serve meals, you know, and so we went away from that after the pandemic just to you know, control costs. So part of some of the government programs that were out there, like the PPP loan, were that we were you know, you had to maintain staffing levels. So we dropped staff on some of the food and beverage, and I was able to increase staff, which was a nice change. So it ended up being a reductive growing season and into the fall.

00:16:02
Speaker 1: With overseeding, you guys don't overseed others in the area do. What's the general split on courses that don't that allow that Bermuda go dormant play a little bit faster, but it's brown versus the courses that overseed. Obviously, that's a very resource intensive process, but produced as a green golf course that probably a lot of Northerners are looking for when they come down.

00:16:30
Speaker 2: This year in Myrtle Beach, there was probably ten percent of us that didn't overseed. There's different reasons why Heritage Club is one of maybe three or four others that didn't. Yeah, it is maintenance intensive, and our business model has just changed so much over the years that summertime play for us has become more and more important. And when you do a heavy amount of play like we do, and this golf course thing fully's all sand too, so it's great for drainage and playability and firmness, but at the same time, it makes transitioning the golf course difficult at times, especially when you're pounding with play. So I just got tired of being at my worst during June and July, which were still really important months for us. I'm here in Paully's Island, which is south of Myrtle Beach Heritage clubs right next to Caledonia in True Blue, and we get a lot of tourists and vacationers here in Pauley's Island in the summertime that love golf, that are from Atlanta or Columbia or Raleigh or places like this, that are members at clubs out there that like to come down for a week and play golf and spend time with their family at the beach, And it's an important segment of the market for us, and I just wanted to be as good as we could be during that period. And summer golf and Myrtle Beach used to be nothing time. When I started at Caledonia as an assistant twenty years ago, we might do thirty forty sixty rounds a day in the summer. Well, that's changed dramatically, and the old overseed model at least here just wasn't working as well, and I just kind of switched it. When I'm gonna, you know, be at our worst condition from June and July to maybe February, when we're charging less and we're getting less play and there's less demand, and we don't get any complaints about it either. We do paint andy sum when when we need to, you know, not always. Sometimes it's brown. Sometimes we paint it, but that's an expensive process too, So it just depends. But it's just a choice that we make here and it seems to work and no one complains. And as of now, you know, late mid March, I mean the Bermuda grass and the fairways is completely greened up. And you know, if your buddies from Chicago were coming down today, they would probably not know the difference.

00:18:51
Speaker 1: If you do overseed, what you're doing is by late March April, like you're going to be a peak condition, right.

00:19:01
Speaker 2: You're going to be yes, you're going to be flush with grass. Yes, it's going to be similar to what we saw on TV this week last weekend at the Players, you know, and it's going to be lush, and you know it's and it provides a great surface to hit off of. I'm not here to say that a non overseated fairway is better in March. It's usually by April or May it evens out, but it's still I would say acceptable for most.

00:19:29
Speaker 1: For the flip side of that, it's going to be really rough when you're transitioning to that riot grass because you're having to water a ton, right, yes, How what's the transition out of it?

00:19:39
Speaker 2: Like, Well, it is a process and it's changed a lot too. It's it's become less and less intensive on both ends. Like everything in turf grass management, it's advancing. And it used to be in Myrtle Beach or in most of the Southeast that everyone would overseed. You know, between September twentieth and October twent those thirty days were the sweet spot everybody would go. Then that also coincides with the probably the best weather that we have in the fall too. That's changed a lot though a lot of people have started going later. I know my friend and colleague next door, Jackson Clemens at Caledonia, has experimented with waiting until December to put his seat out and you know, to not disrupt the fall play, but still get it down and have a less vigorous and less mature stand in the summer. In the spring, that's easier to transition, because it can be difficult to transition sometimes it's a weather related thing. Andy, It's kind of hard to explain. Every year is a little different. We have some more chemical controls that we can use to make the transition chemically and smoother, as opposed to the old way of either a turning the water off either around the Masters or harbor Town the heritage and just letting everything burn up and then bring it back as opposed to hanging on to the rye grass and really watering it all the time and just trying to make the transition as easy as possible. But that could extend well into July. You know, in the wintertime, the mowing part of it. You know, whether you're overseated or not. During the winter months December, January, February, you're not mowing very much, whether you're overseated or not overseeding. The big difference would be now because in order to properly transition rye grass out of a bermuda grass fairway, you don't want to let the rye grass grow on top of the bermuda, which means mowing as frequently as possible. That can be two times a week to six depending on your budget and your golf course and what you can do in.

00:21:37
Speaker 1: Terms of just what's maintenance cost wise, if you do overseed versus not overseed, what kind of differences are you looking at?

00:21:48
Speaker 2: It can be negligible or it can be tremendous. It just depends on what you're doing. If you're painting, like I'm doing, every bit of money that I would spend on seed, I'm spending on paint. The paint cost is very high, and it's all for green, yes, and it's all for to give the illusion.

00:22:05
Speaker 1: It's kind of unbelievable.

00:22:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, and there's there's other little things, but the biggest things are wear and tear on machinery. You know, you certainly do a lot less mowing when you don't oversee. There's really not a lot of upfront change costs, you know, because there's other things we have to do chemically, you know, spray the golf course with a fungicide to protect the bermuda and to keep diseases off of it and to avoid leaf drop, which is basically as the plant goes dormant, the leaves will drop off as it gets warn there's certain things that you can do chemically to help the plant keep the leaves and just have a more vigorous stand to get you through the whole winter. And there's preparation that goes into that. So on the front end, there's not much different. It's more of this time of year when you see the major differences. You know, I'll be mowing fairways. I've just started to mow them for the first time in a few months, and for a while here I'll probably only be mowing once a week, you know, as needed. And then the biggest thing is fertility and chemicals, which are after labor are big cost on a golf course, and you can tailor everything you're doing to one type of grass as opposed to balancing between feeding and protecting a temporary grass versus a permanent grass. It's kind of a fine line where you have to decide which is going to be better for the turf overall, but you have two different species that have totally different needs.

00:23:37
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00:24:57
Speaker 2: It just creates a lot more were you know, one of the number one battles that we have here in the Myrtle Beach area, or really on any golf course that has a lot of cart traffic is just dealing with that, you know, whether it's fertility or traffic management is huge, which involves moving however you like to do it. I like to use a gate system here where I control the entrance and the exits to kind of spread the wear out. Some courses do different types of car control method but they all have a cost associated with them, whether it's the labor to move them every day, because if you're not constantly changing those, they don't do any good, so you have to keep up with with moving them. There's labor associated with that. Whether you have ropes and post or I use split rail fencing. You know, it needs to be weedied it underneath, and it's just it needs to be straightened and repaired to kept nice. So it's just a lot of maintenance.

00:25:52
Speaker 1: I never thought about having to mow under it. Yeah, yeah, because you have to mow to your mowers. That's interesting thing I'd never even thought about.

00:26:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot to it a lot. It takes us twenty man hours a week to keep it all weeded it down when the grass is really going. I mean there's things you can do chemically to you know, just slow the growth of the grass or stun it back. In some areas there's thicker you know, swards of grass than in other places. So but Yeah, there's a definite cost with that, so it's a challenge but important if you want to have a presentable golf course and you want your playing areas to be as good as they can be.

00:26:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I imagine it's like you if there were no rules, everybody would just drive, like you'd have the same spot where everybody would get off the path and then everything from there would be complete go to shit.

00:26:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, And sometimes that method is better than the gate system or trying to control the wear if you're not moving it. You know, it just depends. It's something that needs to be evaluated by each facility and superintendent, and some courses hold up better to wear than others. You know, obviously turf needs sunlight, water and you know nutrition, which it's very adept at getting from the soil, whether we provide it or not. But sunlight and water are limiting factors on golf courses, whether it's trees or drought conditions or you know, light soils where water's perk really quickly. That's always something that you're trying to balance out. And you know, if you don't have any trees and you have perfect sunlight, perfect water, unlimited water, it's less of less of an issue than it is with you have all these other challenges stacked on top of each other, and Turf's resilient. It can stand up to a lot of stresses, Andy, But once you start piling different ones on top of each other, sometimes there's nothing you can do.

00:27:50
Speaker 1: So the Heritage Club is part of the Legends resort courses, and there's four other courses. How do you interact with the other courses. Do you guys talk a lot or is it pretty much everybody runs their own show.

00:28:05
Speaker 2: No, we talk a lot. We're very close. Mike Banker is our director of agronomy at the Legends. He's over the three courses up there. Josh Hu Machers at Oyster Bay, right over the state line in Calabash Sunset Beach, North Carolina, we talk a lot. Mike and I are very close. We discuss things quite frequently. And to be honest with you, Andy, there's a lot of different superintendents here in Myrtle Beach and across the country that I talked to a lot. We we tend to stick together. We have to. We share ideas and here in Myrtle Beach in general, we have a good camaraderie amongst us. You know, it's a resort destination, so we're competitors, but we're also teammates where we're trying to attract people to come here to you know, spend their dollars to play, as opposed to our competitors, whether it's pine Hurst or Hilton Head, Charleston area, the Robert trent Owns Golf Trail in Alabama. You know, so we're we have a vested interest in in everybody succeeding, so we try to work together and and and further are our success across the board. But we I do I do talk with the guys, my colleagues and within my company quite frequently, and you know, we're I was just on a webinar before we got on here with everybody from Century Golf across the country, and we do a lot of those type of things too, and just get together and and and talk about what's going on.

00:29:32
Speaker 1: I get asked this question all the time. I haven't been and I need to go something that I keep saying every year that I need to go to your neck of the woods. But you know where if somebody was coming in there into golf architecture like what's the four to five golf courses they they need to see in Myrtle.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: Beach, Caledonian, True Blue obviously we hear a lot about those, and rightfully so. They're they're very popular and fund play legends. Heathlin, I think, is a big one. It's one of the courses in Myrtle Beach that's been preserved really well. It hasn't changed very much from when Tom first built it. I would love to get him out there sometime and just kind of pick his brain, but I don't think it's changed very much. The Dunes Club is definitely one. I think it's a really good example in one of Robert Trent Jones's best designs.

00:30:22
Speaker 1: They kind of put him on the map, right.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: It did when he built it in nineteen forty eight. It was one of the first ones. Yeah, and it's been changed, but it's a good club and you know, a great spot to kind of understand his style. I think Andy, it's very true to form. I guess whether you're a huge fan of RTJ or not, it is true to form.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: So do they allow public play?

00:30:46
Speaker 2: They do, yep, that's awesome. They're mostly a private club, but they do allow you have to stay at certain hotels and certain packagers have a opportunity to play there. Same thing with Watchisaft Plantation. That's a private club, but I think they do allow a little bit of outside play too. That's an eighties Tom Fozzio course and it was built by Strants, right it was, and if you know about Strans and his style, you can see that right away when you get out there. I like Prestwick. That's a Pete and peb die. It's not really dramatic like a lot of other dies that were built later on in the nineties and in the two thousands. It's from the eighties. It's got some good green complexes. But those those are the four or five that I would start with. You know, obviously I should probably say Heritage Club since that pays my bills.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: I've heard from numerous people that your place is a spot that you should check out when you're in town.

00:31:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's popular. You know. Strands has had his fingers on this place too. And it was originally a Dan Maples and you know, Dan left before the course was finished. In the developers Danny and Larry Jung ended up finishing it and changing some things and It's kind of one of those courses that you can tell when you ride around it that it's had a lot of different hands on it and doesn't necessarily always have a theme that goes all the way through. It has some elements of you know, Golden Age or classic architecture in some ways, but it also has a lot of the modern eighties style bulkheading and you know, the stuff that was popular then. But overall, people like to come here and play because it's a cool piece of land. There's tons of mature trees, there's tons of wildlife. It's right on the Wakama River, the Innercoastal Waterway, and it does have a very cool sense of place.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: You talked about a little bit of a lack of cohesion with the architecture as is superintendent. Are there things that you can do that can try and build cohesion when the architecture doesn't have it.

00:32:52
Speaker 2: You can do anything with money, Andy, as long as you have the money and the tools and the budget. Yes, I think you can. I mean there's some superintendents over the years that have completely transformed that. You know. Bob Rainham, one of your last guests on this podcast, is completely transformed Atlantic and you know, I was out there in two thousand and six when he was just starting, and it's amazing what he was doing. You know, he stripped down an entire hole to it was nothing but fairway and a green. Every other bit of grass was gone. And he single handedly with the help of Reese some and some other shapers and architect that he's employed out there. But yeah, you can, and I'd love the opportunity to do that. I think Heritage is a type of course that someday, I think it will be renovated. Hopefully I'm here still here when that happens, because I'd like to be part of it. But the bones are here, the routing is good, the land, you know, the soil, everything's in place. It just needs, Like a lot of golf courses built in the eighties and nineties, it needs freshening. You know, Crumbling infrastructure and deferred maintenance happens on every golf course, and the same with erosion. You know, you can't stop the forces of weather, winds, rains, tides, it's all they all have effected as time goes on on golf course.

00:34:16
Speaker 1: I've talked to some superintendents that kind of you know, and I think everybody in a professional seting have goals, And I'm curious, do you do you have goals? Obviously you just alluded to like being around for renovation. Are there are there different goals that you have professionally that you know you keep in mind when you're you know, obviously you've been at Heritage for a long time, and are there things that you want to see done to you know, any that you want to do in your career.

00:34:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are, of course, and they change as time goes on. You know. I've always had the vision when I started this of possibly being an owner of a golf course in one way, shape or form. That's kind of why I got into it. Obviously. If I could be involved with bill bilding or renovating or redesigning a golf course if it's existing, whether it's this one or another one, that's something that I'd really like to do someday. As far as being a superintendent, there's certainly, you know, every superintendent dreams about their dream job, and there's different places where you think you'd like to be. But it's important too, I think too many, just to stay focused on where you're at because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the road. And sometimes what I thought was probably a dream job may not line up with what my lifestyle is today. It's important when you're doing this to have balance in your life. And there's only so many hours in a day, and it can be encompassing and all consuming at times. And you know, we're all wired a little bit differently. So I have a lot of respect for all superintendents, whether they're at high, high end clubs or low budget. There's no ability in every facet of the business in my opinion.

00:36:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I want to talk about the start of your career working at Caledonia Mike Strand's design. I imagine that was a unique experience being the golf course was so drastically different than most of the others in the area.

00:36:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it was one of the first golf courses that I saw in Myrtle Beach before I moved down here. I was I'm from the Midwest and graduated from Iowa State with a different degree in urban planning, and knew I didn't want to do that, knew I wanted to get into golf. I just got away from golf a little bit It's always been a constant in my life. But when I was in school at Iowa State, it was kind of faded a little bit, but fired back up towards the end. So I was looking into two year schools and moved down here to go to or Georgetown. And Yeah, the first time I saw Caledonia, it really blew me away, and I wanted to work there, and it's the first place I went and thankfully was able to get on there and I really enjoyed my time and it did teach me a lot about golf course maintenance, but just golf in general, and it was kind of a just a cool place to be. I still really enjoy going over there. And it's really cool when you've been a superintendent or an assistant and you go back to somewhere you've been and you're not there anymore, and it just brings back a lot of memories. And there's just little things that you ride around and see that you were involved with one way or the other, and there's a real sense of pride in that.

00:37:28
Speaker 1: H could you give us an example of something like that.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: It's kind of neat at Caledonia. There's a few teas that I was kind of instrumental in pushing forward to build. You know, there's a putting green there that we added that. It wasn't just my idea. It was certainly in collaboration with Jackson Clemens, who's still over there today is superintendent. But we built it in house, and it was my first experience ever building a green from scratch, and it was a cool little project. And yeah, you know, it's just every time I go by there, I think, you know, myself and everybody else who was on staff, you know, we were the ones that built that. You know that Strants didn't put that there, but it was something that was needed and it's been an improvement to the facility. So that's that's probably the best example I can give you.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: Did you spend much time with Mike Strants? Well, did you come by ever when you were working there?

00:38:22
Speaker 2: I actually was around him more at Bulls Bay Andy, Okay, because he was building Bulls Bay during that time there. You go, exactly, a friend of mine, who a classmate of mine, ended up getting a job at Bulls Bay during the growing and during the construction, So I was able to go down there then and be around Mike some and you know, he was around at Caledonia and True Blue and some but you know, he was kind of off at that time doing Bulls Bay. That's when he would have been up at Todd Hill Farm building that and so he wasn't really around a lot then, but you certainly heard the stories. You know, a lot of the people that built Caledonia in True Blue or that work there now all have a lot of ties to Strands. You know, Strands really got his start back in the business after he'd gotten out through the youngs who built the Legends, and you know he was brought in to finish the Parkland course after Tom left, and you know that kind of preceded him getting the job at Caledonia. A lot of the guys that worked for Mike, the Jones brothers, the Kinder brothers, you know, Mark White, those guys were all originally involved with building the Legends and then Caledonia, and then they kind of got with Mike and started building golf courses together. But there's tons of stories, and you know, I did spend a little time around him, certainly, not as much as some other people, but I'll never forget the first time I saw him at True Blue. I came around a corner and he was out there on the putting green and you know, he just had a real presence. He was tall, the beard, the hair, it was just you know, striking to say the least. Yeah, and he was a really down to earth guy, very friendly too, which was great.

00:40:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the thing I always think about. It's like where it would be had he not passed away at a young age where a golf course, because he definitely was like kind of the representative of the maximalism culture that kind of got killed off when he left it. Obviously Doak and Bill Kore, Ben Crenshaw and Gil Hanson been kind of on the other end of the spectrum naturalism and minimalism, and I think, you know, we're starting to see maximalism come back a little bit with Rob Collins and some others. But it's just an interesting thing to think about, you know, where things would have gone.

00:40:47
Speaker 2: It would have been fascinating to see because obviously, as you know, I mean, all architects kind of mature or change or do things differently. It would have been interesting to see. And you know, a lot of the inspiration for his stuff was similar to Tom and Gil though too. You know, Mike's A lot of Mike's stuff was inspired by Golden Age type stuff, but he did definitely take it to the next level. And it's been interesting to see. You know, he was so widely touted back in the turn of the millennium, you know, in the late nineties and the early two thousands. You know, you've got all those awards from Golf magazine and golf digests, and then you know, there was a period there where you didn't hear much about him. And it's obviously with social media and you know, different more of a spotlight being put back on Mike recently as he's really come back into the forefront.

00:41:36
Speaker 1: I think he's romanticized almost more than he would have been, you know now then if he'd kept designing golf courses. I don't know. I think it adds to this legend.

00:41:47
Speaker 2: And you know, most of his facilities are public facilities andy, so people can play them readily, you know, and they're you know, you can easily play six of them in a three day or three or four day trip if you really want to. So I think the access to his work has had something to do with that.

00:42:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, access and concentration in an area of the country which allows for year round play.

00:42:13
Speaker 2: Which you know, ultimately when you talk about Myrtle Beach golf, that's why it's become. I think what it is is you know the weather, and there's a lot of reasons to come to Myrtle Beach to play golf that don't always necessarily have to do with the equality of the architecture. There's a lot of activities to do, and it's set up well for for vacationing.

00:42:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are some under the radar spots at Myrtle Beach? Are there? You got any good racks like that that might not make your your travel guides that most people probably would follow. Do you have any good restaurants recommendations?

00:42:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Paul's Island is great for restaurants. Franks Franks out back two institutions here or you can't miss those in Myrtle Beech each I don't really get up there as much. I don't really know the restaurant.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: It seems like Polly's Islands the place to hang.

00:43:06
Speaker 2: Out it is. I'm very partial to it. I've lived here for you know, nineteen years, and it's a different vibe than Myrtle Beach. You know, it's separated from Myrtle Beach, and you know, we've got ten golf courses within five miles of each other here in Polly's. It's very tightly packed in with golf courses, but you know, just andy with you know, we've got a lot of natural, outdoorsy type things to do here that people don't really hear about. You know. I mean one of the cool things about here in Polly's and this part of the Myrtle Beach area is you know, we've got a freshwater river that is unspoiled and not crowded at all, where you can if you're into river type or water sports, it's excellent for that, whether it's boating or fishing or hunting. And then we have you know, the ocean and salt water and you know, inshore outshore fishing. You know, there's lots of cool there's a couple cool state parks here, we have brook Green Gardens, and there's just a lot of you know, different things that you can do that you don't hear about. You know, most people think of Myrtle Beach as a a golf destination or a beach destination, but it's just a if you love outdoor activities. It's a cool place to live.

00:44:15
Speaker 1: I gotta get there. Maybe twenty twenty one's the year. Maybe fall. I got to work it in the calendar.

00:44:24
Speaker 2: That's that's the best time for sure, Jim.

00:44:27
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on. People can find you're you're active on Twitter and then you're also on Instagram, and then you're obviously a big part of the Carolina's Golf Course Super Attendance Association as well as the Poll and Weeds podcast.

00:44:46
Speaker 2: That's correct, that's correct. I'm at all those spots and I do enjoy interacting with people. It's fun.

00:45:04
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Podcast. This episode was edited by Meg Atkins and Garrett Morrison. And I just wanted to call out, you know, we just launched a couple events. The Stalemate at Meadowbrook Country Club up in Detroit area, wonderful golf course that was redesigned by Andy Staples. Awesome greens. Should be a really fun event, as well as the cheesecake not cheesecake, cheese steak. I don't know why I got cheesecake there, but the cheese steak at Rolling Green, another amazing golf course that's in the Philadelphia area. It's a William Flynn unbelievable ground for golf there and really tough set of greens. It should be an awesome event and that these are both June events June seventh and June twenty eighth for the cheese Steak at Rolling Green. Hope to see you guys there. You can see those in our pro shop or on the Friday website on our events page, which is a tab that you can find at the top