It’s 4:30 a.m., but Jeff Kent and his 80-man crew are wide awake.
In just two and a half hours, the first contenders will tee off for day two of the Wachovia Championship. The sky over Charlotte, N.C., is black and star-speckled, but under the ceiling of the white tent beside the Quail Hollow Club golf course maintenance shed, the day has decidedly begun.
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Spotlights and eyes are focused on Kent, a commanding presence at the front, his face calm, his voice determined as he calls out instructions: Mow all fairways, double cut greens – and Quail guys, don’t think you can ravage the food and then not wash your equipment like everyone else.
The crowd nods soberly and begins to stir as each crewman moves to his respective post. Twenty orange fairway mowers and an army of greens mowers have had only a few hours to sit idle. The crew mows twice a day, at dawn and dusk, during the tournament. As the fleet charges the field, Kent takes a brief moment to check in with his two assistants and then speeds away in his well-worn utility vehicle.
Kent leads by example – sometimes innovative, sometimes yielding to tradition, but always focused. His effective tactics probably are most prominent during the annual tournament, but when the spotlights are off and the media packs up its cameras, Kent maintains his intensity.
The tournament’s highest first, second, third and final round scores, as well as the highest cumulative tally, have all been recorded in the past four years, beginning with Kent’s first tournament in 2005. When Kent got the call from Quail Hollow that January, he was on vacation, but still hard at work – actually, hard at woodwork, which was is Kent’s hobby and side trade.
“Johnny Harris, the club president, asked me if I wanted to have lunch that coming Friday,” he says. “I had to hurry to finish my woodworking and get down there.”
Harris convinced Kent to make the move, and when the new Quail Hollow superintendent arrived in Charlotte March 1, the third annual Wachovia Championship was two months away.
“I was under fire,” he says. “It was challenging. At this level, if you ask someone to pull the trigger, he’s got to pull the trigger and not hesitate. That first year, a lot of guys weren’t ready to pull the trigger.”
Kent, who categorizes his managerial practice as tough love, has no qualms about demanding a lot from his staff.
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“The tournament is good for the guys as a teambuilding exercise,” he says. “You have to depend on one another. We try to get college students to come in, and it’s kind of a shell-shock for them. They finish their finals and then walk right in. I get guys who have been on the job literally two days and go right at it.”
No small feat, considering the looming expectations of Kent, the players and the viewing public. As part of his hiring process, Kent administers an aptitude test.
“You can’t pass it,” he says. “I tell them they have to get an 80 to leave, but nobody could possibly pass it coming in. It drives me crazy when you get an intern who doesn’t have a clue. We get involved in people. Hopefully when the guys are done here, they know it all. They know the output of a pump station. They know the fungicides. They know the golf course.”
Kent arrived at Quail Hollow with tournament experience – the 2004 Atlantic City Commemorative (Champions Tour) and the 1997 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at Atlantic City Country Club, the 1995 U.S. Senior Open at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. – but he admits he’d never heard of the Wachovia Championship. Still, the biggest difference between regular and tournament golf is the same at every course: the level of grooming.
“Observers are taken aback when they see 20 greens mowers going,” he says. “We have every Jacobsen mower under the sun. It’s a huge part of the tournament.”
Kent credits the crew’s ability to bounce back from rain to the ready availability of the sponsored equipment. Kent’s staff was able to wait out showers and eventually double-cut the greens according to their normal routine.
“It’s a luxury,” he says. “We literally can triple-cut the greens in 45 minutes; same thing on the fairways. We sweep cut all the plant surfaces so you get a good, defined look. We lay all the grass down towards the green and then we lay the rough back so you get a light-dark look. The only way to do that is to have 18 fairway units. You send them out, and you’re done in 25 minutes.”
It’s Kent’s lightning-fast offensive game that’s taken him to tournament tops. A Kent key to success is being proactive.
“When you work for a moderate-sized staff, it’s a competition out there,” he says. “I don’t want to create animosity. I want to create a culture. Guys who are falling below the standard – I tell them, make some birdies out there. It can just be little things like filling a stump hole, fixing a loose rock on a bridge somewhere.”
If the devil is in the details, then call Kent – well, call him detail-oriented. And very sure of himself. Asked if he could go back and change the way he ran his first Wachovia Championship, he says he’d change only one thing: the weather.
“Really, that’s the one thing you can’t control,” he says. “But we’re getting better at what we do. Each year we get a little bit better.”
Kent and his crew will have plenty of chances to improve in coming tournaments. Wachovia renewed its contract with Quail Hollow through 2014.
In the world of golf, though, next year’s tournament is eons away. For now, Kent’s focused on the coming season. The stakes this summer aren’t as high, but as long as Kent’s at the helm, the pressure’s on. GCI