New tools for a classic spot

No matter where he is on the golf course at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, Illinois, director of agronomy Dan Dinelli is surrounded by stability and endurance.

His superintendent and close teammate Jacob Miskiewicz has been with the club for only about a year, but his crew foreman, Juan Villarreal, has worked there for 49 years, which is two years longer than Dinelli himself. Villarreal was hired by Dinelli’s father, Joe, who was the superintendent at the club for 35 years, just slightly longer now than the three Ocampo brothers — Santiago, Felix, and Tony — have worked on the crew. The greens are relatively new, replaced six years ago — more on them in a minute — and so is Dinelli’s course dog, Metta.

“Metta!” Dinelli shouts during a recent morning tour around the course. “She wants to go pick up a member’s golf ball,” he says. “That won’t be good.” Metta relents, her jaws free of any ionomeric resin shells and butadiene rubber cores. A 2-year-old English springer spaniel, she is a hunting dog still full of puppy tendencies.

Dinelli had never raised his own course dog during his long run at North Shore — after arriving in 1976, he worked under his father until a 1993 promotion to co-superintendent, then took over in 1995 after his father retired — with Villarreal often training a goose dog for the course. “Don’t ask me his technique,” Dinelli says. “I just try to learn from him.”

Those decades of institutional knowledge allow Dinelli and his 20-person crew to accomplish far more than other crews of similar sizes at similar sparkling clubs. “It takes time to build that kind of team,” says Dinelli, who will oversee the Western Amateur at the club starting July 31. “I see how challenging that can be, and I’m blessed that I inherited a lot of that from my dad’s era here. It takes time to build and construct a workforce, but once you get it there, oh my gosh, it’s just so rewarding.

“It’s like growth regulators,” Dinelli continues. “You’re trying to develop consistencies out here, and then once you develop those consistencies, develop a baseline, then you can start raising the bar.”

Yes, Dinelli uses plant growth regulators — most frequently Cutless MEC from SePRO on those aforementioned greens, which are a unique bentgrass blend of 007, Flagstick, and Mackenzie. Dinelli opted for that blend after watching Dr. Thomas Voigt, a professor emeritus of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, run a series of tests on the North Shore turf. “It’s not an easy decision because you can probably pick half a dozen blends and be equally satisfied,” Dinelli says. “You have to compare and contrast your options, keep all the tools available and see what works for you. That’s been my experience with all those chemistries.”

Dinelli allowed the greens two seasons to grow in and get comfortable through challenging Chicagoland summers. A conversation with fellow turf pro Scott Pavalko — then the director of agronomy at nearby Bob O’Link in nearby Highland Park, now the director of golf course and grounds at Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado — persuaded him to develop what has become a fairly aggressive PGR schedule: spray the greens every week.

“We started with light rates, knowing that if there’s something I was seeing and was concerned about, it would be an easy, quick turnaround,” Dinelli says. “You start out with a lower rate, say eight ounces an acre, and start creeping up. You find your comfort level that way. With the rates we’ve been using, I haven’t gotten uncomfortable yet. All bentgrasses are prone to wear, so you really have to be careful, but even at these lower rates, if there’s a bit of overspray, it’s just not problematic.”

Dinelli occasionally increases the rate to 10 ounces per acre, and sometimes 12, “if we really want to tighten the screws.” By now, Dinelli says, fewer larger applications could be more challenging, “because then you have to give it a bigger slug. By the time the plant metabolizes, we’re already reapplying it again. There’s quite a bit of overlap. We’ve never seen a decline.

“You get the density you want coming out of spring, you got everything where you think it needs to be as far as density and coverage, you can start the weekly program and just work that in with your schedule. It’s a lot of spraying, but you can fine-tune your nutrient program to be light and frequent with it and the growing degree days doesn’t mean as much.”

After four full seasons of the practice, it feels almost as stable as everything and everyone else at the club.