Huesgen turns the corner on career

Montrose, Colo. – After an eight-year stint on the Monterey Peninsula, during which time he worked at Spyglass Hill and Spanish Bay before landing the superintendent’s position at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Tom Huesgen has been named golf course superintendent at Cornerstone, a private golf community located in southwestern Colorado near Telluride. The 6,000-acre project, featuring a Greg Norman Signature course, is being developed by Hunt Realty Corporation.

“Obviously, Pebble Beach has grandeur, history and a matchless setting for golf,”  Huesgen says, “But I have a very special opportunity at Cornerstone. The site itself, with its majestic views of some of the highest mountains in America, is truly world-class. This is going to be a fabulous opportunity and a unique challenge.”

According to Huesgen, Norman’s “least-disturbance” design philosophy is perfect for the Cornerstone Club.

“One of the beauties of the property is that there’s a minimal requirement for earthmoving,” he says. “There’s wonderful rolling terrain and desirable natural features overlooking a high desert valley.”

The San Juan and Cimarron Mountains backdrop the course site. The layout’s routing, Huesgen notes, takes full advantage of alpine meadows, rock outcroppings and a grove of old-growth aspens.

Huesgen says the layout’s fairways and roughs will be surfaced in traditional Kentucky bluegrass mixed with highly advanced cultivars, while the tees, greens and aprons will be sown with different strains of bentgrass. The goal, he says, is to introduce drought-resistant grasses in order to facilitate the project’s water conservation and water quality enhancement programs. Out-of-play areas will be re-vegetated with a palette of fescue grasses, native plants and woody species that will produce self-sustaining ecosystems.

In addition, Huesgen says Cornerstone is “looking at sub-surface heating systems for some of the more protected greens in order to warm the soil by 5 to 10 degrees in the spring to nurture growth.”

The program’s stated goal is to merge wildlife conservation, habitat enhancement, resource conservation and environmental improvement with the economic agenda associated with the development.

The Cornerstone parcel, located beside the Uncompahgre National Forest and equidistant from Telluride, Ouray and Montrose, will feature a low-density development of 412 home sites, with nearly 3,000 acres dedicated to open space.

“I love the outdoors, as do my wife and two girls, and the hiking, biking, fishing and camping in this corner of Colorado is unrivalled,” he says.

Prior to his work at Pebble Beach, Huesgen, a native of St. Louis, Mo., began his superintendent’s career at Portland Golf Club in Portland, Ore. He received his B.S. degree in Turfgrass Management from Oregon State University in 1997.