Guy Cipriano (4)
The search for a turf team maintaining golf course features akin to their 1920s presentation means curling around a 2,200-acre reservoir to reach the appropriately named Golf Course Road in Rome, New York. The first glimpse of golf appears when motorists notice an expansive green, two bunkers and a trifecta of mounds.
Teugega Country Club oozes Donald Ross from the roadside preview.
Pulling into the parking lot, which borders Lake Delta, yields physical chills, especially on a fall morning — this is central New York, after all. It also produces emotional chills. Who doesn’t want to walk a course with greens that closely mirror what Ross and his associates crafted in 1921?
The hole responsible for the throwback first impression is actually the third hole, a muscular par 3 playing 223 yards from the back tees. Wearing a hoodie beneath a jacket and clutching a well-insulated tumbler filled with coffee, superintendent Ian Daniels stops behind the green and explains what makes the putting surface and other parts of the hole authentically awesome. This is the third such description. Fourteen more detailed descriptions await. By the 10th hole, the coffee is gone, yet Daniel amplifies the fervor of his words.
Standing on the front of the two-tiered 11th green: “I love this green.”
Gazing at unencumbered views of three holes from the 12th tee: “It’s stunning to see the landforms.”
Walking to the 16th fairway, which slopes left and right, then severely dips: “This hole is going to blow your socks off.”
A few hours later, it becomes warm enough to chat on a patio overlooking the lake, and Daniels reflects on his five seasons maintaining the unique land he loves.
“We have something you can’t create,” he says. “You either have it or you don’t. And we’re fortunate that things haven’t changed significantly in the 100 years here. There are Donald Ross courses that are very well-known and don’t have what we have. They can’t claim to being what we are, because we are authentic.”
The third tee at Teugega Country Club.
Preserving this real version of Ross requires golf acumen — Daniels is a low-handicapper and calls playing the game “his escape” from work and life demands — agronomic savvy and resourcefulness. Daniels worked at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina and Glens Falls Country Club in the Adirondacks early in his turf career, so he arrived at Teugega equipped with Ross knowledge. But Teugega contrasts many of Ross’s original designs, because the greens are still 3½ acres, they still support knobs, knolls and slopes, and they still hug bunkers thanks to a careful restorative program.
Teugega is the lone private course in Rome, population 32,127 and 45 miles northeast of Syracuse. Once known for its copper prowess and then as the home of Griffiss Air Force Base, the city has lost more than a third of its population since 1990. Unlike clubs in areas infused with more capital, Teugega must demonstrate discipline when altering the course. That discipline, coincidentally, is a contributing factor to safeguarding Ross’s vision and features. Architect Barry Jordan created a master plan in 2004, and the club has methodically executed elements of the plan via green and fairway expansion, tree removal, and reconstructing original bunkers and grassing over unoriginal bunkers.
Teugega was a decade into the work when Daniels arrived in March 2017. “The club over the last 15 years has done a lot,” he says. “It hasn’t just been in the last five years.” Construction occurs in manageable phases. Prior to and during the 2021 season, for example, the club restored 12 bunkers, worked with Faerys Golf to add drainage on a pair of fairways, removed five acres of peripheral trees, and constructed a new back tee on the par-4 sixth hole.
The team Daniels oversees includes around 13 employees during the peak summer season and dips below 10 workers by fall. Assistant superintendent Nick Perrucci, equipment technician Kevin Riley and Daniels are Teugega’s only year-round turf employees. Daniels judiciously deploys available resources under the premise that preserving Ross-designed greens sits atop the priority list. The emphasis on greens maintenance and preservation means walk mowing half of the surfaces despite a modest crew size.
“That’s something a course with our budget wouldn’t typically do,” Daniels says. “But we have to do that to keep the greens the size that they are and keep them as close to bunkering as we can. We invest a significant amount of our budget into our greens quality. We make sure our greens are the things that shine the most. When people come here, we want them to be wowed not only by the shape of the greens, but also by the quality of them.”
The 17th green.
The more Daniels observes the surfaces, the more he becomes enthralled by their shapes and sizes. Daniels was working as the assistant superintendent at Corning Country Club in New York’s Southern Tier when an industry sales professional informed him of the Teugega opening shortly before the 2017 season. Despite being a central New York native — his hometown of Groton is 85 miles from Rome — and having worked at Corning Country Club since 2013, Daniels knew nothing about Teugega, including how to pronounce the club’s name. He correctly enunciated tee-YOU-juh-guh before learning much about the club’s land. Snow covered the ground when he visited Rome for his first interview in mid-March 2017.
“I couldn’t see the golf course,” Daniels says, “but I did my own research through just making phone calls and everybody I talked to said, ‘If you can get that job, you want that job.’ So, I basically took the job without ever seeing the golf course.”
He was offered the job less than a mile into the 140-mile drive back to Corning following his second interview. Sixteen days later, he started his tenure as superintendent. It all happened so fast that Daniels says it took him two years to finally understand the awesomeness of the course. In addition to protecting Ross, Daniels views promoting what separates Teugega from hundreds of clubs with the same architect on the scorecard as a vital part of his job.
“Our brand is just being authentic Donald Ross,” he says. “This property has some stunning views and the use of the landform is incredible. I have had many people tell me, ‘I have played the front nine, it’s awesome and I was impressed.’ And they don’t believe it, but the back nine gets even better. You’re constantly just in awe of each hole as you go. Every hole has a different character and none of them are really the same.”
Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s editor-in-chief.
