The Nicklaus name has great cachet in the golf world.
So does the name Latshaw in that corner of the golf world where grass is manicured to a standard that dinner can be served on it without a tablecloth.
For more than 30 years, Paul R. Latshaw cared for courses that hosted nine major championships on the PGA and senior tours: Augusta National, Oakmont, Congressional and Winged Foot. Now a self-employed consultant in his field, he retains a stature as the grand ayatollah of golf course superintendents.
"No one has done as many (majors) as he has, and when you look at the courses and the profiles of the places he's worked, he's never taken a path of least resistance," said Latshaw's son, Paul B.
"A good superintendent can always go to a different golf course and come up with an agronomic program to change things around."
Like father, like son?
That's the hope of Jack Nicklaus and members of Muirfield Village Golf Club.
The younger Latshaw, 38, was hired as course superintendent last August, one week after he had shepherded Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., through the PGA Championship and received rave reviews from players for the condition of the course during the heat of summer.
Meanwhile, many greens at Muirfield Village were struggling to survive in places because of underdeveloped root systems, only one year after they had been rebuilt.
Latshaw was hired to nurse them to health, a long-term process that will have a short-term spotlight on it this week. Practice rounds for the 29th Memorial Tournament begin today. The first round is Thursday.
"It's a fine line where we've got to have them because part of the history and tradition of this tournament is to have fast greens," Latshaw said. "But we want to have fast greens and also try to have healthy greens and have something for the membership in the summer.
"I'm hoping that maybe our speeds aren't what they were last year and in years past. . . . But when tournament time comes, it's whatever Mr. Nicklaus wants for the tournament."
The greens, rebuilt after the 2002 Memorial, were not a problem during the tournament last year. Stressed from being cut short that week to promote speed, however, many later became unhealthy and even bare in spots because of insufficient sunlight and air circulation during a wetter-than-normal summer.
Latshaw diagnosed what he believed was the cause the first time he toured the course with Nicklaus on Aug. 23. It was one he was familiar with from years of assisting his father and as head superintendent at Oak Hill and, before that, Merion near Philadelphia.
Muirfield Village, now 30 years old, was overgrown with trees, especially around most greens. That prevented the sensitive bent grass from getting the amount of sunlight it needs during the growing season.
The solution Latshaw persuaded Nicklaus and club members to undertake was a pruning and removal program that Oak Hill had done for three years before hosting the PGA.
Muirfield Village hired a firm that uses a computer software program to calculate the number of hours in a day sunlight reaches the greens at different times of the year. The program identifies which trees are most impeding greens from receiving the amount of light they needed. Nicklaus said 300 to 400 trees were removed as a result.
"When you come into a new job, you want to make sure you're documenting because (projects such as this are) an emotional thing," Latshaw said. "People don't like to do tree work. But it needs to be done . . . and (the technology) takes the emotion out of it. It's quantitative. These are the goals we have to meet if we choose to have good greens."
The project was not cheap. The company, ArborCom Technologies, charges a reported $3,000 fee per green. Muirfield Village had the study performed on 11 greens. Trees around them, six other greens and in other areas such as the right side of the No. 5 fairway, were pruned or removed to let more air and light in. A large, diseased tree that stood sentry left of the 18th green since the course opened also was removed, for safety reasons, and another near the 17th green because Nicklaus thought it unfairly interfered with approach shots from the right side of the fairway.
"I'm very pleased with the results I'm seeing at this point," Nicklaus said.
Latshaw expects the benefits to be better yet by next year.
"We lost a lot of our fall opportunity to grow grass (last year) because I got here Sept. 13, we didn't start doing tree work until probably October and we didn't finish until the dead of winter," he said. "Sometimes you don't see the benefits for a year because you need a full growing cycle."
He showed a photo comparing grass roots on the 18th green, historically the healthiest on the course because it is not shaded, and the 14th, which is. The roots on the 18th measured six pennies deep; the 14th, one.
"When you have the world's greatest golfers coming out here, you need to have fast greens," Latshaw said, "and to have fast greens, you've got to have a plant that's going to be able to withstand the stresses of what's going on -- the mowing heights, the frequency (of mowing).
"Tournament grass is usually not real healthy grass because you're stressing the heck out of it. So for it to be stressed, it needs to be healthy."
Source: The Columbus Dispatch