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Coming of age
2006 ELGA rewards traditional values as established facilities rush to the head of the class.
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Turns out old dogs can learn new tricks.
At least that’s the lesson that can be gleaned from the 2006 GCSAA/Golf Digest Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards. Turning around a recent trend that had seen newer layouts dominating the medal stand in this program, the three national and one international ELGAs this year went to superintendents of golf course facilities ranging in age from 21 to 42 years.
In the opinion of many superintendents from more established facilities, courses a half-dozen years old or less have had an advantage in environmental award programs like the ELGA. The new courses have been built to win, they argue. So when all four top winners represent old-line venues — admittedly spruced up or expanded within the last decade — it is noteworthy.
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“What’s most gratifying to me is that this award just goes to show you that it doesn’t have to be something that’s been done in the last five to seven years to receive this kind of recognition,” says the 2006 winner of the private course ELGA, Michael Perham, CGCS, director of golf course and grounds maintenance at The Landings Club near Savannah, Ga., which was established in 1974.
“There are a lot of facilities out there comparable to The Landings in age that could do this,” Perham adds.
Or, consider the perspective of the winner of the whole ELGA enchilada, Anthony Williams, CGCS, director of grounds at 38-year-old Stone Mountain Golf Club in the shadows of the Atlanta skyline.
“It proves it’s more about people and programs than about location or being the latest and greatest,” says Williams, who should know. Not only is he the public course and overall winner, but he’s the first superintendent to win back-to-back national ELGAs at two different golf courses — earning the resort nod in 2005 at yet another Georgia golden oldie, PineIsle, just up the interstate from Stone Mountain.
Besides Williams' amazing accomplishment of leaving one award-winning venue and duplicating the feat (and then some) at another facility in less than 12 months, the cream of the crop in the 2006 ELGA featured continued impressive runs at the top by Georgia GCSA and Oregon GCSA members. Along with the Georgia two-bagger in The Landings and Stone Mountain, Oregon claimed its third national winner in a row, Ryan Bancroft, the Class A superintendent at Salishan Spa & Golf Resort on the coast southwest of Portland, the oldest of the honored foursome as it moves beyond its fourth decade.
The international winner is James Beebe, the golf course manager at the youngest of the winning facilities, 21-year-old Priddis Greens Golf & Country Club in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
The four superintendents have more than 60 years of combined membership in GCSAA and each favors deflecting praise to ownership and staff. And, in all honesty, their rise to the ELGA pinnacle is not that surprising — all have outstanding track records in environmental stewardship.
Their stories follow:
National Public & Overall
Anthony L. Williams, CGCS Stone Mountain Golf Club
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Williams is one of those superintendents who have occasionally come to the forefront in the 13 years GCSAA has been giving out its top environmental awards. He’s part golf course manager extraordinaire and part environmental evangelist, and it’s hard to tell which feeds off the other.
One thing is certain: Few in the profession are more articulate in making a case for the compatibility of golf and the environment or more determined to prove it.
A year ago at this time, GCM told Williams’ story of 20 years of perseverance at PineIsle, an island-bound, Marriott-run resort on Lake Lanier 40 miles northeast of Atlanta. It was an odyssey of a young landscape superintendent who later became golf course superintendent and developed substantive environmental programs, finally culminating in last year’s national ELGA.
At the time, the intriguing part of the story was that before Williams could get his hands on the award, the resort was sold and he was out of a job. Enter Marriott, which came to the rescue and hired Williams to run another of its properties, Stone Mountain, a 36-hole state park facility.
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By then, Williams still hadn’t received the 2005 ELGA at GCSAA’s conference and show, conveniently conducted in nearby Atlanta, but he had already basically promised himself to do it again at Stone Mountain. It was a bold notion, but he brought a handful of his key people from PineIsle, and he was going to a facility he was familiar with because an uncle, the late Joe Bolton, had been the superintendent there for many years.
Rules etched in stone
“I was at the golf course a lot over the years, I just never thought it would ever be my problem,” says Williams, a 10-year GCSAA member who, armed with Marriott’s blessing and knowledge of its management ways, made it clear from day one at Stone Mountain where he was coming from and where he was headed. It didn’t hurt that his reputation preceded him.
“In my first meeting with the supervisory group at Stone Mountain, I told them that we’re going to change, everything we do is going to be environmentally based and we’re going to move everything forward toward that,” he says. “I’ve been around enough to know you can’t change everything overnight. I took the time to make sure I had buy-in from the staff on our 2006 plan. It became our plan and not my plan. It worked out very well.”
Williams’ maintenance team turned out to be a great fit — four from PineIsle and all but two of the incumbent Stone Mountain staff. Management at the two courses — Stonemont, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. creation in 1969, and Lakemont, a John LaFoy design in 1990 — is under the direction of Williams’ top assistants, GCSAA members Tom Hewitt and Matt Park. “They are the guys who make it happen,” Williams says.
There were very few differences in the tried-and-true programs and strategies from PineIsle to Stone Mountain once staff was trained and a documentation regime instituted — daily work logs, irrigation records, IPM scouting, etc.
“We’ve expanded on what we were doing at PineIsle, but the foundation programs are exactly the same, even though one facility was on an island on a 38,000-acre lake and the other a parkland layout featuring this huge stone outcropping just 16 miles from downtown Atlanta,” Williams says.
Doing what’s best
Some of the key issues at Stone Mountain centered on physical property changes, self-sufficient IPM projects and water management.
Several areas of the golf courses were converted to buffered native grasses and wildflowers that were designated no-spray zones. At the same time, six members of the staff became licensed aquatic pesticide applicators, enabling them to do all applications in-house that used to be contracted out. In his first month on the job last January, Williams unveiled a best management practices (BMPs) plan for water management. Eleven months later, fewer and more efficient in-house turf-care applications and reduced water use led the way in finishing the year $44,000 under budget in those areas.
The success of the water BMP was such that Stone Mountain is hosting two water-related GCSAA regional seminars this year in conjunction with a state BMP symposium.
Meanwhile, the accolades came forth, almost on schedule. Williams’ first order of business early in 2006 was to gain Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status, which was achieved by mid-April, the fastest certification in the history of the Audubon program. Williams also became the steward for Georgia in Audubon’s Sustainable Communities Campaign, coordinating education statewide. He also won Marriott’s Superintendent of the Year award and became the first superintendent to win the corporation’s award for public relations excellence.
When the overall ELGA came in late December, it was the icing on the cake and it also signified a huge relief from the pressure Williams had put on himself throughout the year.
“I was determined to make a statement after leaving Pine-
Isle in a bad way,” he says. “A lot of what I did in the last year was for the whole team and for the company taking a chance on giving me a 36-hole facility and bringing basically my key staff members to Stone Mountain. It proves that it’s all about people. Golf courses can be carved in beautiful settings, but it takes the people to manage it and execute it and dream bigger dreams.”
National Private
Michael J. Perham, CGCS
The Landings Club
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Located on Skidaway Island just across the Intercoastal Waterway from Savannah, Ga., The Landings Club and its six golf courses spread out over 800 acres are a part of a community for which environmental stewardship is an everyday way of life. “The island was originally intended to be a haven for environmental awareness,” Perham says. Photos courtesy of Michael Perham |
The Landings is more than just another island venue to win a national ELGA these days. It’s quite something in its own right — the largest private club in America and, with six golf courses spread out over more than 800 acres, the largest facility to win GCSAA’s highest environmental honor.
The club is the showcase of a notably proactive community of 8,000 people on 6,300-acre Skidaway Island just across the Intercoastal Waterway from Savannah. The Landings oozes old-line tradition, yet has embraced the qualities of environmental awareness throughout its 38-year existence, if only to be belatedly discovered by those who reward such qualities.
Perham is only the third superintendent The Landings has ever had, but the 28-year GCSAA member has made his mark in less than three years at the helm of the vast golf property. He manages the ongoing development of one of the most unique water resource projects in the industry, oversees the continuation of course renovations and Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary re-certifications and, most important, maintains a relationship/partnership in environmental stewardship with the island community.
“The island was originally intended to be a haven for environmental awareness,” says Perham in maintaining that the national ELGA is as much a recognition of the community as anything. “It’s a recognition of so many things on the island. For instance, it’s hard to differentiate between the club’s Audubon activities and the community’s Audubon activities,” he says.
In fact, the golf club and the Community Association recently took on a pilot project for Audubon to test its Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Neighborhoods.
Six of a kind
The Landings built its six courses between 1974 and 1991 and had all of them certified as Audubon Cooperative Sanctuaries by 2002. Four have been re-certified to date and two are pending.
Perham, who spent most of his career on golf courses in southeast Florida before escaping what he calls a lack of population growth management, is assisted by four course superintendents and their staffs at The Landings, whose championship layouts include Magnolia, Marshwood, Plantation, Palmetto, Deer Creek and Oakridge.
The courses have been renovated basically one at a time since 2000, a multipurpose project that features new and more efficient irrigation systems for each venue compatible with the club’s breakthrough water resource system that will eventually allow the courses to end their dependence on deep wells in the Floridian Aquifer.
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| Michael J. Perham, CGCS |
The new water management utilizes two tracts of land totaling 250 acres as spray fields that collect the island’s effluent discharged by a utility contractor using large irrigation guns. The effluent water percolates through the spray fields’ soil, is thus cleansed by the natural filtration process, is then pumped back up through an extensive shallow-well system and is redistributed to the golf course and other entities on the island.
“It’s really quite an operation that’s allowing us to become water self-sufficient and avoid the possibility of salt water intrusion from the aquifer,” Perham says, adding that all six courses will be on line with new irrigation systems in the next four to five years. “We’ll probably renew our aquifer permit (which expired Dec. 30) and use those wells on an emergency-use basis.”
Birds of a feather
Perham also has restored many natural areas around the golf course property and has forest understory restoration under way to re-establish wildlife habitat where needed.
“There is a tremendous bird-watching population on the island, and we work with them where it’s feasible for their desires and the golfers’ desires to co-exist,” he says, pointing out that the club recently won an Audubon Bird Count. A sparrow field also has been established at a former turf nursery, resulting in regeneration of the rare Henslow’s Sparrow.
Perham’s staff also draws from the resources and expertise at the University of Georgia’s Marine Science Extension Center on the island for IPM issues, natural projects and as consultation for Audubon re-certifications.
Tree management on the heavily forested island includes selective removal of trees indigenous to the area, and Perham has found a local resource to help determine what is removed — island resident Clyde Johnston, a noted golf course designer and past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, who conducts tree surveys for the club.
Last month the club and the Community Association formally agreed to combine their environmental stewardship efforts, a byproduct of their involvement with Audubon programs, as well as a way of addressing a community that includes a 588-acre state park and large tracts of land designated as nature preserves.
“Interactive stewardship is everywhere here,” Perham says. “We have to work closely with the community and coordinate that what we’re doing doesn’t conflict with what they’re trying to accomplish.”
National Resort
Ryan J. Bancroft
Salishan Spa & Golf Resort
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A renovation at the hands of Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy, along with steady guidance from superintendent Ryan Bancroft, turned Oregon’s Salishan Spa & Golf Resort into an environmental superstar. “We were able to correct some things that needed to be changed. We were able to fix a lot of issues,” Bancroft says. |
Bancroft likes to talk about how he and his good friend 120-some miles down the Oregon coast — Troy Russell, superintendent at Bandon Dunes — feed off of each other in the ELGA competition. Both have been chapter winners and Russell won the national resort award a year ago, so it was only right that Bancroft won in 2006.
The competition within the Oregon GCSA overall is strong, for that matter. Besides the current trifecta in national awards, the group has had a dozen chapter or merit awards in the same three-year span.
“We really focus on environmental issues in our chapter, and it’s (ELGA) really showing the fruits of our labor,” says Bancroft, who came to Salishan 4 ½ years ago.
The 18-hole layout hard by the Pacific Ocean to the west and a large estuary to the north opened in 1965, and like a lot of established Oregon layouts, it’s been enriched by its local flavor. Bancroft is an Oregon native. New ownership out of Eugene, Ore., has poured several million dollars into the facility since buying it nearly four years ago.
One of the owners’ wishes was to renovate the course, so professional golf star Peter Jacobsen was hired to design the work (along with Jim Hardy). Jacobsen is a Portland native and, moreover, played Salishan frequently as a youngster.
New shine on golden oldie
Bancroft says the renovation was the best thing to happen to the course, and he says the work was extensive, “disturbing about 50 percent of the property,” including new tees, landing areas, greens and surrounds, bunkers, an irrigation system and, most of all, drastically improved drainage.
The latter features contoured fairways that help capture surface water in a series of sand-filled ditches lined with perforated pipes. The water is filtered through the turf and sand. Besides improving daily playing conditions, the system enhances winter maintenance and protects the facility’s main irrigation source, Sijota Creek.
“We were able to correct some things that needed to be changed. We were able to fix a lot of issues,” Bancroft says of the long-awaited renovation.
The project also set up Salishan for environmental acclaim, and the role of Bancroft can’t be overlooked. The 34-year-old has a pedigree worthy of Oregon’s penchant for stewardship.
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Ryan J. Bancroft |
A winner in the making
Bancroft’s experience was honed by two significant stints as an assistant, first at the Oregon Golf Club near Portland, where he helped in attaining Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status and was a part of some of the half-dozen chapter and merit ELGAs the club has won over the years, and then at Aspen Lakes Golf Club in Sisters, Ore., where he assisted in the stringent qualifications for Audubon Signature certification.
Since landing the head job at Salishan, Bancroft won three successive ELGA merit honors from 2003-05 to set the stage for the 2006 national. The Oregon GCSA’s Superintendent of the Year in 2004, he helped the late Mike Hindahl, Ph.D., develop the Oregon Environmental Stewardship Guidelines, a body of work supported by the state chapter that won GCSAA’s 2005 President’s Award and has been the heart of Bancroft’s programs at Salishan.
“It’s really been a fun experience going through the environmental issues and being a part of things,” he says. “It’s something that’s so important in an industry like ours.”
Bancroft is also anxious to see what the future brings for himself and other like-minded superintendents in Oregon. One can only hope there are enough awards to go around.
“I’d like to see what we can do now,” Bancroft says. “The competitive edge in environmental stewardship in the state is healthy for all of us.”
International
James C. Beebe
Priddis Greens
Golf & Country Club
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Priddis Greens G&CC features two 18-hole layouts. This is the 11th hole on the Hawk Course. James Beebe keeps golfers informed about course conditions in various ways, including the daily posting of green speeds. Photos courtesy of James Beebe |
Priddis Greens is another facility that was on the cusp of environmental excellence for a long time before winning a 2006 ELGA on the merits of a superintendent with dedication to a cause.
Carved out of native foothills and forests of aspen, pine and spruce in 1986 in the demanding environs of the Canadian Rockies, Priddis began as an 18-hole layout, expanded to 27 holes in 1990, then a dozen years later grew another nine to make it 36. In 2004, the club renovated nine of its original 18 holes.
Beebe says the work generally addressed major changes to reduce agronomic challenges, such as wintertime drainage and shade issues, and irrigation inefficiencies. In the meantime, Beebe, who is the club’s golf course manager and has three assistants to oversee the day-to-day maintenance regimen, has embarked on a career-defining mission to make Priddis Greens environmentally correct, and a highly visible correct at that.
“Our strength is our continual commitment to environmental stewardship,” he says. “I don’t think we do things a lot different than anybody else, it’s just that my philosophy is that golf course superintendents in general are environmental stewards, and we need to document information to that effect and provide that information and communicate the positives to people.”
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James Beebe |
Canadian honors
The tenaciously determined Beebe is no doubt overall ELGA winner Anthony Williams’ kind of guy. Beebe guided Priddis Greens to be the first facility in Alberta and just the 11th in all of Canada to achieve Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary certification in 1997 and has re-certified three times since. Precluding the international ELGA, Beebe won the 2005 Canadian Golf Superintendents Association’s Environmental Achievement Award.
But more impressive has been Beebe’s unrelenting idea that the story of what golf courses do for the environment needs to be shouted from the rooftops and not just by superintendents, but by everyone with a stake in golf.
It started when Beebe, as president of the Alberta GCSA, led the development of a DVD designed to counter Canada’s raucous environmental groups, who have been critical of water and chemical use on golf courses. The DVD highlighted golf’s environmental benefits and the professional training and licensing of superintendents as it pertains to turf-care applications. The message was distributed to every course in the vast province.
Beebe moved a major step further by enlisting the “moral and financial support” of various non-golf course management organizations — the Royal Canadian Golf Association, the Alberta PGA, the National Golf Course Owners Association Canada and the Canadian Society of Club Managers, plus a few local (Calgary) golf groups. All were asked to help spread the word.
“We didn’t think it was right that superintendents are the only ones involved in promoting what we’re doing in a positive fashion ... it’s not just our responsibility,” Beebe says. “We need help from everybody to deal with this issue — not just from an agronomic point of view, but we need to educate people, specifically people in the game, that golf is good for the environment.”
Exemplary effort
So far, the feedback from the industry-wide entreaty is encouraging. Beebe has been especially successful in recruiting PGA pros to carry the cause.
He has made sure Priddis Greens is a standard-bearer, as well, with unmatched maintenance practices and environmental programs for all to see. Beebe’s most strategic move came about five years ago when he hired an IPM coordinator, Mark Nickel, to help guide staff in monitoring and record-keeping.
“The staff embraced the commitment, and our IPM program has shown significant improvement,” Beebe says.
Two years ago, Nickel became full-time, was promoted to environmental coordinator and now has a guiding hand in addressing all the issues. It wasn’t long before Priddis Greens began to win major awards and serve as a crucial benchmark for others.
“The value we found in it was that Mark makes sure all the IPM documentation — weather, daily green speeds, mowing heights, fertilization and pesticide applications — was complete,” Beebe says. “At the end of the year, he put together a 150- to 200-page document that summarizes everything that was done and allows us to review all of our practices, to find out if we achieved what we wanted to and where we can improve.”
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