The
best place to start on anything is at the beginning. When I was first hired at
LedgeRock, Mr Styer asked me to come up with my Philosophy of Golf Course Maintenance,
which somewhat doubled as our standards of maintenance. He used it to show prospective
members what LedgeRock was about and what was planned for the course conditioning. Revisiting it 8 years later and the fundamentals are still the same, although
improved on in some cases.
While
that was written mainly as a marketing tool it did represent the standard we
expected the course to be maintained and the proof is what you see during the
summer so this post is more to provide information of some of the maintenance practices
that occur throughout the year and why I do things certain ways. I will cover
each of these in more detail later, so in order to keep readers from falling
asleep, a summary of each will suffice for now.
One
of the items that was decided on very early was the playability of the course
was priority and it should play hard and fast. That meant a little brown turf
is tolerated provided the players get good ball roll and the course plays fun,
especially considering how tough it can be, every yard counts! We can control
how much water we put down but unfortunately have no control over mother nature’s
input so this item is very had to keep consistent when she plays her hand. Just
remember brown turf isn’t a bad thing.
Next for playability is how the greens play;
I manage our greens without growth regulators (which is rare these days) and to
do so requires that the crew pay a lot of attention to them to have them run at
the speeds they do. By doing this they sometimes look a little thin especially
when the (black) algae appears but this is nothing to worry about provided they remain
to putt extremely true and smooth, their playability is my biggest concern. I’ll
explain later in detail in another post why I manage them this way.
Soil/plant
health: When I started as a superintendent I relied on the old mantra of feed
the soil and everything else will fall into place. Being a new construction and
having moved a lot of soil in the process, they definitely needed some work but
I soon realized I was running in circles as when one nutrient would be in
balance it knocked another out…… Once they were in decent shape (a nice
average) I just started concentrating on the surface which let’s face it is all
golfers are really concerned about!!! Since then I haven’t looked back and the
turf is healthy and can do pretty much anything
that is asked of it.
General
aesthetics: The big one to most people – the visual aesthetic when you drive in,
walk up on a tee box etc. I believe that everything should be as perfect as
possible at all times, especially the items that attract the eye and try to
ensure that as many details as possible are taken care of. There are always more
items that can be done but it would take unlimited resources so I have to work
within the budget to ensure that they are kept to a minimum. Sometimes I do
miss little things and am appreciative of when members let me know and in a few
instances where we know about it but can’t address for some reason or another I
can let them know it is on my list.
Our
maintenance budget is very good to provide and exceed the required standards. It
should be noted that no two golf courses are the same so comparing budgets –
while a good indicator of general costs – the details need to be looked into. LedgeRock
is a very difficult course to look after with large areas that require handwork
which in turn costs more to maintain than a course without them. I search for
better ways to do things and save as much money as possible ensuring I can do
more with the budget that’s provided and get to items that may previously be
overlooked.
Over
time I’ll detail these items in more detail, but to sum up my general philosophy is to provide the members with first class conditions with playability taking
priority.
