In can happen at any private club: A new member joins the green committee and before long begins complaining about course conditions or maintenance practices. Soon, comments such as, “This isn’t the way my old club did things,” and “They raked bunkers every day at my old club,” turn into “The superintendent has no idea what he’s doing.”
Though golf course superintendents understand you can’t compare one facility to another because of environments, conditions and budgets, golfers – especially green committee members –care only about results. If members are not getting the results they demand, that could spell doom for the superintendent.
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Barbara Jodoin, general manager/COO of Pinetree Country Club in Kennesaw, Ga., explains a system for effectively managing expectations that would prevent the above scenario from spiraling out of the superintendent’s control and into job-risk territory. Her answer is a standard operating procedure (SOP) document for the maintenance department. Jodoin, a USGA Green Section committee member, presented this concept during a session called “Growing a New Strategy” at the Carolinas GCSA Conference & Show Nov. 18 in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Though Jodoin, a 30-year veteran of the club and resort management business, has worked primarily at private clubs, she advocates SOPs for managers in the public arena and resort facilities, too. She also says every department, not just maintenance, should function with an SOP.
“The SOP sets the tone for member expectations,” Jodoin says. “It also sets expectations equal to budget-driven decisions.”
In essence, a golf course maintenance SOP lists objectives, maintenance standards, grooming standards and future plans for each component of the golf course (greens, tees, fairways, rough, bunkers, etc.). Outlining the optimal conditions and detailing the maintenance practices required to achieve those results establishes that the superintendent does, in fact, know what he’s doing; however, he must make concessions to meet the budget.
To highlight the budgetary constraints, Jodoin says it’s imperative superintendents annotate the SOP with the concessions made and the dollars saved as a result. For example, if the SOP says it’s ideal to mow fairways five times a week, but a limited budget only allows the maintenance staff to mow three times a week, this difference would be added in red ink to the SOP, accompanied by the dollar amount of labor saved as a result of this deliberate budget-driven decision.
“All members want the same thing – Augusta National,” Jodoin says. “But most of us do not have the luxury of that maintenance budget to affect that result.”
Not only is the SOP evidence of the superintendent’s capabilities, it justifies every dollar in the budget and demonstrates what more could be done with additional investment in operating or capital budgets. Plus, once a superintendent prepares an SOP, if he’s required to make additional cuts, he’ll know exactly where those cuts can come from because each task is tied to a dollar amount.
Though it can be tedious to create the baseline SOP – it’s a document that can be amended each year going forward as budgets and expectations may change. The USGA provides standard SOP templates (click here to download a PDF template) and also offers its Turf Advisory Services to assist in thorough course evaluations to establish baseline SOP manuals.
Every region of the United States has a local representative that can be the greatest ally to the course superintendent and the club management in planning for its golf course facility, Jodoin says. She points out that many clubs conduct costly financial audits annually, but many fail to recognize the value of an independent audit of the golf course as a tool for evaluation of current conditions as well as for future capital need. A full-day TAS visit costs $2,400 to $2,700 compared to financial audits that can cost up to $20,000.
Another benefit of creating an SOP is to have a response for the perennial comments that arise after member-guest or member-member tournament time. When members say, “I don’t understand why we can’t have these conditions year-round,” superintendents with SOPs can respond, “I’d love to provide these conditions all the time, if we only had the budget.” And they’d have the document to prove it.
