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Lone rangers
During tough times, there’s a lot to be learned from golf’s ‘little guys,’ superintendents who have made an art form out of doing more with less.
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Some of the biggest guns in the
golf course management business started out closer to BB gauge, their firepower limited by budgets that let them keep the grass short tee to green but not much else. Any progress, any tiny nudge forward in the condition of the playing surface had to be paid for in sweat or brain juice.
It’s a tough school, maintaining a golf course with less than some households spend in a year, but it’s a great education for those good enough to graduate.
“There’s real ingenuity, a real genius, with a lot of those guys,” says Stan George, CGCS at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan., one of those superintendents whose career began in modest surroundings.
“They’re like Radar O’Reilly of ‘MASH.’ They’ll trade this for that. They’ll wrangle to get a good deal. They’ll scrimp and save for three years to buy one piece of equipment. They’ll use every resource available, but somehow they’ll find a way to get it done.”
George learned to play on a nine-hole course with sand greens and started in golf course maintenance at city-owned Mariah Hills Golf Course in Dodge City, Kan. He knows what it means to solve a problem when the checkbook is out of reach. In his early days, he ran golf course improvement tournaments to raise money for “the stuff you could never squeeze into the budget.”
Today, the 30-year GCSAA member’s résumé includes a U.S. Women’s Open and U.S. Senior Open at Prairie Dunes, which is a regular on the various lists ranking the top layouts in the country.
“I have so much respect for these guys who do it all on a shoestring,” he says. “I don’t presume to say that I have done what they do because I’ve never been the only guy on the crew. But there are some outstanding talents among them and they never seem to have a chip on their shoulder, and nor are they braggarts. Their course may not be Pebble Beach, but, you know, they’re proud to say, ‘It’s where I am and it’s what I do.’ You look at the results they get, dollar for dollar, and sometimes you’ve got to stop and wonder what you spend your money on.”
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Bindewald’s previous job was to keep trucks and tanks operational in the Army, so fashioning homemade golf course equipment is not a big deal for the superintendent. |
Unique setup,
unique super
Ray Bindewald is a case in point. A former “wheels-and-tracks” man in the U.S. Army — keeping trucks and tanks mobile — he is now superintendent at Cross Winds Golf Club in Greenville, S.C. An 18-hole par-3 course with the unique claim to fame of having each hole designed by a different
architect — Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Arnold Palmer and Rees Jones among them — Cross Winds constantly surprises
newcomers.
Last April, Shaun Clews, who caddies for LPGA Tour veteran Hee-Won Han, visited Cross Winds and was still pinching himself 36 holes later. “It’s amazing,” he said. “Those greens are every bit as good as the best we see on tour. They’re better than a lot of them.”
A new GCSAA member, Bindewald is essentially a one-man band. Sometimes there is a casual laborer he can afford to bring on board for 20 or so hours a week. But even then he is still the superintendent, spray technician, irrigation technician, equipment technician and any other title you can think of all rolled into one. He generally works seven days a week broken into two shifts a day with a few hours off in between.
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Except for the occasional laborer he can sometimes hire for the week, Ray Bindewald, superintendent at Cross Winds GC in Greenville, S.C., is an army of one. |
Warding off Mother Nature
It’s a grueling routine, particularly in summer with temperatures regularly in the 90s and sometimes into triple digits. It would be one thing if he had bermudagrass on the greens, but Bindewald maintains about 95,000 square feet of Dominant bentgrass.
Mid-summer, Paul Brandenburg, CGCS at nearby Furman Golf Club and a Carolinas GCSA board member, called into Cross Winds. “He had (his greens) at 0.90!” Brandenburg said of the greens height. “The guy’s a genius. I really think he is. To produce the conditions he does with what he has to work with is incredible.”
Not surprisingly, Bindewald lives with a hose in his hand when it’s hot. Yet he couldn’t be happier. Mind you, he wouldn’t say no to a used aerifier (estimated cost $4,000 to $6,000). “If I had that I’d be in good shape, I think,” he says, adding that he has a savings plan under way to make the buy. That cookie jar received a $1,500 injection last season when he skipped aerification to save the money he otherwise would have paid a contractor.
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Despite the less-than-new equipment at Cross Winds, Bindewald manages to keep the course looking beautiful. His hope is to be able to buy a used aerator soon, as he sees that as the next step to getting the course looking even better. |
“In this job I get to do a little bit of everything instead of a lot of just one thing and I don’t have much stress as far as handling employees,” Bindewald laughs. “I don’t have any trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I love being out here at 6:30 a.m. It’s so beautiful.”
Cross Winds prefers to keep budget and rounds details under wraps. But with a green fee of just $16, you can understand why Bindewald hand builds some of the equipment he needs. A greens roller, greens brush and bunker rake — fashioned out of leaf rakes that he rigs on the back of a Cushman — are all his own doing.
Mountain man
In Townsend, Mont., John Hilton also goes to extraordinary lengths to squeeze every cent out of a dollar as the GCSAA Class A superintendent at Old Baldy Golf Course. Old Baldy is a 3,200-yard, nine-hole course where green fees are paid on an honor system and the last golfer out is responsible for shutting the gate. There is a clubhouse, but it’s not heated — in Montana! If you wonder why there’s an exclamation mark, consider that some Old Baldy diehards go ice fishing in the morning before golfing in the afternoon.
“Put it this way,” Hilton says. “There’s a lot of roll out there at the right time of year.”
Hilton knows the value of access to good information, not least because he has master’s degrees in both education and administration. A former teacher, he is now an 11-year GCSAA member. He has never been to a Golf Industry Show but is an active participant with the Peaks & Prairies GCSA, whose meetings he attends religiously although he never signs up for the buffet.
“I’m very frugal,” Hilton says. “I eat McDonald’s on the way. The price of the noon meal at those meetings amounts to a third of the cost of a bag of fertilizer.”
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No need to go to the clubhouse — golfers at Old Baldy GC in Townsend, Mont., are asked to pay by the honor system before teeing it up at the 3,200-yard course. |
Hilton maintains Old Baldy on an $80,000 budget, which includes his salary and the hourly rate of two former teaching colleagues who do some part-time mowing between May and August. He doubts he could make it work if his wife didn’t have “an excellent job” with Graymont Western, a mining company that occasionally lends Hilton equipment when needed and trucks in water so he can syringe his Penncross greens.
Membership has its privileges
“I cannot stress enough the importance of the superintendents organizations in helping me do my job,” he says. “The education I’ve received and the people I have been able to meet have been the difference.” Among those helpers, Hilton describes John and Gary Shampeny, Gary Colstad, Steve Johnson, Mike Pigg and Dwayne Dillinger — all active in the industry and chapter in Montana — as “honorary superintendents” at Old Baldy. “If it wasn’t for those people in the Peaks & Prairies, this course would still be in the Dark Ages,” he says.
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John Hilton, an 11-year GCSAA Class A member, depends on the local community of Townsend (population 1,981) to help out at the course, as well as lock up when they’re done playing. |
In an article he authored several years ago for the Peaks & Prairies GCSA newsletter, The Perfect Lie, Hilton wrote: “The first thing I requested from the course board of directors was a membership in a professional organization to teach me how to run a golf course. Over the years this has been an unbelievable help to me … The first year I put on 240 pounds of fertilizer per acre, and Townsend received rain for a week. Unluckily, my trusty E-10 — yes, I said E-10 — fairway mower picked this time to throw a rear end. My career about ended before starting as some of the board felt I was responsible for a 25-year-old mower losing its traction gear.”
Fellow superintendents and industry partners stepped up and took care of Hilton’s “hay crop.” He closed that article saying, “I think you get the drift of how I feel about our organization and how important it is to my course and me.”
In a town the size of Townsend (population 1,981), a golf course can serve as a community focal point. The course hosts school events, and townsfolk turn out on cleanup days when Hilton offers up pop, beer and hot dogs as payment. Late this past summer when the clubhouse needed a new screen door, two members approached Hilton and told him they’d take care of it. “It’s kind of a community project,” he says.
You might never run golf any closer to its grassroots than that.
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One of the nine fairways at Brae Burn G&CC in Redmond, Wash. The care of the entire course is up to one man — 28-year-old Josh Soden, a two-year GCSAA member. |
Strengthening the ‘base’
But while the John Hiltons and the Ray Bindewalds rarely make headlines, their kind can be found all over the country if you scratch hard enough. They are the base of what golf course architect and author Mike Hurdzan, Ph.D., calls “golf’s pyramid,” providing an affordable, no-frills entry point for juniors and beginners. Of course, they are also home to the mass of modest-budget golfers who still need to buy clubs, balls, gloves and so on.
Back in the late ’90s, Hurdzan was among a small group of industry observers concerned that golf’s pyramid was upside down. At the time, he argued there was too much emphasis on the game’s high-end and not enough on the base. He warned that any bump could tip that precarious balance and leave the industry with excess infrastructure and insufficient customers. A decade later, rounds and golfer numbers are stagnant, course closures are outstripping openings and, oh, the economy is in intensive care.
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Soden says maintaining a nine-hole course still has the same challenges as the big courses. “You’ve still got to cut the grass, fertilize, do your preventive spraying, all that,” he says. |
The pyramid is on its side
In Redmond, Wash., the work of Josh Soden at Brae Burn Golf and Country Club is akin to the individual toil that, en masse, allowed the original pyramids to be built, and it will play a similarly incremental, yet critical, role if golf’s pyramid is to be righted.
Soden maintains Brae Burn on a budget of $44,500, his salary excluded. It may be just nine holes and only a par-28 routing, but with about 100 surrounding homes housing the membership, it is very much a golf course that needs tending.
“We might be a small facility, but sometimes there can be extreme amounts of direction,” the two-year GCSAA member says. “Everybody wants to be your boss. That’s direct accountability. It’s forced me to get better (at) dealing with people.”
A lifetime in the game
Soden, 28, is the son of three-year GCSAA member Andy Soden, who works for the city of Seattle, and has been around the game since he was 2. He went to school and “tried different things,” but golf drew him back. After three years with Rick Taylor at storied Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash., Soden was ready to tackle sole responsibility at Brae Burn.
“Hopefully, I’m slowly but surely working my way through, learning the ropes,” he says. “At Sahalee if you needed something you’d go out and buy it. Here, I have five homeowners wanting to know why one sprinkler head isn’t working.”
The gap between Sahalee and Brae Burn may be cavernous, but Soden argues the role of the superintendent is basically the same, albeit on a micro scale. “You’ve still got to cut the grass, fertilize, do your preventive spraying, all that,” he says. “You’ve still got to jump through the same hoops as a larger golf course. The biggest difference is pretty much you’re the only one you can bitch at.”
Often you’re also the only one with the keys and the know-how. “Even if I have to call in sick, they’ll still get the greens mowed,” Soden says. “I’ll show up even if I’m pretty (sick). Get it mowed, get it set up. Then I’ll move on home. Most of the time the ownership understands.”
The industry’s backbone
As Stan George identified earlier, these guys get the job done, through their dedication, sheer grit and sometimes even a little mischief if they have to — three years after Hurricane Katrina, Peter Carew waters his greens at city-run Joseph P. Batholomew Golf Course in New Orleans with a “borrowed” fire hose.
“These guys are the backbone of the industry,” George says. “For a lot of the people who play their courses, it is about the pure joy of the game itself.”