From the Office of the Tour’s new Slow Play Czar | Feb 20, 2019 Press Briefing

The following transcript is from the February 20^th, 2019 evening press briefing of the PGA Tour’s newly-appointed Slow Play Czar—a position created earlier this week on Monday morning after the nearly six-hour final round of the Genesis Open at Riviera Country Club.  More updates on the newly created Office of the Slow Play Czar will be given to the press as they become available.

[The new Czar enters the briefing room in the Club de Golf Chapultepec clubhouse in Mexico City, site of the WGC-Mexico Championship, and approaches the microphone as reporters settle into their seats with notebooks and margaritas in hand—it is 6pm local time after all…]

Czar:  Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Please take a seat. Thank you. I appreciate all of you taking the time to be here for the briefing this evening because I know that slow play is a very important topic to a lot of people. A lot of people. It’s huge! And I cannot begin to overstate that fact. Let me start by thanking Commissioner Jay Monahan for creating this position and appointing yours truly to take the reins as we work together in a bipartisan manner to resolve this issue.  I also want to thank the player advisors who are with us this evening: Brooks “Fast Lane” Koepka, Dustin “Speedy” Johnson, and Bill “Hustle” Haas for agreeing to work as co-chairs of my first committee and for being player representatives for implementation of the exciting new policy we will be discussing here this evening.  I should also note that I politely declined Ben Crane’s offer to assist…

I will be presenting the 30,000 ft view of the new policy and how our office will implement and enforce the policy, but we’re not going to drill down too deeply just yet.  We have a framework, but the details are fluid right now and subject to change—not unlike the putter of a player struggling with Strokes Gained Putting.  Now for the reason we are all here: Slow play is killing the game of golf! I know it, you know it, everybody knows it.  If we want to grow the game with juniors and millennials, we must reduce the time it takes to play 18 holes from just above glacial formation to just under four hours.  The PGA Tour has finally realized how bad the problem is (thanks to the outpouring of spite and hatred on Twitter after the Genesis Open and the ATT Pro-Am the week before that) and has appointed me to implement my new system to not only address the issue, but to solve it once and for all.

As you know, the European Tour has shot clocks and they seem to be making an impact.  We thought about doing the same thing using a cooperative crossover with Rolex, but a recent study showed that most young American viewers cannot read an analog clock face…so we nixed that idea.  That said, I don’t want to put a bandage on the gaping, sucking wound that is slow play.  I want to heal that wound forever before we have to amputate.  So instead of addressing the issue player by player with a shot clock, we are going to drill down to the source of the problem.  After that, I hope our peers at the USGA and the state and local golf associations will allow the “trickle down economics” of saving time to work their magic so that amateurs will reap the benefits of following our lead.  If so, soon young players will emulate Rory McIlroy’s pace of play and not—well, some of the slow players—and millennials will find renewed interest in playing actual golf, hopefully catching an Uber to play 18 at their local muni instead of TopGolf or playing disc golf at the park or (Heaven forbid) soccer.

Now for some of the more pertinent details of my solution.  My approach utilizes a new methodology I have invented and patented called the TTI Index (or Time To Impact Index).  We were originally going to go with Seconds To Impact, however polling showed that the acronym STI caused confusion and HIPPA concerns among some of the younger single players…but I digress.  The TTI Index, used in conjunction with my three-prong enforcement approach, will rid the Tour of five and six hour rounds within months, increase the enjoyment of viewers, quiet the trolls on Twitter, and allow Nick Faldo and Jim Nantz more quality time with their families at home instead of staying over on Sunday nights to finish events on Monday mornings.  As an added bonus, the TTI Index is easier to calculate than Strokes Gained Putting (not to mention easier to understand for the viewers at home) and not nearly as confusing as, say, the NFL’s Passer Rating. Any questions so far? Yes. You there in the front row. Question?

Reporter 1:  Who are you and why would the Commissioner appoint you as the Slow Play Czar?

[Awkward pause as reporters shuffle nervously in their seats]

Czar:  Next Question.  Yes, you there in the fourth row.  No, not you. Yes, you. Your question?

Reporter 2:  How is the TTI Index calculated and what is your three prong enforcement approach?

Czar:  Both excellent questions.  The TTI—or Time To Impact—Index measures the amount of time it takes a player to actually play a shot.  No more ridiculous “guidelines” that are never enforced like 50 seconds for the first player, 40 seconds for the second, and so on.  Every player in the field of each event will have an Index and that Index is measured in three separate categories:  Tee Shots, Putts, and Others.  The TTI Index for a tee shot measures the time in seconds between the instant the player places the ball on the tee until impact.  For putting, the TTI measures the time between placing a marked ball back on the green and stroking the putt.  It’s important to note that tap-ins are not used to calculate a player’s TTI because that would artificially skew the Index lower.  The Others category includes approach shots to greens, layups on par-5 holes (though most of these guys don’t do that anymore anyway), and pitches, chips, flops, bunker shots, and the occasional shan—  Sorry. I forgot we’re not supposed to say that word.  Are you with me so far? Yes. You have another question?

Reporter 1, again: Back to you being appointed as Czar…

Czar:  Good! Moving on!  Because the TTI Index is measured in seconds and tenths of a second, the lower a player’s TTI Index, the better—much like the game itself.  The TTI for every shot in a round is measured and divided by the number of strokes played in that round—except for tap-in putts of course.  That average for the round is the player’s TTI Index for that round.  For a tournament, the four round average would be used to calculate the player’s tournament TTI Index.  Don’t worry.  If a player misses the cut, they will still have their two-round TTI Index calculated—we don’t want anyone to miss out on the enforcement phase. That’s when the fun begins.  We have a question right here in the front?

Reporter 2:  You would have to have an army of people to measure the TTI for every player on every shot.  How can the Tour afford that?

Czar:  That was an initial stumbling block. We know the Tour has very limited funds and struggles some weeks to even fuel the corporate jet.  There have even been times when some of the top officials could only fill the tanks on the jet to ¾ or even…well…fly commercially [the crowd of reporters gasps audibly].  That’s why the first prong is technology.  We will use the ShotLink system that’s already in place at every Tour event to measure the TTI of every shot of every player.  If we already have a system so advanced that we can tell you Phil Mickelson is 321.8 yards from the tee and 172.3 yards from the pin on a given hole—in real time with cool video game graphics and tracer technology—surely we can connect a stopwatch to it! We just need to make a few upgrades.  So the infrastructure is already there and my 13-year old nephew and his friends tell me they will have it up and running for testing by next Monday, depending on how far they get in the Fortnite tournament this weekend. Yes, you from ESPN in the back with the very large and quite manly beard. Question?

Reporter 3:  Can you explain how the TTI index is used to implement your three pronged enforcement?

Czar: Ah yes! That’s the genius in all of this.  After technology, the second and third prongs are money and public shaming.  And before you ask about that last one; I know it’s 2019 and we’re all supposed to be “woke” and not shame anyone anymore, but desperate times call for desperate measures! Plus, I think I saw on the news the other day that it’s cool now to shame millionaires…

Bearded Reporter 3:  Again, how does this speed up play?

Czar: Another great question, oh bearded one.  As I said, the second prong is money.  PGA Tour members are essentially contract laborers and like any contractor, the goal is to earn as much money as possible whenever they are working.  As the old adage goes, you have to “make hay while the sun shines!”  Although there hasn’t been much of that the last two weeks.  We will use a player’s TTI Index each week to hit the slowest players where it hurts—in the checkbook!  But we will also reward the fastest players by TTI index where it hurts us—in the checkbook!  It’s a real carrot and stick approach.  If your TTI Index is bad, you get the stick and a fine, if your TTI Index is good, you get a bonus and a carrot-infused smoothie or latte—your choice!  The top 25 and ties in best TTI Index each week will receive cash for their fast play.  The bottom 25 and ties in worst TTI Index each week will pay a fine to the Office of the Slow Play Czar, which we will in turn use to pay the players on the top of the list.  If you’re in the middle, you’re safe—that week.  We thought about letting the bottom 25 make a donation to a charity of their choice, but we don’t want to be handing out tax write-offs. We want the fine to hurt like the sting of an old school knit head cover across their sun-burned faces (below the tan line of their caps of course).

Reporter 1 again, while drinking from a carrot-infused latte:  How much will the fines and bonuses be?

Czar:  We’re still working out the details on that.  We want the fines to be enough to encourage players to not want to be in the worst 25, but not so much that they can’t afford their plane ticket to the next Tour stop.  Maybe we’ll do it based on a percentage of the purse like we calculate winnings.  And as an added incentive not to be on the bottom of the list, that fine must be paid to the Czar before the player will be allowed to play in another Tour event.  There is one caveat: if 92.6% of every round for the field for the week is below 4 hours and 15 minutes, there will be no penalties or public shaming that week! I mean, I’m not an animal…

Reporter 2:  And the public shaming?  How will that work?

Czar:  Most of you have a pretty good handle on that already.  Just ask Matt Kuchar…  But to answer your question, we will be listing the worst 25 players and the best 25 players by their TTI Index and the amounts paid in or received each week on the Tour’s web site and on the new Slow Play Czar app, available in the Apple Store or Google Play for those of you still clinging to your Android devices.  And we’ll encourage player shaming on Twitter and other forms of social media as well as praise for those consistently in the top 25 in TTI Index.  Again, we feel the shaming aspect of enforcement will come naturally to most every fan using social media anyway, as evidenced by tweets the past two weeks.

Reporter 3, wiping carrot-infused smoothie from his whiskers:  How will all of this make a difference?  The system in place already isn’t being enforced.  Why do you think this will be different?

Czar: Man, you ask some great questions!  First, the old system is gone.  Never again will J.B. Holmes be told he’s “on the clock” by a timid Tour official concerned about becoming the focus of his ire and steely gaze.  Besides, that disrupts play for the other players in the group and why should Matt Every have his round bumped or risk being assessed a penalty because he’s paired with Kevin Na?  Instead, the new system will be lurking in the subconscious of every player for every step they take…every move they make…every smile they fake…we’ll be watching. Think about it!  The nagging thought that their TTI Index is quietly being calculated by a bank of IBM laptops in a discrete Tour trailer on the periphery of the clubhouse parking lot will always be in the back of every player’s mind.  They will be forced to train differently and think differently.  They will have to put in time on the range to alter their pre-shot routines and have them finely tuned for competition.  Their trainers, sports psychologists, life coaches, and shamans will have to realign their thinking to always be mindful of improving their TTI Index.  But they can’t take improvement for granted because real time data will not be made available during an event.  They will not be allowed to ask Roger Maltbie, “How’s my TTI looking, Rog?” when he’s walking with them because no one will know until the weekly numbers are calculated, verified by the accounting firm of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe, and made public on the web site after the final round.  Every player on Tour will always be thinking “I wonder what my TTI was today?” and therefore be incentivized to speed up a bit on every shot—just to play it safe.

Reporter 1:  What role do the television networks play in your new program?

Czar:  None really.  This is an in-house Tour program.  We don’t expect the networks to put clocks on the screen—they have enough graphics distracting from the actual golf as it is.  But it’s a different business than it used to be when I was just a young little czar.  Back in the day, they would cut off coverage if the final round ran long on a Sunday to be sure viewers didn’t miss the start of “WKRP in Cincinnati” or “Charlie’s Angels.”  Now when they run long, they just shift coverage over to another network—sometimes even a competing network! We know some of you in the media have become jaded and think that both the Tour and the networks turn a blind eye to slow play because it means more time to sell more commercials, but I stand before you today to say that could not be further from the truth! Now excuse me while we take a 60-second “limited commercial interruption” for a word from our press conference sponsors…

[Press conference pauses for commercials from two sponsors]

Reporter 5:  You know this idea sounds crazy, right?

Czar:  Am I crazy?  Or is this idea SO crazy that it might actually work?  If the existing system isn’t being enforced, then why have it?  If police don’t enforce the speed limit, then everyone will speed.  Wait, bad analogy. This is the opposite of speeding…  Anyway, we have to throw out the old system and think outside the box.  Time is money, money is time, and we have to do something for the future of the game.  To sit idly by and say things like “Well, they play for a lot of money, so it only makes sense to take 7 minutes to line up a putt before they miss it anyway” is placing an individual’s narcissism ahead of the game and the respect for one’s fellow competitors.  [Czar turns to Brooks Koepka and pats him on the back].  Brooks here plays fast and he’s won a time or two recently—including three of the last six majors!  Look folks, something must be done and hand-wringing, complaining, and social media snarking are getting us nowhere.  If more players like Brooks would stand up and say something, it might help; but most players are not comfortable telling other players to speed up.  It’s awkward, it’s not their job to police other players, and it makes for a very uncomfortable ride on the Gulfstream back to Juno Beach.  The TTI Index is the only fair way to address the problem.  The computer has no favorites because the system sees only seconds on a clock.  No one has to slip out onto the course to explain to Jason Day that he needs to speed up or he’ll be put on the clock—because EVERYONE is on the clock on every shot!  Its true genius is in its simplicity!

Reporter 3:  When will this new system be implemented?

Czar:  We hope to test it in New Orleans at the Zurich.  We think players will be more relaxed there because of the team format—and the Hurricanes from Pat O’ Brien’s.  We’ll see how that works and then hopefully do a full roll out after The Masters.

Reporter 4:  Will this apply to The Masters?

Czar:  You’ll have to ask their Czar.  My office only handles sanctioned PGA Tour events and the PGA Championship.  Which reminds me:  you guys on the Web.com and Champions Tour need to step it up too.  We’re coming for you next.  Now I know it’s getting late, or early depending on who you’re going out on the town with tonight…so any more questions?  None?  Good deal.  I have to fly back to Ponte Vedra and clear out my condo before the Realtor comes over to list it and then skedaddle over to Friscoe and move my stuff into Jerry Jones’s guest house.

Reporter 2:  You’re friends with Jerry Jones?

Czar:  No, but his guest house is so big I’m hoping he doesn’t realize I’m there before I find a house.  Thanks again for coming this evening and if you need any more information, you can visit the official Slow Play Czar web site at SlowPlayCzar.com and follow our office Twitter account at @SlowPlayCzar for updates.  And for those of you who went to public school like I did, Czar is spelled C-Z-A-R.  Once again thank you, God bless you, God bless America, and God bless this beautiful game!

[Reporters clamor to their cameras to report the news back to their respective networks as the Czar exists stage left]

*  END OF TRANSCRIPT *

______________________________________________

Note:  Obviously, this is satire and I have not been appointed as the Slow Play Czar for the PGA Tour; but someone should be appointed.  That said, I think some derivation of the plan I have laid out here is an answer for addressing slow play on Tour because the TTI Index system treats every player with 100% equity and is completely meritorious.  Hopefully, someone will have the nerve to try some version of this in the near future–for the sake of the game…

                                                                                                    — Nathan Crace, ASGCA

 

 

 

“A Day with Pete Dye” (a reprint from August 2001)

Today is Pete Dye’s 90th birthday!  An iconic figure not only in the world of golf course architecture, but also of the game of golf itself.  Decades ago, he changed the way many thought about the design of golf courses and drove Tour pros insane (something many suspect he quite enjoyed).  But on his birthday today, I’ve been digging around the archives and pulled this story I wrote in my monthly Lipouts column from back in August of 2001.  It was actually written about spending a day with Mr. Dye and Tim Liddy walking the grounds of one of Pete’s first designs–originally named Marsh Island GC in Ocean Springs, MS.

The course had already been closed for years at the time (a victim of Hurricane Georges) and we were working with a developer to try and breathe new life into the old course.  That project never made it out of the planning phase due to regulatory red tape and now the property is dotted with what’s left of homes after Hurricane Katrina.

A few things I remember vividly about that day:  it was Election Day 2000 and it was pouring rain!  Not just raining cats and dogs–absolute deluges as waves of rain came whipping across the property as a cold front dipping down from the upper Midwest came crashing into the warm air of the Gulf of Mexico.  We were ground zero.

The other thing I remember was what Pete remembered.  By that, I mean we walked (on foot) the entire grown-up golf course through waist high grass at times and the edges of marshes and we had to hustle to keep up with Pete as he recalled a hole here or a dogleg there.  It was a great time!

I also thought it timely to re-print this because Pete’s wife Alice (an accomplished architect and player in her own right and also a Past President of the ASGCA) was just announced as teh recipient of the Donald Ross Award at our annual ASGCA meeting in May of 2017.  As you read the following, please remember that it was written by a 29 year-old me (so it may sound a little “fanboy-ish” at times.  But  if you are a fan of golf, you’ll understand and forgive me for that.  With that said, please enjoy from 15 years ago (when he was a spry 74 year-old youngster), my story “A Day With Pete Dye.”

It was cold. And wet. And miserable. And I couldn’t have been happier. As I watched the cold winter rain drizzle over the tidal marsh in the distance, it almost appeared that the tall upright marsh grass (turned a grayish brown from the winter temperatures) was stretching out to meet the rain as it fell from the sky. This was Election Day 2000 and it was also the day I was to meet the man some call a living legend. You could even argue that he has had the most influence on the game of golf of any architect since Robert Trent Jones. I was going to be one of a handful of people spending the day with the Pete Dye regarding an upcoming project on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The Pine Island course (shut down since Hurricane Georges in October of 1998) was one of Dye’s first courses. The course — then named Marsh Island — was built in the late 1960’s for less than what we spend nowadays on eighteen green complexes. The owner felt that having Dye involved with the project again would not only bring notoriety to the Ocean Springs course, but that it was also the right thing to do since he was the original architect—good call.

I don’t really know what I had grown so nervous about as we sat waiting on Mr. Dye to arrive—his plane delayed by the bad weather. I have met a number of “famous” people in my life such as actors, comedians, politicians, and professional athletes, but for some

reason I had never been especially impressed by these others—let alone nervous about meeting them. However, meeting Pete Dye was going to be different. This insurance salesman turned golf course architect icon was self-made and time-tested for longer than I had been alive, with hundreds of golf courses around the globe to his credit.

To be honest, my first impression was that he wasn’t as tall as I had envisioned him being from seeing pictures in magazines. In fact, to the untrained eye Dye might even go unnoticed in a large crowd. No flashy clothes or fancy shoes. Maybe I assumed he would take over the room when he walked in like some well-traveled celebrity. That’s not to say he didn’t have the attention of everyone in the room—he did. But it was more like the respect all of the family gives your Grandfather when he prepares to bless the Thanksgiving dinner. Pete Dye is more of the quiet, thinking type than some might assume of a person with his extensive background.

There we were: eight of us trudging through the weather following Mr. Dye across 18 holes of overgrown rain-soaked fairways, along acres of tidal marsh, and through countless puddles of cold water up to our ankles—all on foot because he likes to walk a course. We spent about three hours walking the property and I got the impression that some would have had a difficult time keeping up with the 70+ year-old Dye if he had not kept stopping to admire the views from the course and out across the tidal marsh. Remarkably, he remembered a great deal about the course he had not seen in thirty years, commenting of certain holes that stood out in his mind.

As sunlight began to fade across the bay, about five or so of us decided to get cleaned up and go out for dinner before Mr. Dye had to catch his late flight home that evening. Just as he had been the entire day, Mr. Dye remained conversational and “down to earth” at the restaurant as he shared stories from years of travel and hundreds of projects around the globe. I tried to keep quiet and listen—at first not even mentioning our Indiana connection (both of us having family roots there). I wanted to hear what he had to talk to about and, after all, I can hear myself talk anytime. I learned from my parents at a very early age to take the time to “listen” to the stories of older generations and not just “hear” what they had to say. So, notwithstanding his impressive resume as an architect, I listened. And I learned. And believe me: you cannot imagine how difficult it is to spend a day with

someone like Mr. Dye and force yourself not to “pick his brain” at every chance you get.

As dinner drew to a close and we all said our goodbyes, we snapped a couple of photos and I ran off into the rain-soaked darkness, climbed into my car, and drove two hours home to my family—appreciating even more the value of time well spent with people worth admiring.

Copyright 2001 — Nathan Crace and Lipouts.com

 

Remembering Bob Cupp: How Our Awkward Conversation 22 Years Ago Inspired My Career and Changed My Life for the Better

Photo: Golf Channel/Morning Drive

Like many others in the golf industry who have had the chance to get to know him or meet him, I was saddened to hear this past Friday of the passing of Bob Cupp.  In the two days since the news was made public, there has been an outpouring of support from across the golf world with words of praise not only for his body of work, but also for the man himself. You can read many of those with a quick Google search, including a great story by Ron Whitten via Golf Digest’s website.  For my part, I felt compelled to write about my connection to Bob, the unusual way we met, and the strange way he kicked off my career—even though I didn’t tell him about it for 14 years.

To understand, you need to know a little background about how our paths first crossed.  When I was finishing up college at Mississippi State, I worked as an assistant golf professional at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi.  Bob designed Old Waverly in the late 1980s and it is still one of my favorite courses to play.  During my time at Old Waverly, I became friends with then golf course superintendent Bill Colloredo and told him of my desire since childhood to become a golf course architect after graduating from college.  I showed Bill some of my sketches and drawings and he gave me a copy of Bob’s original hand-drawn green plans for Old Waverly, which I carefully studied in my apartment while I sketched out greens I imagined for a “yet to be determined” golf course that existed only in my mind. I still have Bob’s green plans to this day.

This was in 1994, about the time that Old Waverly was talking with the USGA about hosting a US Women’s Open (which it would eventually host in 1999).  When I arrived at work one day, Bill informed me that Bob was coming to visit and look at adding a few bunkers to the course as part of getting the course ready for the presentation to the USGA.  To my delight, Bill asked if I wanted to tag along and listen.  I jumped at the opportunity.  The day Bob arrived, a group of us piled into multiple golf carts and followed hole by hole in what must have looked like a giant serpent snaking along the cart path.  Bob was in the front cart with owner George Bryan and I was way back in the back.  Each time they would stop, I would jump out and run toward the front, trying to listen and learn by osmosis.

When we were done and had returned to the golf shop, Bill asked if I wanted him to introduce me to Bob. “Of course!” I replied. We stood around waiting for the others to finish speaking with Bob and when the small crowd has thinned, Bill made the introduction.

“Mr. Cupp,” Bill began. “This is Nathan Crace.  He’s a student at Mississippi State and wants to be a golf course architect.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bob replied. “Good luck. It’s a tough business to get into.”

And just like that, it was over.  To this day, I don’t recall saying anything.  I was devastated.  In his defense, I don’t know what I was expecting.  Did I think he would say “Great! Pack your bags and let’s go! You can work for me!” Again, I really didn’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting what happened.  I tucked my tail between my legs and quietly slunk away to my car for the 25 minute drive back to my apartment in Starkville.

Then something strange happened.  About five minutes after passing through the guardhouse at Old Waverly, I thought “Who in the hell does he think he is? He doesn’t know me! He doesn’t know what I can and can’t do! I’ve wanted to be a golf course architect since I was ten and I’m not going to not do it just because he says so!”  I was, for lack of a better term, fired up.  I was mad and I was going to prove I could do it.  What I didn’t realize that day was that his brutally honest reply was the proverbial “kick in the pants” I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. I would have to work harder than others if I wanted to become a golf course architect, but I would do it.

That same year, I was taking a now-defunct course called “Golf Course Architecture I” and the instructor had convinced Bob to visit the class and judge our projects in conjunction with an upcoming visit he was making to the area.  He sat through the other students’ projects as I waited for my turn.  When it came time for me to present my design, he seemed to remember me.  Rather than asking me the same rudimentary questions he had been asking the others, he immediately engaged me in an in-depth hole-by-hole discussion of the entire course I had laid out.  Everything from the routing, the combination of holes, the angles of doglegs, and the placement of bunkers to the way he liked how I routed holes diagonally across natural features.  I was flabbergasted.  He was fully engaged and spent nearly a half-hour asking me about the smallest details and offering constructive advice for things he would have done differently.  It was as if we were the only two people in the room.  I left that auditorium feeling like I could be a golf course architect after all—all because Bob Cupp acted like he thought I could.

Flash forward to Fall 2008 and I had been designing golf courses for nearly 14 years.  Unlike others who worked under established architects, I spent the first eight years of my career working for a former golf course superintendent whom Bill Colloredo introduced me to in late 1994.  The two of us built an impressive body of work for two guys who had no formal training.  By 2008, I had been on my own for nearly six years and had been blessed to add some nice renovation work to my portfolio when I stumbled across a story about a project Bob was working on.  For some reason, I felt compelled to write to Bob to let him know that his words to me in 1994 were the catalyst for inspiring me to become a golf course architect—not to say “I told you so,” but rather to say “Thank you.” I sent him a letter telling him the story of our meeting at Old Waverly and how his reaction “lit a fire beneath me” to prove him wrong—and that I would always be indebted to him for that.

A week or so later, I received an email back from Bob.  He had been in Argentina working on a project and was just catching up on getting back to people.  To paraphrase, he said that he did indeed remember me from that day at Old Waverly fourteen years earlier as well as the night he came to campus to judge our project designs and that he was encouraged by my reaction to his verbal dose of reality.  He said he only wanted to be truthful with me back then that the golf course design industry is a tough one to break into without getting my hopes up.  He would go on to write a lengthy email explaining that he had been following my career from time to time (even noting my renovation at Ole Miss GC) and offering me sage advice going forward on everything from hiring staff to being a “gentleman competitor.”  He was genuinely happy for me and how I had responded to his challenge.  To this day, I have that email framed in my office and sometimes I read it when I need a dose of inspiration.

From that point, we would correspond off and on via email and the occasional phone call and Bob became the closest thing I had to a “mentor” in the world of golf course architecture.  In 2013, he and Ron Whitten were going to discuss their new book at the Golf Industry Show in San Diego.  On that same day, I was speaking at a panel discussion hosted by the National Golf Course Owners Association across the street and told Bob I would hurry from there and try to get over to hear them speak.  In an email, he encouraged me to come by if I could, if only for a few minutes to say “Hi.” Because of the timing of the two events, I only caught the last 15 minutes of the discussion, but we had an opportunity to speak for a while afterward.  As always, he was very gracious with his time and his words of wisdom and I enjoyed the stories he told in the short time we had that day.

The next year, Bob called to ask if I was interested in joining the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA). Was I?!?!?  That was my goal since I was a boy! He would become my lead sponsor and shepherd my application through the lengthy vetting process.  That’s why I was so excited to get to the 2016 ASGCA Annual Meeting in DC this past April.  We would finally have time to sit and talk in person—both as ASGCA members—and I could ask him questions and share stories and tell him in person how much he meant to me and my career.  The first night, a member of the ASGCA staff took me to the side and told me that Bob was not going to be able to attend and why.  He had just been diagnosed with cancer.  I was speechless.  Since he was my lead sponsor, they wanted me to know, but asked me to keep it to myself.  At the time, they were only telling a handful of people.  That evening, I sent Bob an email to let him know I was thinking about him and that he and his family would be in my prayers.  I closed with a note of encouragement, telling him that I looked forward to catching up at the next annual ASGCA meeting in 2017.  Sadly, we won’t get that chance.

Bob Cupp was many things to many people. Husband, father, grandfather, golf course architect, writer, craftsman, and Renaissance man.  There are many titles that applied to him and we should all strive to be as well-rounded as Bob.  We should all be so lucky to be remembered by all as giving of our time and inspiring to others.  Our industry may have lost a huge talent, but the world lost a great person and many people lost a true friend.  To me, he was the person who was brutally honest with a college kid who had his head in the clouds and forced him to buckle down and work hard to achieve his dreams.  I cannot believe that was 22 years ago, but I am so glad I told him what he did for me.  Too often, we don’t take the time to tell those who inspire us just what they have done for us in our lives.  Bob Cupp challenged me to be the best I could be and to become a golf course architect for one reason—because I loved the game.  For that, I will always be personally indebted to him.  I only wish I had the chance to tell him so in person one last time.

 

Designs on Improving the Future of Your Course…and Your Career

The following article was written by Nathan Crace, ASGCA Assoc., at the request of the Mississippi Turfgrass Association for the May 2016 edition of MTA Magazine.  Visitors and subscribers to this blog can read it here before the magazine is published in May.

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Hard to believe, but 2015 is officially in the rearview mirror.  As we pass the off ramp to New Year’s and the College Bowl Season, the exit to The Masters is only a mile away; and with the superhighway to 2016 squarely ahead of us, more news outlets are reporting that the economy is turning around and things are getting better every day.  Depending on your choice of twenty-four hour cable news coverage (and the point in the news cycle when you choose to check-in), America’s economy is either roaring back and poised to be the driving force behind a global recovery or we are hopelessly lost in a death spiral of joblessness, natural disasters, unsustainable national debt, and a staggering increase in the number of reality shows on television.  So which is it?  Are we continuing to dive headlong into the Mariana Trench of a deepening global economic abyss or have we rebounded and are now headed back toward the surface, poised to breach stronger than ever and sail on happily toward the future?  Like most stories in life, perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

There is another option that I keep hearing muttered about on the nightly news: maybe we have found a “new normal” where malaise and stagnant wages are fine for the majority of people, so long as they can still hammer a check every two weeks.  Call me optimistic, but I think the fall stopped a while back and we are starting to rebound, ever so slightly—and not as quickly as those in Washington might want us to believe.  But a steady improvement is better than a slingshot rebound.  Of course, it might just be the new-found optimism that we see every election cycle, but things feel to have bottomed-out and are now poised to come roaring back.  Don’t misunderstand: the rocket has not left the launch pad yet, but maybe we’re almost done fueling it and the engines are warming up.  From a personal perspective, phone calls and emails to our office are ticking up with inquiries about renovations, practice facilities, and—dare I say it—new course design.  Most encouragingly, these calls are not only from existing clients who tabled their projects years ago when the economy ground to a standstill, but also new clients looking toward the future.

It’s no surprise to anyone in the golf industry that things have been slow for the past eight years.  The term “slow” might be too nice when one looks into the golf course construction industry since 2006.  According to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), 2013 marked the eighth straight year that more courses in the United States closed than opened—by a long margin.  In 2013, the NGF reports that only 14 new courses opened for play (actually up from 13.5 in 2012), but the total number that closed was 157.5.  We’ll be generous and call it a market correction of the glut of courses built in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, but that is still a large disparity.  Before you panic and start filling up the prepper pantry in your bomb shelter, there is good news.  Golfdom Magazine’s recently released annual “Golfdom Report” (January 2016) of industry insiders, golf course managers, and superintendents reveals some cautiously optimistic findings. This is important because these are the players on the inside of the industry—not just golfers, professional economists, and the news networks’ talking heads.
Of those surveyed about their expectations for the golf economy for 2016, 65% were either very optimistic or cautiously optimistic, while 23% were neutral, and 11% were slightly pessimistic.  Only 1% of respondents reported being very pessimistic about the state of the industry for 2016.  Digging deeper into the statistics, there were some reassuring stories from across the country regarding rounds of play increasing in 2015 over 2014 with expectations for that increase to continue into 2016.  Then again, the giant gorilla standing quietly in the dark corner of the room is the new Waters Of The United State (WOTUS) overreach by the EPA…but I digress.  WOTUS is a story for another time when I’m not limited to three or four pages.  That being said, the “Golfdom Report” found that WOTUS may be part of the cause for some of the pessimism in the industry as it rambles its way through the court system with the final outcome as yet unknown.  The 2016 election was also on most course managers’ minds, but respondents were evenly split on how it would impact the golf industry.

Taken as a whole (and forgetting about WOTUS for the time being), the good news is that optimism is up and pessimism is down.  What does that mean for you and your club or course?  As my college economics professor was fond of saying, “It depends.”  What it does mean, however, is that maybe it’s finally time to pull those projects you metaphorically shelved years ago from the back of the bottom drawer and dust them off.  It means it’s time to start planning for the future again and not simply maintaining the status quo.  Optimism is afoot and you don’t want to be caught watching as the aforementioned economic rocket leaves the launch pad because you didn’t take the time to pick up your spacesuit from the cleaners.

Remember those ideas you had a few years ago to re-build a green or upgrade irrigation or renovate tees or re-build bunkers because the additional maintenance was taking your staff away from other areas of the course?  It’s time to re-visit those ideas.  There may be no better time in the last seven years than now to tackle that course-wide bunker renovation program or re-build those problematic greens that you’ve been fighting for years now.  With market prices falling, golf course contractors are still looking for work for their crews and you can still lock-in significant discounts on construction compared to the pre-slowdown era.   However, as the economic engine begins to warm up and interest begins to pick up in renovations, so do the laws of supply and demand.  As the contractors find their demand and their prospects increasing, so too does their price.

Just like it’s time to reconsider those bunker, tee, green, drainage, and irrigation renovations, it’s also time to think outside the box about things you can do to improve your facility that will attract new golfers.  Over the past six years, I have designed and built seven practice facilities—including full ranges, practice greens, and (my favorite) full and comprehensive short game facilities.  It’s an odd niche that I stumbled into seemingly by mistake at first, before the epiphany that I had—in fact—come full circle.  When I was a student in Mississippi State’s Professional Golf Management (PGM) program, part of my experience and training on my cooperative internships was teaching the game to golfers and helping them improve their game and subsequent enjoyment of playing.  I naturally gravitated toward teaching the short game.

Why naturally, you ask?  Because as a child growing up in Southern Indiana, no one in my family played golf; but my parents had enough land behind their house for me to fashion a short three-hole par-3 course.  Granted, I was only 11 years old or so; but if I was going to learn how to play, it was my only real option.  So I mowed out “fairways” and “greens” with our riding lawnmower, borrowed an old 7-iron and some even older balls from a neighbor who hadn’t played in years, and began to teach myself how to play by watching Jack Nicklaus for a few hours on television each weekend.  In later years, I even added sand bunkers to my course.  Because of the short length of the course, I quickly found myself hitting more old pitching wedges and less old 7-irons.  Soon, my school-day afternoons and entire summer days consisted of shagging hundreds of balls with an old pitching wedge.  When that became boring, I started opening the face and trying to hit flop shots over trees, sheds, and neighborhood children who were brave enough to stand still for long enough.  I was first exposed to playing the game by necessity—forcing me to become creative with my short game out of boredom.  There were no 60 degree lob wedges in that day.  When I finally saved up enough money to buy a 56 degree sand wedge at K-Mart, I remember that it had a dot-punched face—not grooves.  But it was on sale and in my leaf-raking-for-income budget.  So now, some 30+ years later, I have come full circle because I have been unknowingly using those life experiences from teaching myself to hit those shots and my expertise later in life from teaching others how to hit those shots to design what I feel are the best short game practice facilities for players of all abilities and imaginations.

Practice facilities (and particularly short game facilities) are important to growing the game for a number of reasons.  Flash forward to the recent economic slowdown and more courses are looking for ways to attract new players and retain existing ones without the expense of renovating the entire course.  Likewise, golfers are looking for ways to work on their games and/or spend time with their families without having to spend four or five hours on the golf course to do it.  These higher quality practice facilities fit the bill for both golf course and golfer.  With a smaller capital investment by the course and a smaller investment in time by the golfer, an added amenity can be created that differentiates your course from the one down the street and sets you apart in a tightened marketplace.

Three such facilities (one at Annandale Golf Club in Madison, Mississippi, one at Tupelo Country Club in Tupelo, Mississippi, and one at Hattiesburg CC in Hattiesburg, Mississippi) are among the best for private clubs in the Magnolia State while Hattiesburg CC and two other facilities (at Ole Miss GC and at Mississippi State University GC) are among some of the top collegiate facilities—the short game facility at Hattiesburg CC was built in cooperation with the University of Southern Mississippi for the men’s and women’s golf teams as well as the membership.  I know what you’re thinking, and before you say “Adding areas for me to maintain won’t help my bottom line,” consider this:  a better practice facility will attract new golfers.  New golfers bring added play and revenue.  Added play and revenue necessitate a better budget.  And a better budget helps your bottom line.  The cause and effect may not be as direct as you want, but there is a real connection.  Just as there is a direct two-prong correlation between bunker renovations and cost savings/increased rounds, so too is there a relationship between better practice facilities and increased play/overall facility revenue.

Case in point is the aforementioned Tupelo Country Club.  In 2010, I was commissioned to develop a master plan for the entire golf course and existing practice facility (which at the time consisted of an undersized practice tee, a never-used chipping green, and a putting green).  During the planning and budgeting process, it was decided that the practice area would become Phase I and the golf course itself would be Phase II and completed at a later date.

Tupelo Country Club’s new chipping green is part of an award-winning practice facility.

Working with the club and course superintendent Jim Kwasinski, CGCS, we developed a plan to revitalize the driving range that included a practice tee large enough to accommodate the membership.  A new tee measuring 100’ by 285’ with internal drainage and a sand base now provides ample tee space that’s playable even immediately after a rain event with multiple target greens shaped to replicate actual greens as targets.  Additionally, a 6,500 sq ft short game green with bunkers and chipping areas and a new putting green give ample opportunity for members to work on their short games without being crowded.  But the most talked about feature of the new practice facility is by far the “Short Course” behind the driving range.  While on a site visit during master planning, Jim and I stood on the back tee of the 7^th hole looking out over an expanse of scrub and small trees behind the driving range.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: That’s a lot of wasted space.

Jim: Yep, the club almost sold it about ten years ago to a developer to make condos.

Me: It would be the perfect place for a par-3 course.

Jim: Yes it would.

[Both turn slowly to look at the other as the epiphany hits both of us simultaneously]

Jim: Why not?

Me: I need to find a piece of paper.

Soon, I was sketching out what would become unique in its simplicity of operation and complexity of design—a large expanse of fairway with two double greens and a triple green spaced within it and a handful of bunkers strategically dotted throughout.  The only things missing were tee boxes—intentionally.  I didn’t want Jim’s staff to have to stop and mow tees and move markers and I didn’t want members to feel forced to play certain holes in a certain order.  It was designed to be freeform with “the only limitation being the golfers’ imaginations” [Note to self: Write that down—I need to trademark that saying].  Want to play nine par-3 holes with your kids? Perfect.  Want to stay in one spot and work on greenside bunker shots then turn the other way and practice fairway bunker shots? Perfect.  Have an extra hour of time and you want to work on a number of short shots and wedge shots? Again, perfect.  The short course facility worked so well that it has been written about in numerous industry publications around the world and (I’ve been told) even copied by other courses after they visited Tupelo CC (I won’t name names).  At the end of the day, Jim’s staff has a few extra greens to mow and a few more acres of fairway to cut.  However, the impact on the club has been a renewed interest among golfers and a way to differentiate the club from the competition.  It’s also a great way to advertise how nice the course itself will be once Phase II is completed.

Likewise, the short game facility at Annandale GC has been a boost to the club by providing a much-needed amenity to a membership with an above-average skill set.  We transformed the old bentgrass nursery area into a spectacular facility with two chipping greens that offer varying lies, elevations, bunker shots, chipping areas, and yardages.  Additionally, one of the green contains a “putting lobe” that is adjacent to the new teaching studio where members can have a private putting lesson.  The short game facility is adjacent to the driving range, so players can practice short to long irons as well as greenside and fairway bunker shots.  Again, Annandale superintendent Al Osteen, CGCS, has two extra greens to mow and a little more fairway area to maintain, but for a relatively small investment, the club has a facility that is used daily by the membership and sets it apart from other clubs in the area.   Another important thing to note:  Al built his facility with in-house labor and one golf course shaper.  Jim’s facility was put out to bid and built by a golf course contractor—proving there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.

The tri-lobed pitching green at Annandale in the distance and the chipping green in the foreground.

The short game facility at Hattiesburg CC is big enough to hit wedge shots from 120 yards away to an elongated green that measure more than 9,000 square feet with a separate putting green tucked away into a private corner.  Immediately adjacent to the driving range, it is not only easy to use, but beautifies the drive into the club.

If the economy is in fact about to take off and the future finally looks bright once again for the golf industry, you must be prepared and you must be ready to go when you get the call.  There’s no excuse for not doing your homework and being prepared if and when things begin to improve.  There’s practically no cost in getting prepared, but there could be huge opportunity costs in not being prepared.  Be smart, be prudent, and be ready.  Worst case scenario: the economy stays flat for another year and you have a fine-tuned set of goals and a revitalized plan to make them a reality.  With that in mind, here are three simple keys to being ready when the economic uptick finally becomes a financial jumpstart:

STAY TUNED IN/GET TUNED IN:

Stay current on current events.  This means more than reading just sports scores and keeping up with the Kardashians (you know who you are).  Take time every day to catch up on the news and know how it might impact you.  If listening to who got shot on your local news every night is more than you care to sit through during dinner, opt for a business news network.  Fox Business or CNBC, for example.  Do you know what’s going on in the petroleum markets lately?  Surely you’ve seen the difference at the pump when you go to fill up.  So you must assume that you’re not the only one to feel that rush of dopamine to your brain when a full tank now costs you $30 instead of $75.  That extra money in the collective pocket of the population translates into an increase in disposable income, including recreational spending.  Is your course ready to take advantage of that?  How about that irrigation project you’ve been putting off?  A drop in petroleum markets typically translates into a drop in the price of plastic products—like PVC pipe and drainage pipe—not only because of raw materials costs, but also transportation and shipping.  Do you have asphalt cart paths at your course?  Petroleum is a key ingredient in asphalt.  Might be time to look at replacing some of those paths your members have been complaining about.  We’ve all seen the stories of crystal meth addicts stealing copper wiring from commercial air conditioning units and trying to cash it in because the price of copper has increased so dramatically.  Did you know that innovations in irrigation like Rain Bird’s IC system drastically reduce the expense of copper wiring, not to mention the elimination of above-ground satellite controllers?  Maybe it’s time to start looking at those projects again.

More than just watching the news, ask yourself how involved you are in making news.  Are you on social media?  If you are, great!  If not, you need to be (and while you’re there, follow me @lipouts on Twitter. Trust me, it’s worth it).  That said, you need to plan ahead for how you will use your social media sounding board.  If you want to let people know what’s going on at your course and/or in your career, remember to KEEP IT PROFESSIONAL.  If you like to sound off on politics, your favorite sports team, or you can’t help but re-tweet those off-color jokes you see from your college buddies, you really need two separate accounts: one personal and one professional.  And since not many things in this day and age will sink a career quicker than a series of ill-conceived (or late-night drunken) tweets, do yourself a favor and use TWO DIFFERENT APPS on your phone to differentiate between accounts and help avoid the potentially career-ending accidental tweet.  Don’t add yourself to the list of teachers, small business owners, and US Congressmen who have found themselves suddenly unemployed because they sent a tweet using the wrong account or sent a tweet for public consumption that they mistakenly thought was a direct message.

And while we’re at it, if you don’t know what a tweet is or if you’re confused by the previous sentence’s mention of the terms “tweet” and “direct message,” stay off of Twitter until you have a chance to study up.   Better yet, find the nearest 14 to 22 year-old and ask him or her to explain it to you in layman’s terms.  Your son/daughter and/or grandson/granddaughter and/or his/her friends should suffice.  The same goes for Facebook, blogs, and other forms of social media.  Just like other advances in technology during the course of your career, don’t be left behind just because the changes don’t make you feel warm and fuzzy.  But remember, unlike the upgrade from hydraulic to electric irrigation, what you do on social media can potentially haunt you for the rest of your career if you’re not careful.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK:

You know your bunkers are in awful shape.  You know they have long surpassed the average useful life of sand bunkers (5 to 7 years for the sand, 5 to 10 years for the drainage, and 7 to 15 years for the bunkers themselves, depending on your climate and soil types) and you know you could actually save money on labor and materials by renovating the bunkers and better using the time you spend after every rain (pushing sand back up onto the faces and cleaning out the sediment that washes down and contaminates the sand) for other projects.  So start doing your homework now and research what options are best for you.  The same goes for irrigation, drainage, tees, greens renovations, etc.  When the time comes and the General Manager or the President of the Board stops you at work to ask you about capital projects, think of the satisfaction you’ll have from responding “Actually, I just updated a spreadsheet with some comparisons of cost benefit analysis and the savings from the renovations we need. I’ll email it to you before lunch.”  And think about the missed opportunity if your answer to “What do we need to do on the golf course?” is “Hmmm, I haven’t thought about it in a while.  Things have been pretty slow.  Let me think about it and get back to you” or “We need to renovate the greens, but I have no idea how much it would actually cost.”

PLAN AHEAD:

It’s never too early to start planning.  Just as you plan your budget, plan your family vacation, plan your retirement, or plan your fantasy football league, start by writing things down.  Multiple studies have shown that the success rates of individuals who write down goals and re-visit them are exponentially higher than individuals who only think about their goals.  And seek out advice from those professionals who can help you the most.  As a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA), I spend a lot of time fielding calls with potential clients and answering their questions regarding which direction they should be headed.  Part of my job is helping superintendents prioritize improvements to their courses and package them into a well thought-out and organized proposal with real world numbers and time lines.  Most ASGCA members (myself included) will make a site visit and spend some time helping you prepare this information with very little initial cost to help you get the ball rolling.  We know that with the right data and information at your disposal, your chances of successfully navigating the politics involved within your club are greatly increased.  Again, we do this for the growth of the game and because the industry is strongest when we are able to work together to advance the success and sustainability of the game. So pick up that phone or click that mouse or swing by PetSmart and pick up that new carrier pigeon you’ve had your eye on, and reach out to us so we can help you get the thought process started.  A wise man once said “It’s never too early to start planning, but it might be too late to catch up.”  In the interest of full disclosure, no one told me that—I just made it up [Note to self: Write that one down too and trademark it with the “limitation/imagination” one from earlier].

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Nathan Crace, ASGCA Assoc., is an associate member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA).  He is also a member of the Golf Writers’ Association of America and a published author.  You can follow Nathan’s insight into golf and other topics on Twiiter @lipouts.  For more information on Nathan, visit www.nathancrace.com or www.watermarkgolf.com/design and for more information on the ASGCA, visit www.asgca.org  

 

 

 

What Can Brown Do For You? An Examination of what the US Open at Restored Pinehurst #2 Does (and Does Not) Mean for Your Course.

If you were one of the millions of people watching the US Open from Pinehurst #2 this year, you surely noticed that the course did not look like the typical US Open venue we have grown so accustomed to over the past, oh, 114 years. And if you didn’t notice the change, then the on-air talent, analysts, USGA staff, and producers from the Golf Channel, ESPN, and NBC were sure to remind you—over and over and over again.  Don’t misunderstand.  I’m all for restoring classic courses, growing the game of golf, and finding more sustainable ways to design and operate golf courses.  That being said, some of the media hyperbole surrounding the exemplary work that Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw did to Donald Ross’s seminal piece of work bordered on the absurd. In my humble opinion, some people marginalized the goals that Coore, Crenshaw, and the staff at Pinehurst accomplished by focusing too much on the browned-out condition of the turf and how “wonderful” it looked on the small screen in our living rooms…ad nauseum.

Don’t take my word for it.  The people I saw on my television were practically giddy about how bad the course looked and on Sunday afternoon, the onslaught of “brown is beautiful” erupted into a good ol’ fashioned Twitter back-and-forth between Golf Channel’s Matt Ginella and no less than Donald Trump himself.  The Donald said he would not let the USGA do to his course what they had done to Pinehurst #2 and that the course looked horrible on TV.  He went on to name a number of his own courses that he claimed were better than the “new” Pinehurst #2.  To his credit, Ginella tried to diplomatically sort out the top-ranked courses and keep the hashtag discussion civil, but a good number of other people on Twitter jumped at the opportunity to pile-on Trump, while still others sided with him and his opinion.

If you missed the spin, the talking points heard on-air can be summed up in a nutshell herewith: a browned-out burned-up course with single row irrigation, no “rough,” 50 acres of waste areas, and playing 7,500 yards from the tips with turtleback greens that won’t hold a wedge shot from the world’s best players is the future of the game.  You say you didn’t know that?  Me either.  For those who spoke as though there is no middle ground between the cathedral of American golf that is Augusta National and what we saw at Pinehurst over the weekend is at best naïve and at worst disingenuous.  Let’s look at just a few of the key points we heard from Pinehurst:

1. “The new single row irrigation system at Pinehurst #2 cut the watering requirements in half and saved 40 million gallons of water each year.”  Single row irrigation is nothing new and many of you may play on older courses with single row irrigation still today.  As I noted on Twitter during the #USOpen, we were installing single row systems just 15 years ago in designs in Mississippi and Louisiana—not to save on water, but because we were building entire golf courses for roughly $1 million.  That being said, it’s not the most desirable means of irrigating a golf course—unless you want unhealthy turf everywhere except a roughly 85’ radius around each of the heads in the middle of the fairway.  Try driving up and down those struggling fairways with 50 to 80 golf carts a day in the middle of summer and the “awesome natural look” of the brown turf will quickly become the “awful natural look” of brown dirt.  Turf on golf courses needs water for the same reason you and I need water—to survive.  There are more sensible solutions for your course than starving half of it from irrigation, such as single row irrigation from the tees to the landing areas, then double row irrigation to the green.  That sensible approach, coupled with an irrigation audit and smarter irrigation programming, can cut water usage dramatically without burning up your course. Yes it can. I’ve seen it done many times over.  One one-air personality at the US Open went so far as to say that the water savings in the first year at Pinehurst paid for the entire cost of the renovations! I’d like some confirmation of that statement because I find it hard to believe—unless the Pinehurst Resort was actually buying water from the Village of Pinehurst’s municipal water supply to irrigate the course before the restoration. Of course, I could be wrong…
2. “Brown is beautiful.” No it’s not. Not in America. At least not turf burned brown to the precipice of turf loss.  This statement is not good, bad or indifferent.  It’s just the way things are in America. Tan, however, is a very attractive look that contrasts nicely with green and looks both natural and healthy.  British Open venues that are more tan than green look great! Partly because that’s what we’ve come to expect from them.  They also have different soils and turf types that the vast majority of courses on this side of the pond do not enjoy and many below the Mason-Dixon line cannot have and/or afford to maintain (see “Conversion of Bentgrass Putting Greens to Ultradwarf Bermuda” for more information).  But generally speaking, Americans like their courses more green than brown and I doubt the “look” that Pinehurst #2 had from overhead on TV will be what the majority of American golfers want in my lifetime.  I’m not advocating spending millions of dollars on extravagant irrigation systems that water every nook and cranny of a golf course—quite the opposite actually.  But if the goal is to “grow the game,” I don’t see how starving a course of water to the point of near turf loss from desiccation coupled with greens that won’t hold an approach shot from the world’s best players is going to accomplish it.  Let us not forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.  I’m sure that Alexander Graham Bell never thought you could accidently call someone by sitting on his invention (the telephone for those of you who didn’t know).  Likewise, I’m fairly sure that turning people off to the game by advocating that courses cut water back to the point that fairways are dirt and greens are so hard to hold that the best in world can’t do itis not what the USGA is hoping for by hyping less conditioning.
3. “It looks great because there’s no rough anymore!”  It may not have been “rough” in the traditional sense of a US Open, but the huge swaths of waste areas and native sandy scrub looked pretty rough to me.  Sure you don’t have to water it like turf, but it’s also not a one-size-fits-all solution for every course in America.  There also appeared to be as many broadleaf weeds as there were wiregrass plants in the newly reclaimed native areas that I saw.  Also consider that the native sandy well-drained soils in and around the region of Pinehurst, North Carolina work great for that natural look.  But try pulling that off in heavy clay or poorly-drained soils in other areas of the country, and you’ll have a hodge-podge of every weed known to man in less than a year.  That’s because every agronomist knows that the best defense against weeds is a thick canopy of healthy turf that helps keep sunlight away from the weed seeds that are waiting to germinate.  Again, I personally like the new look of the natural areas at Pinehurst and I’m a big advocate for reducing bunkers on golf courses because they are so expensive to maintain.  In fact, I once completed a bunker renovation for a course in Arkansas that cut the overall square feet of bunkers by nearly 50% without changing the playability or challenge of the course.  It takes time to study it and some common sense, but it can be done and it’s a great way to save on your maintenance budget.  That being said, I like the theory of the waste areas along the edges of the fairways at Pinehurst #2 because they do not have to be maintained like bunkers.  But again, it won’t work for everyone and some maintenance is still needed in those areas.  It’s less maintenance, not maintenance-free—a fact seemingly lost on some of the on-air talent. 
4. “This will help grow the game because it’s less expensive to maintain and will therefore make golf more accessible due to lower green fees.”  The argument sounds like a sensible one and from a strictly ECON 101 point of view seems like it would work.  But for all the talk of how much water Pinehurst #2 was saving after the restoration, what I didn’t hear was how much the maintenance budget had been reduced.  I would like to know because any superintendent will tell you that the most expensive line item in the golf course maintenance budget is the same as any other business—labor.  And I would suspect that even if there was a savings in overall costs, the maintenance budget at  post-renovation Pinehurst #2 would still make many of the Greens Committee members of America’s others courses from coast to coast choke on their member assessments—notwithstanding preparations for the US Open.  To prove my point, look no further than the cost to play Pinehurst #2: a paltry $420 (no that’s not a typo).  Before I get emails trying to explain supply and demand economics to me, save your time.  I understand it.  It’s just tough to square the argument being made that the new look of Pinehurst will make golf more affordable—everywhere except Pinehurst, that is.

To sum up, I love what Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw did at Pinehurst #2.  As a rule, I typically don’t like when fellow golf architects channel dead architects from beyond the grave, but Coore and Crenshaw didn’t do that.  They used old photos and research to restore the 40+ acres of native sand scrub that had been filled in with turf over the latter half of the last century.  No Ouija Boards, just research and a lot of time studying history. Granted, a full-on restoration to the “original” Pinehurst would have seen flat oiled-sand greens like the ones in place from 1907 to 1934, but that would’ve just been silly…or would it?  The restoration cut back on water usage and that’s great.  They gave the course back what it once had by turning back the clock 100 years ago and that’s great too.  In fact, I can’t wait to see the course in person again. And if the coverage of the US Open helped further awareness of the need to make golf more sustainable and more affordable, then that’s great too.

What bothered me about the coverage was the extent to which everyone from the USGA to the folks from the television networks tried to force-feed the American golfer how beautiful a burned up course really is and hint that if your course doesn’t look like Pinehurst #2, you are doing something wrong.  That undermines the great work done by Coore and Crenshaw.  It’s one of the best restoration projects I’ve ever seen and it’s a shame for others to politicize it.  That being said, if we really want to grow the game and make courses sustainable, we have to find a common middle ground somewhere in the middle of perfectly pristine and burned to a crisp.  In an extremely unscientific poll I conducted among golfers in the 19^th hole at the course I play, all except one said if given a choice they would rather play a course that looked like Augusta National than a course that looked like Pinehurst #2. Again, unscientific, but it’s an interesting point.

To quote a famous frog, “It ain’t easy being green.”  But in America, for now at least, the browned-out look of Pinehurst is still seen as more the novelty and Augusta National as the shining city on a hill. Can everyone be Augusta? Of course not. In fact, no one can. Can everyone be Pinehurst #2. Of course not. Not everyone wants or needs to be.  But the way to grow the game is somewhere in the middle (if admittedly more toward the Pinehurst end of the spectrum than the Augusta end).  New strains of turf take decades to fine tune for golf, but people are working all the time on turf that requires less water without sacrificing quality.  What we need in the meantime are more courses built with sensible budgets that reduce maintained turf in a practical way and can conserve water—not starve the turf of it—while creating playable holes with receptive greens and fewer oversized and out of control bunkers.  It’s the same philosophy I’ve been preaching for 20 years now and can be summed up with this: to be successful, courses need to be aesthetically pleasing, less expensive to maintain, and—most importantly—fun to play!  But only you can decide if that means that brown is beautiful to you.  Not someone on television. Or even someone writing a column in a golf magazine. Or a blog…

 

The Venerable Ken Venturi — Passing of a Legend

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Ken Venturi today at age 82, just 12 days after he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.  I’m glad he was on Feherty last year and I still have that episode recorded (I’m willing to bet we’ll see a re-run of it on Golf Channel–as well we should). As my tribute to Ken Venturi, here’s a e-print of the column I wrote in 2002 about Venturi and what I learned from his time on CBS and as a player.  Thoughts an prayers are with his family.  He will be missed….

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“The Venerable Mr. Venturi”   from June 17, 2002

When I was young—say about 8 or 9 years old—my parents used to tell me to take time to speak with our older neighbors and listen to what they had to say. And not just when they were yelling at me for cutting the corner through their daylilies on my bike after school. Take some time to sit down with them, ask them questions about how things were when they were young and listen to what they had to say. I was assured that I would be amazed not only at how much had changed in the world, but also at how much had NOT changed.  These were the men who had fought our World Wars and the women with more grand and great-grandchildren than they could keep up with at times.

Of course, getting that to sink in for a nine year-old with ball games to play and dogs to play fetch with was surely an unenviable task. Later in life, as these elderly neighbors and friends of my parents began to pass on and I grew more mature, I realized all of the potentially fascinating life stories about their lives that would go untold—at least to me. Procrastination is a nasty habit, especially when it costs you the time that cannot be relived. But to a child, there’s always tomorrow to talk to the older folks.

The 2002 Kemper Insurance Open was the last time Ken Venturi would sit in the CBS tower behind the 18th green calling the shots for the viewers of CBS’s PGA Tour coverage each year.  Although Ken Venturi the man has not passed on, his television legacy has—leaving an indelible mark on more than a few of us. He was one of those announcers you found yourself inexplicably drawn to due to his true emotion and sense of “been there, done that.”

Unfortunately for me, it took a few years for me to realize exactly who he was and that makes his exit more noteworthy to me than perhaps to others. When I first got hooked on golf at about age 10, I would sometimes spend entire afternoons on weekends watching CBS’s golf coverage. Early on, I grew tired of Mr. Venturi’s ramblings and seemingly obvious comments. “This putt is all speed and direction” was one of my favorites. As a pre-teen who knew everything there was to know about the game (except who this Venturi guy was), I knew that all putts were speed and direction. Right? Then again, it’s always been difficult to bridge the generation gap—especially when it requires two bridges over three generations.

As I grew older and began to play competitive golf in junior and senior high school, I still watched as much golf as possible when I wasn’t actually playing golf. For me, the small screen provided an eye on the golfing world and an outlet for my desire to play more. The reason was simple: no one in my family played golf, there was no course in my hometown, and I wasn’t yet old enough to drive. I didn’t mind not getting to play as much as I would have liked and—in hindsight—it probably benefited my career today by spending more time watching golf on television. I got to see some of the best courses from all over the world instead of the same course every week.

So there we were: Ken Venturi and myself going over every shot on every hole week in and week out.  Sure there were weeks when NBC or ABC would grab a share of the market to cover a major or a Skins Game; but the majority of the time was spent with Kenny in the tower on 18—there was no Golf Channel.

Then at about age 14, I had an epiphany by “accidentally” learning who Ken Venturi really was. I couldn’t believe what an idiot I had been! I read a story about him in a magazine that I can’t remember the name of today. It began with the story of his childhood and how he turned to golf to escape the taunts he endured as a result of a speech impediment. Speech impediment? “How could someone with a speech impediment make a career of sports broadcasting?” I thought.  It went on to tell of how he lost the 1956 Masters as an amateur with a final round 80—losing by one stroke! He then turned pro and won no less than 10 times in the next four years on Tour before hitting a dry four-year spell that nearly cost him his game. He said he had to borrow money to play in the 1964 U.S. Open—an Open that is now a part of golf history. The same 1964 Open he won by playing through dehydration and 100 degree heat for a 36-hole final that forever defined Venturi the player.

Now we’ve come to the end of a 35-year long career in the booth that has seen Ken Venturi win the hearts of millions of viewers. Forget the critics. So what if people thought he wasn’t as critical as NBC’s Johnny Miller. Venturi was a straight talker, but a consummate gentleman—a genre that has be slowing slipping away from your television in contemporary times because it’s hard to sell to the younger generation. The viewers are what count and remembering Ken Venturi is what counts to him. Will the Masters really be the same to us without him in the booth? Only time will tell.

The viewers and players alike will surely miss you Mr. Venturi. Enjoy your retirement and the much-deserved time off. Just remember: like putting, retirement is all speed and direction.