Good? Bad? Easy? Hard?

The resurgence of golf in the last couple of years has meant many different things for superintendents worldwide. But to call it good, bad, easy or hard is not really accurate, nor would just labeling it as one of those things be totally correct, either. To call it a roller-coaster ride is much more on the money. And, let’s be honest, the resurgence is mostly due to a global pandemic.

The current situation, I suppose, contrasts another tumultuous time for superintendents when a global recession hit golf hard about a decade and a half ago. That period, certainly for superintendents who lived through it, was more cut and dried. It was less of a roller coaster and more like riding the subway. You went down … and you stayed down.

But a comparison of the two periods seems in order here, certainly for we superintendents who have managed golf courses through both historic periods.

Having been the superintendent at the same course through both ordeals, I might be well-suited to offer a comparison not only for my situation and what each period meant for our staff and me, but also for what many superintendents experienced. The challenges we faced with the recession and the different obstacles the pandemic has brought us — and is still bringing us well into 2022 — are starkly different yet eerily similar.

The Great Recession rocked most industries and sectors. Golf felt a tighter squeeze than most. Casual golfers found the game was one of the first things they could eliminate in their suddenly money-strapped lives. Losing the casual golfer for a half-dozen years nearly derailed our industry.

Avalon Links, our course here in western Washington, is about a 90-minute drive from Seattle and a similar distance and drive from Vancouver, British Columbia. Owner Ron Hass built and opened the 27-hole Robert Muir Graves design in 1991. Ron and his family have owned the course since its inception.

“One thing that made the recession especially hard was that the golf industry was already in tough shape before the recession,” Ron tells me. “With the overexpansion of the supply of courses lingering from the ’90s, the recession was like a double hit against the industry as it tried to reach equilibrium.”

I remember pre-recession budget meetings from the mid-2000s when our staff tried to determine what was happening with the game and how to navigate the numbers moving forward. There were many discussions about the direction to go, whether it was putting more money into the course and trying to stay ahead of the curve by offering a product golfers couldn’t resist, or cutting the budget and trying to stay afloat as the game struggled by offering golf to the masses at an affordable price. Living through the uncertainty proved stressful.

“One of our responses was to reduce labor at a time when we really needed to improve our product to grow the game,” Ron says. “It was particularly tough on community courses that are typically where new golfers are introduced to the game at affordable rates. With fewer people having the time, money or opportunity to learn the game, our industry outlook at that time was rather bleak.”

The hardest thing as superintendent during this period was figuring out how to do more with less. And when I say less, I mainly mean less labor. Creativity and the ability to change one’s outlook on what is acceptable reigned supreme. Tolerance levels suddenly became a hot topic.

Managing a property with anywhere from 25 to 35 percent less resources — as prices for labor and supplies remained the same or increased — caused much strife for superintendents. The ability to communicate these concerns to the powers that be became extremely vital. You had to let people know that the traditional ways of managing golf courses needed to be altered or, if you will, reined in.

Superintendents got creative and started looking outside the box. We started examining many of the maintenance practices we had been taught and executing for years. A lot of self-assessment began to happen within the industry.

I don’t think all of these changes we made were necessarily bad. In fact, many of them were needed, even though we didn’t realize it at the time. Many changes made for financial reasons dramatically improved our environmental responsibility. If not directly made for all the right reasons, they were certainly a positive byproduct to how we manage golf courses now. They were and still are the silver lining.

Watering less, creating large no-mow zones, acceptance of brown fairways in late summer, acceptance of weeds at a certain level, reduction of fungicides and elimination of antiquated plant protectants, to name a few, all began to come into play. The effort to keep playability somewhat the same but do it for significantly less money became the main focus of the job for several years.

Losing available resources during the Great Recession was stressful and scary. But the ups and downs of managing the course through the pandemic are amplified on all fronts.

Initially, you would think packed golf courses are nothing but a good thing. If you are only looking at the bottom line, I guess you’d be right. From the owner’s view, it’s been a savior.

“COVID dramatically changed the trajectory of our business,” Ron says. “It restored budgets. It essentially restored the local industry. The exposure golf got from people being attracted and reattracted to the game was strong to say the least. I’m just hoping there is some longevity to their interest.”

However, managing a golf course through the pandemic has not been such a clear-cut, positive experience for the superintendent. The number of rounds played represents the biggest challenge most superintendents face stemming from the pandemic. Suddenly being busier is a simple, yet complex issue.

In fact, the great spike in rounds played from the spring of 2020 to the summer of 2022 is, for the most part, the root of several subdivisions of problems that we’ve encountered. The amount of traffic on the golf course is really the cause of most managing headaches and issues golf course maintenance staffs have dealt with throughout the pandemic.

There’s less time to get the course ready in the morning because many courses have moved up the first tee time to accommodate demand. Cart and foot traffic issues arise. Compaction issues, especially on the greens, are apparent. Trying to keep divots filled and seed sprouting on the tees because of all the divots, and to a lesser extent on the fairways, is tricky. More play has meant smaller windows for mowing and rolling, as well as for applications of plant protectants and irrigation windows.

Compaction on greens has meant corrective responses such as less mowing, higher heights of cuts, more fertility, and increases in verticutting, aerification and topdressing. The reliance on long-lasting fungicides, plant growth regulators and wetting agents is unprecedent. Making the most out of applications has never been more vital.

On top of all the daily maintenance problems, the very real difficulty of finding and keeping labor has also been at the forefront of the pandemic challenge. For the most part, I can find workers to fill seasonal positions, but keeping those workers can be more challenging. Labor retention is not limited to golf course maintenance and it’s a challenge many companies and businesses have been facing throughout the pandemic. But that doesn’t make the issue any less intense or any less real.

The extreme difficulty in worldwide product inventory also contributes to making the pandemic more challenging for superintendents than the recession. Almost everything we try to order comes with backorder delays and longer-than-long waits. Future planning for purchasing has never been so complex and worrisome.

The increase in prices and stretching of the dollar are the greatest commonality between the two periods. That means even more emphasis on finding creative ways to complete tasks.

What will ultimately make the pandemic the more difficult of the two periods is the very real prospect of another recession on top of it. This doubling down might eliminate any real comparisons between the two periods.

Let’s hope not.

Ron Furlong is the superintendent at Avalon Links in Burlington, Washington, and a frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.