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Players dances to a swan song
The torch is being passed at the Players Championship this month at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
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Fred Klauk (left), superintendent at TPC Sawgrass, talked to assistant superintendent Jim Abate during last year’s Players Championship. Klauk is resigning after 22 years at the PGA Tour’s signature TPC facility following this month’s edition of the Players. GCM file photo |
Fred Klauk Jr., longtime superintendent at the club’s Stadium Course, is resigning following the May 8-11 run of the PGA Tour’s marquee event. Klauk, who will become a project manager for the Tour, has prepped for 28 Tour events over a 35-year career that includes 22 years at the Stadium Course and its sister layout, the Valley Course (site of such action as the Senior Players, NFL Classic and the Senior Q-School).
Although the 2008 Players is his last, Klauk will continue to be a presence at Sawgrass for some time to come.
“I say I’m going to miss it, but I’m still going to be around,” the 32-year GCSAA member says. “I’m consulting and helping the next superintendent here, Tom Vlach, with the 2009 and 2010 tournaments, so I’m not totally walking away from it all at once. I’m going to wean myself off of it.”
Klauk adds that his first gig in his new job with the Tour is a renovation of the Valley Course in 2009.
Klauk headed a much-heralded major renovation of the Stadium Course in 2006 to produce a firmer and faster layout, and the resulting rave reviews following last May’s Players have caused a lot of resort play and visits by Tour pros in the last year.
“With all the activity, it’s a little more challenging to get the course back into the perfect playing conditions we had last year,” he said in early April, adding that the Stadium Course rough has been slow to develop because of early-spring cold weather in Florida.
Klauk and Vlach go way back. Vlach worked for his mentor as a 14-year-old at TPC Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fla., then as a college intern at Sawgrass in the late 1980s and later as an assistant (1991-93) at the Stadium Course.
Thus, it’s a homecoming of sorts for the 17-year GCSAA member who has been the CGCS for the past nine years at Greystone Golf & Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., where he prepared for seven Bruno Memorial Classics on the Champions Tour.
“It’s a dream come true. It’s a fantastic opportunity,” says Vlach, who also has been superintendent at Ekana Golf Club (now Twin Rivers) in Oviedo, Fla., and Pine Tree Golf Club in Boynton Beach, Fla.
To be sure, Vlach has come to a different Stadium Course from the one he knew 15 years ago.
“I think one of the biggest changes after the renovation is that it’s a bermudagrass course year-round now versus the overseeded operation of the past,” he says, adding that he has no doubts that Klauk and his staff will have the venue in immaculate shape come tournament time. “There’s a wealth of experience here. They have a program in place and they will implement that program. It’ll be great.”
Meanwhile, Klauk is going to have some rare downtime between the completion of this year’s Players and next year’s Valley Course renovation, and he plans on taking advantage of it.
“I haven’t had the time to explore some things,” he says, “But I’d like to caddy for my son, Jeff, on the Nationwide Tour a little this summer and maybe do some other things I haven’t had the opportunity to do all these years.”
May is the PGA’s Free Lesson Month, which aims to reach new golfers and help existing golfers improve their game with free, 10-minute golf lessons given by participating PGA Professionals at facilities nationwide. This is the 11th anniversary of the event, part of the PGA’s Play Golf America grow-the-game programs. During last year’s month-long event, more than 115,000 free lessons were given by 6,630 PGA pros and 5,353 facilities. This month, NASCAR drivers Elliott Sadler, Kyle Petty, J.J. Yeley, Brian Vickers and Stephen Leicht will test their mettles at golf by competing in the inaugural HorsePower Tee Shot Tour, a series of six golf events pairing NASCAR drivers with Power Golf professional golfers. Using only USGA-approved drivers, all play in the events is generated from a tee box located on a golf hole. On May 15, the first event will tee off at Cabarrus Country Club in Concord, N.C., just miles away from Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The final event of the series will take place Oct. 8. |
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