Setting up your golf course right

As the superintendent at Wilmington Municipal Golf Course in Wilmington, North Carolina, Matt Smith leads a busy life. The course hosts 65,000 rounds each year and clientele ranges from scratch players to those new to the game with golfers of all ability levels in between.

Smith is charged with striking a balance to give golfers of all ages and skill an enjoyable experience. Setting up the golf course requires weighing a number of factors, chief among them maintaining a good pace of play and protecting the health of the turf.

So how do he and his team go about preparing the golf course for a typical day of play? It starts with providing green speeds appropriate to the clientele.

“Being a municipal golf course, we have a lot of beginners and people who are just learning the game,” Smith says. “During our busy season during the week, for just normal play, we don’t want green speeds of 12 or 13. We have Donald Ross greens” — the Ross design opened for play in 1926. “They’re kind of undulating and can be hard if they’re fast.

“We take that into consideration for people that are enjoying the game. Plus, we’re so busy, we want pace of play to move along. We can’t have five- to six-hour rounds or people won’t come back. We want them to enjoy the game. So, we’re not going to make it like it’s a U.S. Open for somebody that’s just learning the game.”

On a typical day, Smith’s greens will run somewhere between 9½ and 10½ on the Stimpmeter. “Which is a pretty good speed,” he says, “but not overly ridiculous for our beginners. But it’s very easy for me if I want to step it up a notch for the weekend for our tournament play, I have the ability to do that. I feel like that can satisfy both clienteles, both the golfer that’s a scratch golfer and the golfer that’s a 20-handicap. We have to take that into consideration on a day-by-day basis.”

Smith is careful with his Bermudagrass rough, which is normally at a height of 1½ to 2 inches.

“It’s kind of a Catch-22 for us, because of the amount of rounds that we play,” he says. “I have to give the golf course a little bit of extra fertility for recovery from all the cart and foot traffic. So of course, I fertilize a little bit more and push growth. (The rough) is going to grow a little bit faster and get a little bit thicker and denser.”

The impact of the rough was tempered somewhat when the fairways were widened during a renovation a little over a decade ago. In addition, the green surrounds are mowed to fairway height. “If you miss the green, you can putt it or you can chip it,” Smith says.

At Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, director of golf courses and grounds Jim Roney has the underlying responsibility for 60 golf holes.

When he and his team set hole locations, they’re thinking about how much play might be expected on that particular course that day and in the days immediately ahead.

“We’re looking at it holistically for, say, a two-week period,” Roney says. “If we know we have something we’re ramping up for and we have specific hole locations we’re going to select for those special days, we’ll make sure, on a normal day, that we’re avoiding those spots, so the area doesn’t get any excessive wear.

“In addition, we’ll also consider high-traffic areas like walk-on (and) walk-off areas and things like that. So, if we have a light Wednesday, for instance, where it’s just normal play and we have maybe 60 to 75 percent of our tee times taken, we will utilize a hole location that may be in an area that gets a lot of heavy traffic because you know you’re not going to get as much play in that area that day.”

With warm weather approaching, Roney and his team pay particular attention to unique conditions on greens.

“Let’s say you have an impacted growing environment on one particular side of your green,” he says. “You’re going to want to stay away from that. Or, if you have any challenges, let’s say you have a really wet area on a green that stays wetter than others for whatever reason. In that regard we would completely avoid that spot.”

Roney and his team are especially careful about hole locations on the Old Course, which opened for play in 1922; the greens feature significant undulations which limit the number of possible hole locations.

The crew is also careful about where tee markers are positioned on all three of the club’s championship courses. Roney says it’s all about protecting the integrity of the course and the handicap system.

“The course is rated a certain way for each tee-box location, so you want to make sure that your yardages are consistent with whatever your card yardage is. That doesn’t necessarily mean each hole has to be that way. We can move tees up on a par-3 or par-4, for instance, just to spread out wear, but we have to make sure we balance it out on the next par-3 or par-4 so we’re close enough to the yardage on the card. We don’t want to be in a situation where we’re shaving 300 to 500 yards off the white tee marker yardage because then you’re going to mess with people’s handicaps.”

Every club’s membership has its own set of expectations. At Montclair Golf Club in New Jersey, expectations are as high as anywhere. Vanja Drasler, one of the club’s two superintendents, oversees two of the club’s four nines. She works alongside fellow superintendent Mike Sharpe and reports to director of golf course operations Michael Campbell.

Drasler and Sharpe get together each day to lay out what needs to be done the next day.

“We sit down when everybody goes home and then we plan for the next day,” Drasler says. “It’s much easier, we don’t have to figure it out early in the morning. We go through everything. We start with greens, tees, fairways, no matter what, whatever has to be done. We know exactly which day we are cutting those surfaces. Greens have to be mowed every single day, and we have fairways three times a week and tees three times a week.”

Located at its present site since 1899 and situated less than 20 miles from midtown Manhattan, Montclair is part of the galaxy of elite clubs in the New York metropolitan area, a group that includes some of the best-known clubs in America. Many Montclair members have played the region’s other esteemed courses.

“It’s an elite membership and they are playing some other courses in our area, all among the best golf has to offer, and they’re expecting from us the same speeds, firmness and things like that,” Drasler says. “That’s why we try to try to achieve that, no matter what.”

The crew works to strike the right balance between providing the conditions their members insist on and protecting turf. One step in the process is walking at least nine holes every day to inspect the turf.

“That is a priority that we walk on our surfaces every single day,” Drasler says. “Tees, fairways — everyone has to walk at least nine holes.”

With an eye on the upcoming U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, the crew welcomes every opportunity to monitor the turf. Oftentimes, any needed extra work is executed on Mondays when the courses are closed until noon. “We always count on that,” Drasler says of the Monday window.

Mike Moyer is in charge at Bear Trap Dunes in Ocean View, Delaware, a 27-hole semi-private club situated a few miles north of Ocean City, Maryland. The club supports 60,000 rounds a year; on a busy Friday, Saturday or Sunday in the summer, it might handle 450 rounds. Moyer and his team control pace of play and wear on the turf by repositioning the tee markers on a daily basis.

“Because of the high number of rounds, the tee boxes here really take a beating,” Moyer says. “What I have my guys do, tee markers will be as far back on a Monday and gradually work their way up to the front of the tee boxes for the weekend. So, it’s moving wear and also pace of play, trying to have the course at its shortest for the 400-round Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in the summertime. We try to have the course at its shortest and definitely try to keep the markers moving on a daily basis, especially on the par-3s.”

Moyer describes his greens as “user-friendly.”

“The greens are kind of big and they’re relatively flat,” he says. “We do not try to push the fastest green speeds, especially on the weekend.

“For some of our members’ days, men’s day or ladies’ day, we might get them north of 10½ on the Stimpmeter (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). But when we head into the weekend, we’re comfortable if we can get a 10 on the Stimp. I honestly don’t have the time to Stimp that often, but I’ve kind of learned over the years that that number, or a little below that, is kind of friendly for resort golf and it doesn’t lead to too many three and four putts and keeps people moving through the property.”

Troon manages Bear Trap Dunes and emphasizes pace of play. “You have a timecard and we try to do our part to enable people to meet that,” Moyer says.

In short, Moyer’s top priority is promoting the idea that golf is supposed to be fun.

“We try to push the fun factor of golf,” he says. “Our original members are aging and the average guy coming down for vacation, he may not have played all summer and he’s grabbing a set of rental clubs, so we want people to have a good time. That’s really what we focus on, just being able to enjoy the game.

“We don’t take ourselves overly seriously and just keep in mind that we’re a resort course down at the beach and we want everybody to enjoy their experience.”