golfrewind.com

at least to me.
http://www.golfonline.com/golfonline...672912,00.html

Amazing amount of info about course preparation and during-tourney maintenance for this year's PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. Thanks for posting that link, greenguy.

So, there are usually about 45 people on the Whistling Straits grounds crew during the season, but there will be 150 for the PGA Championship. Understandable, given all the work that is described.

Like cutting the rough with small rotary push lawn mowers like you use for your yard....ughhh! Before anyone asks why they are doing that, the only thing I can think of is they don't want tractors mowing the rough like you see at courses you play because the tractors tires cause the grass to lay down and may lead to inconsistencies in the rough. Plus, the tires may go over the same places every time it mows and could cause some minor rutting, even if it is relatively dry. By doing it this way, the grass is more apt to be standing up, not trampled by tractor tires. One other possible reason is that the push mowers are less likely to scalp when going over some of the mounding that is so prevelant at Whistling Straits. At least that's my theory...I could be wrong. It seems that a riding front deck mower with articulating mower decks would do the same thing as a small push mower because the grass is cut b4 the tires run over it and since it is articulated, it would also handle undulations well. And they can turn around on a dime. These machines are very common, so, ok, maybe I don't get why they are using push lawn mowers! Either way, I bet they don't even mow the rough during the tournament proper or even during that week.

I hope that they don't mow that way for normal play; it shows you just what length these courses go to have 'perfect' conditions. I remember for the '98 Open and PGA, they walked mowed the fairways to prevent the larger riding mowers from causing the rough to lay down when the mowers came off the fairways and turned around in the rough. All these really fine details keep people employed, but you've got to wonder if things have gotten a little out of hand. JMO.

Great article, greenguy! I read it in the magazine and I thought it was amazing how much work goes into course maintenance. So how does your daily schedule compare to the Maintenance Manager in the article? I noticed in a post here, you noted you were babysitting the "automatic" irrigation system for your course tonight. Sounds like you put in some long hours, too.

One thing that struck me about the article was how they will rake the rough to have the consistency even and not beaten down. This made me take special notice when I played a round today. On one hole, I was in the greenside rough and chipped on. As I walked to the green, I looked back and could see my trail of footprints in the rough. I am always amazed with the maintenance on this particular course but I'm sure they go through much greater lengths for the PGA Championship as shown in the article.

There was a goood article in this week's GolfWorld about Whistling Straits too. It concentrated a bit more on the difficulty of the course design by Pete Dye and how it takes golf courses to a new level of challenge for today's players and equipment. The players who have practiced there are filled with fear and loathing already. Word is if the wind blows during the tournament, that things could get mightly ugly. Looking at the pictures, I never saw so many bunkers or so many undulations, which will undoubtedly send balls bouncing in all directions when they hit.

Greenguy, I think their whole point in designing and building this course was to make it especially difficult, and Herb Kohler can afford to do whatever it takes to maintain the level of perfection he wants, a luxury that most other courses don't have. I think that they will love to have "raised the bar" for everyone else if other courses try to duplicate the design and conditions of Whistling Straits. It will be Herb's and Pete's legacy to golf.

How does my schedule compare's to the guy at Whistling Straits? I'll start with the irrigation system, which is the real 'heart' of any golf course. To make a long story short, I'd say the biggest difference is that his system works and mine don't In that article it lists the schedule the supt had starting at 4:00 a.m. He gets to tuck his kid in bed at night, I don't, which means either the system works, or he has someone doing it for him. When I have worked at Butler National, former site of the Western Open, the rough was routinely spruced up, although we had a tractor pulling the machine that did all the work. I remember just trying to stay awake driving it - it's a boring job! I guess what I don't get is doing all by hand, but hey, it's not my dime paying for it. The details of cup-cutting is slightly different here from what you read, but is very close to what I try to do here every day - perfectly vertical cups with no debris around. Also, if we have a big tournament at my facility, I have used my best greens mower person to do the perimeter cut - they use their best fairway mower to do the same thing and even choose what guy does what side of the fairway to mow. My experience is that it is easier to make a cleanup cut following your right side (going around counterclockwise), then looking off to your left - if you came to my course, we mow certain areas in the rough always in a counterclockwise direction because it's easier to follow. The fact that the best fairway mower was chosen to do the left side of the fairway isn't real clear-it might be that they are better looking off to their left and able to exactly outine the fairway. But the left side is relative to what direction you are making your perimeter cut and I imagine they would alternate the direction of the perimeter cut to reduce the grain of the turf in the fairway. If you are going counterclockwise, your cleanup cut favors looking at the right side where the edge of the fairway is, but the opposite is true if you are going clockwise - then someone favoring looking left would be able to get a more exact cut. Maybe they aren't alternating directions on the clean up, so left means left and right means right! The reason was not given, probably because the explaination would take more space than the editor had room for the entire article! Oh, I just thot of this, in many tournaments, you may notice the fairways are cross cut to give a 'checkboard' pattern. If they are not, then they will cut something close to a 'contour' cut, where the mowing pattern follows the contours of the fairway and they will 'burn' in the stripes by following their cuts exactly day after day, then the left side is the one more difficult because most people prefer looking off to the right. I bet that is what it is - i.e. there is no perimeter cut because the pattern follows the contour of the fairway. This cut also takes far less time than the cross cut pattern because you spend more time mowing and less time turning around. Wow- that was simple wasn't it! A fantastic idea I saw is how the guys would communicate with tennis balls. A hydraulic leak from a mower makes supts upset and even more so if you are preparing for something like this.

He has normally has a staff of 45 and is up to 150 for tournament prep. I have a staff of 12, and never are all 12 guys there at the same time. The difference is all the hand mowing. The greens are hand mowed, I use a triplex riding mower, and their bunkers, following specs made by all PGA tour stops, are hand raked - although they are only hand raking the bunkers inside the ropes -still thats a lot of bunkers and very labor intensive. Mine are mechanically raked, at least when the machine is working! Also, I'd bet the tees are also hand mowed, although it doesn't mention that in the article. So mainly, I try to mimick some of the things you see on TV and read about, but I have to try to do it with machines, because we could never afford to pay the labor.


Lots was mentioned about the stimping - at all PGA events, all greens are stimped and must get within a few inches of each other. I also stimp my greens for tournaments, but I only have time to do 2 greens - one on the front nine that was mowed with one mower and the other on the back that was mowed with another. I might have more inconsistencies from green to green, but at least I know they were cut the exact same way and usually come out ok. I seriously doubt the average golfer could come close to noticing these imperfections from the speed of one green to the next - I can tell on my course because I know where these inconsistencies will show up on a green - but that's a whole 'nother thread! BTW - the tour players are in my book legendary in how they close they can come in guessing just what the greens stimp at - usually within 2-3". The average golfer can't get within a foot (six inches either way) of what they actually are. And Stimping greens is not an exact science either, but that 'nother thread if someone's interested!

Your last point about noticing your footprints after chipping in probably tells me that the area you hit from was cut with some kind of rotary front deck mower - my greenside rough is cut with a reel type machine - the difference is the grass tends to stand straight up with the rotary, hense you could see your footprint because the grass was standing upright. The reel type mower has the tendency to roll some of the grass over and not cut it. However, I can mow these areas much tighter (about an inch) than with the rotary and I am more concerned with people finding their ball and hitting again, then in making it more difficult by making people hit it out of longer turf. The other variable is that you are playing on a far different turf species than what I have here, and its possible your supt can get a really tight upright cut with a rotary mower.

Sorry if this is too long a post!

Whistling Straits looks unbelivable - you could be right that this will be these guys' legacy. My thinking about the the level they are taking it to make it perfect has nothing to do with WS. When golfers see something on TV, they think that these things should also be done to their course - this is more true at private courses than your typical public course. But some committees don't take into full account the true costs when trying to make their course 'perfect', then fire the supt when he goes overbudget trying to please them. It happens, trust me. Believe me, Herb can spend his money anyway he wants, but I hope Greens Committee Chairmen watch with blinders on - just because all these manual labor tasks work there, they don't and won't work everywhere. You could mimick some of these tasks using machines, get good results and not spend a fortune to do it. I'll use one example about how some us in the business don't like saying exactly how we get things done - in the article, it mentioned the supt didn't want the stimp readings to get out to the public - the reason of that is that all supts know that green speeds can't be the same at every course and we don't want other country clubs putting pressure on us guys to try to do what can't be done.

So, are you saying that the superintendent at Whistling Straits was trying to do his fellow supers a favor by trying to keep the stimp readings private? If so, he must be a pretty decent guy.

I guess that the success of the course will be measured by its imitators, and that you grass jockeys will have to pay the price.

By the way, I didn't know that "Whistling Straits" was named for the whistling winds off the lake, which are supposedly calmest in August.

[quote=valeogut]So, are you saying that the superintendent at Whistling Straits was trying to do his fellow supers a favor by trying to keep the stimp readings private? If so, he must be a pretty decent guy.

[quote]

Yes, he is doing some supts a favor by not letting that info out. Most supts do not like publizing the stimp readings - so by not wanting that public follows an unwritten code that is usually followed. The online article I posted mentioned there was a sidebar explaining the secrecy. The sidebar didn't show up in the online article, but must only be in the actual hard print magazine you can buy off the shelf. I imagine the sidebar info follows along the lines that those guys at courses like WS know that usually they have access to $$ that most of us don't. With enough money, you could make every course that would satisfy the members of Augusta National. But most of us don't; so for the guys that do, they keep some things to themselves knowing that it might put somebody else's job at risk because some greens chairman at another course might all of sudden get the idiotic idea that they could do the same thing at their course. I refer to them as '5 cent millionaires'. They have all these grandiose ideas that won't work because they don't want to pay for it AND get it right. Sometimes the combination of trying to do a project without enough $$, or making the greens faster than nature will allow, will lead to failure where the supt is sometimes blamed and fired. When I've worked at private courses and was forced to attend member's meetings, the stupidity (and that's using a nice word) of the people responsible for enhancing the investment they had in the club was beyond the words I can write on a board. This is why I will never be a supt at a private club - and believe it or not, I left that course on good terms, have a friendly relationship with the people and go back to play there once or twice a year. But now it's not a private course - they went totally public 10 years ago.

I never heard of the supt at WS, but I haven't yet met a supt that isn't a good guy-I know I could call any number of people if I was having a problem and they would let me borrow a machine, use a particular tool or a suggestion that might help me out. Kinda like the 'friendly farmer' concept - yes we compete with each other business wise, but if our 'crops' start to die, they'll help you out. I certainly have the highest respect for the people that are responsible for preparing their courses to the highest level at golf's most important events, but you'd be hard pressed to find any gainfully employed supt that doesn't do the very best he can with the resources available. It's a labor that you have to love cause you ain't going to get rich from it, the hours are very long and the frustration level is off the charts sometimes because there are maybe 2 or 3 days a year where you get the course exactly how you want it - it's like shooting at a house fly with a pistol. Once in a great while you hit the target, but you keep shooting everyday knowing full well that the target is moving faster than you can shoot! Yet every morning I look foward to coming to work - I must be insane!

[quote]guess that the success of the course will be measured by its imitators, and that you grass jockeys will have to pay the price.[quote]

You would have to have some pretty deep pockets to imitate what Dye did with that property - he moved a lot of dirt - it looks tremendous! I can tell from the pictures that I love it-right up there with some of the greatest courses I've seen. As long as everyone else outside of WS understands the price tag to make and maintain it, then no problem. Problems arise when someone tries to imitate it without the deep pockets of Kohler.

People who are close to nature--farmers, gardeners, greenskeepers, landscapers, etc.--share a love of the soil and living things that binds them together in a kind of productive fraternity. They also share a humility that comes from recognizing that no matter how hard they work, there are some things that they just can't control. That love, humility, and knowledge usually creates an essentially decent and wise human being who is willing to help others who are also victimized by the vicissitudes of nature and fate. :)

I thought the figure of fairway acreage before the PGA and during the PGA was intersting. 37.5 acres versus 21 acres - almost cut in half. Wayward drives will kill you. What is this, the US Open?

plus its 7,500 yards long.

I'm wondering if this isn't due just to tightening the fairways as much as it is making them shorter i.e. making the players hit longer drives just to reach the fairways. No doubt they made it tighter, but I would find it hard to shrink them that much without making them shorter. They will have a lot of roll similar to Shinecock and I don't think they'll make the same mistake as the USGA did at Blackpage where sometimes they required a 270 yard carry to reach the fairway. 37.5 acres is a lot of acreage for fairways on a major championship quality course. 21 acres isn't that far out of line to a lot of courses that you see the tour compete on. On a few of the holes, the PGA said they will move up the tees considerably if the weather dictates it - you might see cases where a 240-250 yd carry is required to reach the short stuff, but I think they'll use their common sense on this. Even if they have to move the tees up, par might win this week.

During the International, Jim Nantz stated on a number of occasions for the promos for the PGA that WS would be a course like we've never seen b4 - normally I would say that's typical hype, but in this cause I can't wait to see this course on the tube. It really is different than anything like we've seen the PGA or US Open played on.

i cant wait to get there! chip's caddy called my dad and i yesterday to tell us that its awe-inspiring. he said its up ther ewith pebble beach in terms of feel.