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Kindred spirits
PGA Tour Agronomy staff and tournament superintendents make a formidable team.
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Those perfect golf course conditions the professionals enjoy week after week on the PGA Tour don’t come easily. In fact, they are the result of, almost literally, the blood, sweat and tears of many.
The role played by the tournament host superintendent and his or her maintenance staff is a given and increasingly more upfront and noted nowadays. More behind the scenes, but just as important to the success of a tour venue, are the men and women of PGA Tour Agronomy.
The department is split into competitions agronomy for the PGA Tour, Champions Tour, Nationwide Tour and some World Golf Championships events, and TPC agronomy, which serves the burgeoning Tournament Players Club network.
The chief mission of competitions agronomy is to support on-site golf course management professionals, as well as tour and local tournament staff. TPC agronomy supports those tour events held at TPC facilities, but is mostly involved in providing guidance to year-round golf course management operations throughout the network.
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Bland Cooper (left), CGCS, with superintendent Matt Beaver at Bay Hill GC in Orlando, says that for the agronomist/superintendent relationship to work, a level of trust must be established. |
An evolution by design
Like the PGA Tour itself, tour agronomy has come a long way over the last two or three decades. Cal Roth, the tour’s senior vice president of agronomy, says the program has been evolving since 1974 when the first tour agronomist, the late Allan MacCurrach, was brought on board. MacCurrach was eventually joined first by Dennis Leger and then Jeff Haley as events expanded greatly with the advent of the Senior Tour (now Champions) in 1980 and the Ben Hogan Tour (now Nationwide) 10 years later.
Haley, the only one of the original three agronomists still on the job, says he helped prep for as many as 35 events a year in his early tenure — something that would be impossible under today’s tour agronomy regimen.
“We didn’t do advance visits then,” he recalls. “In fact, we didn’t do all of the tournament sites. We only went when there was a problem at a site or it was a prestigious event and we wanted to make sure everything was OK.”
Roth has been a big part of the program’s evolution. After several years as a superintendent at various courses in Colorado and Illinois, he joined PGA Tour Golf Course Properties in 1983 as superintendent of TPC at Plum Creek (now Plum Creek Golf and Country Club in Castle Rock, Colo.). Two years later, he moved to TPC Scottsdale where he prepped for a handful of tour events. In 1989, Roth became director of golf course maintenance operations under Jon Scott, who was then head of tour agronomy. Roth’s chief task in that role was the development of TPC maintenance and construction operations. In the spring of 2006, he was promoted to senior director of tour agronomy and five months later took over as vice president of agronomy when Scott left the tour to head the agronomic services of Jack Nicklaus’ design firm. A year ago, Roth was elevated to senior vice president.
Today, the tour agronomy program comprises 11 agronomists, including Roth and his top lieutenants, Paul Vermeulen, director of competitions agronomy, and Collier Miller, CGCS, director of TPC agronomy.
All of the 11 have worked as superintendents and all are GCSAA members with nearly 250 years of combined membership. Five maintain CGCS status.
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Paul Vermeulen (right), director of the PGA Tour’s competitions agronomy, also plays the role of tournament agronomist at a half-dozen events. He’s shown here with Wayne Kappelman, superintendent at San Francisco’s Harding Park, site of this fall’s Presidents Cup. Photo by Kat Wade |
Program with a plan
Roth, a member of GCSAA since 1978, says the agronomy staff will support 109 events in 2009, adding that up to 120 may be scheduled in some years depending on the post-season slate. The amount of time the agronomists spend at a tournament site has increased
accordingly.
“There has been, over the years, an effort to try to increase the support where needed — pre-tournament, advance week and tournament week and usually a follow-up visit. Typically there are three visits a year,” he says. “But some may require more than that in an effort to help the host course, the superintendent and our tournament staff prepare the golf course for the competition.”
The pre-tournament visit is usually eight to 10 weeks prior to an event and involves interplay between the agronomist and the host superintendent and often a tour advance or rules official. The course is studied, and those things that need to be done are discussed. Often about this time regular play may be affected as golf cars are restricted to paths only to allow uniform rough growth, and par-three tee boxes are closed to let the turf heal.
Advance week, which melds into tournament week, features the final preparations among agronomist, superintendent and advance rules officials regarding course setup. Often, with the work done, the agronomist will leave the site before the first round is played.
The follow-up or review visit varies in timing and content, depending on the success of the event and/or if the host site is planning renovation projects to enhance the following year’s tournament.
A key component of the routine is the tour’s advance rules staff, which actually sets the working parameters for the agronomist and the host superintendent according to tour standards and the makeup of the particular tournament venue.
Acceptance is rule of thumb
All of this begs a particular question, of course: What’s the reaction of superintendents whose tournament prep is strongly influenced by the opinion of outsiders such as tour staff and agronomists?
Roth says that for the most part superintendents, especially those first-timers at a new tour site, are open and appreciative of the support — particularly during the nitty-gritty of advance week.
“First and foremost, it needs to be a very positive relationship between the superintendent and the agronomist,” Roth says. “All of our guys have been superintendents … they understand and they try to make things as comfortable as possible.”
Obviously, the more experience the superintendent has in hosting the tour, the easier the process. Compatibility means a win-win situation, Roth notes, when both the superintendent and the tour agronomist have worked the same event together for a few years.
“Just as a superintendent learns his golf course, what it can do and what it can’t do, it’s the same with our agronomists,” he says. “The more tournaments they have under their belts at the same location the better they understand that golf course and how it responds at that time of the year and what can be done and what can’t be done.”
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From left, Beaver, Cooper and John Anderson, director of golf course management at Bay Hill, discuss final preparations during advance week prior to the Arnold Palmer Invitational held March 26-29. Photo by Scott Miller |
Green: The color of experience
Vermeulen, who came to PGA Tour Agronomy in December 2006 after 20 years as an agronomist for the USGA Green Section, agrees that the strength of the tour’s program is its stability.
“That’s a priority,” he says. “We try as best we can to keep agronomists assigned to the same events year after year. There is a great deal of value in knowing the history of an event, developing a working relationship with the superintendent and the maintenance staff and knowing the golf course itself.”
Vermeulen also points to the longevity among the current tour agronomists, who have been with the program on average more than 10 years apiece.
“We’re very fortunate to have such infrequent turnover — over the years, it’s been mainly prompted by retirement,” he says. “I think superintendents really appreciate working with someone who’s been doing tournament golf as much as 20 years, someone who has seen just about everything and can help them foresee surprises.”
Travelin’ men
As director of competitions agronomy, Vermeulen coordinates and schedules assignments for as many as 120 events a year on the three tours at many points in North America. Each agronomist is responsible for 12 to 15 events and most of them spend 160 to 180 days on the road each season. Vermeulen himself is in the mix for six tournaments this year, including the Presidents Cup in October at Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.
The scheduling includes some crossover, with competitions agronomists assisting at events at TPC facilities and TPC agronomists returning the favor at non-TPC properties.
The agronomic team must be prepared for a variety of tournament formats, from stroke play to match play, from fields of 144 players to 70 or 30 or less. Multicourse events and the Champions Tour’s penchant for two-day, double-shotgun pro-ams are examples of even more challenges.
“How the players are scheduled for start times can actually have a big impact on maintenance operations … it creates opportunities and its takes away opportunities,” Vermeulen says. “The primary goal of the agronomist is to help the superintendent understand everything that’s required at a professional event, led by the course setup as determined by the rules staff (greens speed, mowing heights, bunker maintenance, course marking, etc.). We have to reach out to the superintendents to make sure they have that information so they know clearly what the expectations are going into an event.”
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Tour agronomist Jeff Haley (left) and superintendent Josh Dyer examine soil amendments at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail’s Ross Bridge Golf Resort in Birmingham, Ala., during Haley’s pre-tournament visit for the Champions Tour’s Regions Charity Classic on tap May 15-17. |
As the TPC turns
After a decade as a golf course and construction superintendent for Sunrise Co. throughout the Southwest, Miller joined the PGA Tour operation in 1994 as superintendent at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas. A few years later, he was also put in charge of the nearby TPC Canyons facility. In 1998, he was promoted to regional director of agronomy and golf course maintenance operations for the tour, mainly helping Roth in the development of the TPC network. When Roth moved up to head the broader tour agronomy program, Miller became director of TPC agronomy.
A 26-year member of GCSAA, Miller and his two regional directors — Dennis Ingram, CGCS, and Mark Johnson, CGCS, both also former TPC superintendents — have far-reaching duties with the 19 TPC properties, a dozen of which host tour events.
“Our responsibility goes way beyond the competition of a tournament,” Miller says. “Our scope is all aspects of the golf course management operations at all the properties, establishing policies and procedures, working with the superintendents in developing their budgets, capital plans, agronomic plans, environmental programs … everything that is involved with operating the maintenance department and the daily course conditioning for our memberships and daily-fee customers.”
Collier, Ingram and Johnson, who have 71 years of GCSAA membership among them, split up their duties in groups of about a half-dozen clubs each and, as previously noted, also help out occasionally on the competitions side.
“We make about two to four visits a year, depending on the club and what’s going on — a tournament, a lot of capital work, conditioning issues, things like that,” Miller says, adding that the trio tries to stay with its core groups year after year.
Meanwhile, in the field …
The PGA Tour’s competitions agronomy staff includes many personalities, yet is bound by a common thread — vast experience in turf management. The following features two of the agronomists, the longest tenured, Jeff Haley, and a relative newcomer, Bland Cooper, CGCS. Fittingly, both were interviewed for the article while traveling.
Third’s the charm
When Haley joined Allan MacCurrach and Dennis Leger (who recently retired) as the third PGA Tour agronomist two decades ago, he was well-schooled for the task.
In 1986, Haley was hired as an assistant superintendent under Fred Klauk at TPC Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fla., and not too long afterward he was promoted to head superintendent when Klauk moved on to eventual fame at TPC Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship.
Haley prepped for the 1986 and 1987 Honda Classics at Eagle Trace, then the following year he switched to the agronomy department and has been a fixture there ever since, serving as an agronomist for hundreds of tournaments on all three tours, plus several World Golf Championship events.
The 22-year GCSAA member is also the epitome of the tour’s emphasis on nurturing venue familiarity among its agronomists, having worked, for example, events at Miami’s Doral Golf Resort all 20 of his years in the department. His experience has led him to the forefront on the one overriding issue facing both agronomists and superintendents — the firm and fast course conditions the tour and the players demand these days.
“I’ve come to learn that there’s a communications gap, or a misunderstanding, about what dry conditions are,” Haley says. “What a superintendent believes is dry is far different from what a tour player considers to be dry. Educating the superintendent to that sometimes takes a lot of doing.”
Mostly it takes learning the art of specific watering techniques along with frequent fairway topdressing to achieve a delicate and often controversial balance at today’s tour venues, a balance between current tour standards and the lush, green look desired by most high-profile tournament facilities in order to be attractive on television and, thus, attract customers later on.
“I will say that I’m working with more superintendents who have a great appreciation for what the players want — very firm and very fast — and unfortunately, that usually relates to very brown,” Haley says.
Haley adds that while the guidelines set by the advance rules staff are strong conditioning blueprints, they aren’t exactly set in stone.
“It’s up to me to interpret that for the superintendent and develop a plan to achieve those goals. Sometimes we have to go back to the rules staff and say, ‘You know what? This week we can’t achieve those goals,’ for whatever reasons,” he says. “We lean very much toward making sure that when we leave the golf course we leave it as good as or in better condition than it was before the event. We don’t want to harm the turf. We want to come back next year and be welcome.”
Overall, Haley says tournament course agronomy has progressed a lot farther than he would have imagined when he started out.
“It’s all changed so much in the last 10 to 15 years,” he says. “The quality of the superintendents out there has absolutely made our job so much easier. We’ve been able to take the entire level of golf course conditioning so much higher.”
New kid on the block
Cooper is in his fourth year as a competitions agronomist, coming on the heels of a golf course development and management career mostly in the Carolinas region.
He began as a superintendent about 16 years ago in the Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta areas, gaining extensive construction and renovation experience. In 2001 he helped found and was co-president of the Sulstone Group, a Charlotte-based golf course acquisition, management and consulting firm. He held that position until he was tabbed by ValleyCrest Golf Course Maintenance to be its national director of agronomy. A member of the board of directors of the Carolinas GCSA, Cooper is a seminar instructor at the GCSAA Education Conference.
In 2006, Cooper joined PGA Tour Agronomy, fulfilling an interest he had built up through volunteering at tour events and, of course, his familiarity with agronomists and their relationships with superintendents.
“There’s a level of trust that we have to establish with the superintendents,” he says, speaking from the agronomy side. “I think ultimately all superintendents realize that we’re there to look after their best interests and still provide the best playing surface we can for our players.”
Cooper was assigned to 11 events in 2009, fewer than in past years, but he figures to be away from his home and family in Sumter, S.C., for half the year because of extensive construction projects that will expand his visitations to three tour venues — a greens renovation at Bay Hill Golf Club in Orlando that began as soon as the Arnold Palmer Invitational ended in late March; the new course construction of El Bosque Golf Club in Leon, Mexico, that’s hosting the Nationwide Tour’s Mexico Open this month; and a greens renovation at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary, N.C., that reopens in time for the Champions Tour’s SAS Championship in late
September.
“We’ve all got experience in construction projects and renovations. If one of your tournament courses is going into renovation, then it becomes your renovation,” he says.
He adds that he has quickly learned that while the advance preparation process is vital, especially for a first-time tour site and its superintendent, the review period afterward is just as important because it includes debriefings, tour reports and player summaries, which all generally lead to projects and continuing work for the next year’s event.
“We’re pretty good at what we do and we think we can foresee a lot of things, but there are some things we can’t foresee until we get in there and play the golf tournament for the first time, whether it be agronomic issues, operational issues, rules issues … whatever. We don’t get a dry run,” Cooper says.
The 16-year GCSAA member says most tour agronomists prefer to fly under the radar, but there are few pressure-packed moments in golf course management that rival meeting the expectations for tour tournament conditioning — pressure from the event’s title sponsor, which wants to attract the best field possible; pressure from the course ownership, which doesn’t want their investment jeopardized; pressure from the TV network, which must showcase the property to enhance the viewing experience; and, probably most of all, pressure from the tour tournament directors and the players, who demand the maintenance standards they expect.
Sandwiching it all between the first and the last pressure points, Cooper says, “We don’t want the reason the players aren’t coming to be because the golf course is in bad condition. We want that reason to be something other than agronomics.”
Do PGA Tour Agronomy standards have an impact on golf course management beyond tour events?
Cal Roth: I would hope that some of the things that our guys are doing, particularly in regard to superintendents new to our business, help them get through a tournament with the realization that they can take the golf course in terms of firm and fast without hurting it. But the impact is really both ways. Our agronomists are constantly learning from the superintendents, especially from those who have been doing it a long time, and relay information (such as product updates) to our agronomic team that’s going out to other superintendents. The discussions are very open and active.
Bland Cooper: I would say no more than yes. At least, that hasn’t been our job. If people want to listen, we’ll help. But the fact is, tour tournament conditions aren’t for everyone. Still, I would hope that we’re having a positive impact at all of our sites and others take something from that. For me personally, there isn’t a visit I make where I don’t leave a superintendent’s office having learned something and, hopefully, they pick up one or two things from me along the way.
Jeff Haley: I see a lot of superintendents who come out and help at tour events as maintenance volunteers. They watch and they take notes. So, in that regard, maybe there is an influence.
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Tom Vlach (left), CGCS, golf course maintenance director at TPC Sawgrass, is prepping for his first Players Championship at the Stadium Course this month, while Cal Roth, senior vice president of PGA Tour Agronomy, has been the tournament agronomist for the event the past 20 years. Photo courtesy of the PGA Tour |
The PGA Tour’s signature events in 2009 will feature a trio of superintendent/tour
agronomist success stories.
The three main events on the PGA Tour calendar this year — The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., May 7-10; the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Sept. 24-27; and the Presidents Cup at Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco, Oct. 8-11 — all have a unique set of recent circumstances surrounding them that have strengthened the bond between the individual course superintendents and the members of the PGA Tour Agronomy staff.
The following takes an in-depth look at those three events, the principals involved and how they’re working together to prepare for the playing of these tournaments.
Dialed in at Sawgrass
The Players Championship on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is Cal Roth’s baby. He’s been the tournament agronomist for the PGA Tour’s premier event since 1989, and he’s in no hurry to step away. Not even now that he’s the head of the tour’s agronomy program on top of everything else on his plate.
Then there’s the golf course maintenance director at Sawgrass, Tom Vlach, CGCS. Despite two decades in golf course management, Vlach will be considered a rookie of sorts when The Players unfolds this month. For the first time in nearly a quarter-century, Fred Klauk Jr. won’t be calling the shots as superintendent at the Stadium Course. Vlach hopes to prove he’s a rookie in perception only. He’s no stranger to the pro game, and most important, he’s no stranger at all to the vaunted Stadium Course or the man he’s replacing in the job.
Vlach is a protégé of Klauk himself, having worked for him as a teenager at TPC Eagle Trace, where Klauk hosted the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic, then as a college intern at Sawgrass and finally as an assistant on the Stadium Course for a couple of years. Those experiences led him to his first head superintendent’s job at Greystone Golf & Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., where he hosted several Bruno Memorial Classics on the Champions Tour.
Furthermore, Vlach was already on the Sawgrass team a year ago when Klauk prepped for his final Players before retiring. And there’s more — Klauk has been retained as an adviser for this year’s Players and again in 2010.
Roth, meanwhile, has no concerns regarding the new tournament superintendent. The two of them have taken advantage of the circumstances and have already forged a strong relationship. Roth says Sawgrass is in good hands.
“It’s a big golf course to get your arms around. Tom has spent most of the last year doing that, learning the operation,” Roth says. “He’s done a terrific job at that and is very confident in his position right now … and he should be.”
Vlach’s biggest learning curve might have been the effects of the major renovation of the Stadium Course in 2006 when it subsequently became the poster tournament venue for what the tour and its players want.
“It wasn’t that drastic … grass is grass. I haven’t had any problems with it at all,” the 18-year GCSAA member says. “It’ll be firm and it’ll be fast and it’ll be challenging.”
Both Roth and Vlach came away from their pre-tournament session in mid-March very pleased.
“Tom’s got it set up to be very good for his first tournament. I’m confident we’ll have an excellent event,” Roth says, adding that the maintenance staff — a mixture of Sawgrass veterans and new hires by Vlach — has been a key factor. “It’s a very talented group, with new thoughts and new ideas.”
Adds Vlach, “We walked through all 18 holes and there were no issues. But it’s still important to have that open dialogue and discussion of what’s been done in the past. We expect to do much of the same as in the past with some small, minute modifications. Fred had the place so dialed in that there’s no reason to make wholesale changes.”
His experience notwithstanding, Vlach, like most superintendents prepping for an event for the first time, is appreciative of what the agronomist brings to the table.
“Cal and I work great together; he plays a great supporting role,” he says. “Cal respects superintendents who have been in the business a long time. He certainly gives me that respect.”
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Jay Sporl, a tour agronomist known for his hands-on approach when needed, demonstrated the art of hand-watering the new greens at East Lake GC before the 2008 Tour Championship. Photo courtesy of the PGA Tour |
The comeback team
There’s no lack of know-how between veteran tour agronomist Jay Sporl and East Lake Golf Club’s longtime superintendent, Ralph Kepple, CGCS, and certainly no lack of respect in their professional relationship.
Sporl and Kepple have been through thick and thin together over the last decade, notably bringing new meaning to the term in the past couple of years. With the promise of a successful eighth Tour Championship together less than five months away, the troubles of 2007 seem very distant and the ensuing triumph of 2008 seems like yesterday.
“We’ve been through a lot together, good and bad, but Ralph and I have had a good relationship from day one,” says Sporl, who has been a tour agronomist since 1997 and is known for his low-key interaction with host superintendents.
“I’m fine just walking around being another set of eyes on the golf course,” says Sporl, who was a superintendent in Virginia and Florida for 15 years and was also a consulting agronomist for Nicklaus Design in Europe. “I try to fit in and contribute wherever I can. I’ve even been known to run a mower if I have to.”
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By necessity underscored by success, Ralph Kepple, CGCS at East Lake, has learned to like managing bermudagrass. Photo by Scott Hollister |
The long, hot and dry summer of 2007 tested the patience of many as it took its toll on East Lake’s bentgrass greens, much to the dismay of Kepple and Sporl and to the anguish of some tournament officials and tour players.
It was a perfect storm, one could say. A cool-season grass facing a stifling drought in Atlanta, as well as heavier-than-normal play during that summer and no time to recover as the tour had moved the championship from its usual date at the end of October to mid-September, essentially wiping out Kepple’s 30-day cushion to bring the greens back to tournament conditions.
“There was no time to hide the sins of summer,” as Sporl says.
To be sure, it was a bad time for Kepple, who has been at East Lake for 17 years. But the 25-year GCSAA member found out he had a lot of friends, including his tour agronomist.
“One thing that really impressed me was the way the turf industry came to Ralph’s defense,” says Sporl, who especially points to Mike Crawford, CGCS at TPC Sugarloaf near Atlanta, who showed up at East Lake about 10 days before the 2007 event with several members of his staff to help hand-topdress, repair and plug the greens.
In the end, Kepple and Sporl came out of the tournament with a popular champion, Tiger Woods, and their pride singed but intact. Within a few months the decision was made to convert East Lake’s bentgrass greens to the same ultradwarf bermudagrass, MiniVerde, that was the highlight of the renovation at TPC Sawgrass two years earlier.
“Ralph is a very good bentgrass manager, but he didn’t have much experience with bermuda, while I had done numerous grow-ins of bermuda greens for Nicklaus Design throughout the world,” Sporl says.
Already the tour’s most traveled agronomist — he has put in 2 million miles with Delta Airlines alone — Sporl spent a large portion of the summer of 2008 monitoring the regrassing of the East Lake greens, from sprigging on June 1 to tournament time, an accelerated 3½-month grow-in that had many shaking their heads.
“He had me doing some things that I probably would never have done with my bentgrass experience,” Kepple recalls. “I trusted him that everything would work out well and it did. You can’t argue with what we had for last year’s tournament.”
“We did some extraordinary things,” Sporl admits. “We knew the greens had to be as smooth as possible. We double-verticut, rolled and topdressed every week that summer. The most challenging tournament in my career in terms of prep and conditioning was the 2007 event. But it was followed a year later by the most satisfying — and on the same golf course. Last year was the best greens a Tour Championship had ever been played on.”
Sporl likes to say a good working relationship has to have some difficulty along the way, which then reinforces the relationship and makes it even stronger. Kepple agrees.
“It’s a mutual trust,” the superintendent says. “If something is going on here, he knows I’m going to contact him and if he thinks I’m doing something different than I should, he’s not hesitant to say something. Jay has seen a lot of golf courses and seen a lot of things. I don’t have a problem leaning on someone who’s got a lot of history and experience and can communicate that.”
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(From right) Kappelman and Vermeulen are joined by Michael Garvale, CGCS of Kemper Sports Management, during a pre-tournament walk around Harding Park. Photo by Kat Wade |
A Cup full by the Bay
As PGA Tour tournament rookies go, Harding Park Golf Course’s Wayne Kappelman is raw indeed. Add to the mix that his venue for this year’s Presidents Cup presents year-round turf management issues to begin with, and it shapes up as a formidable task from now to October for Kappelman and his tour support, Paul Vermeulen, a bit of a newcomer himself to the subtleties of tournament agronomics.
Actually, Kappelman, a refugee from the dot-com industry now pursuing his real passion in golf, has learned much about turf in a short time as a matter of survival at Harding Park, one of the country’s more unique major championship venues. And Vermeulen is really no stranger to the nuances of turf after 20 years as an agronomist with the USGA Green Section and experience in numerous championships.
Nevertheless, Harding Park is a challenge regardless of the résumés of the superintendent and the agronomist. Not only is it the first municipal course to host the Presidents Cup matches, but as an entity of the city of San Francisco, it falls under the scrutiny of the local department of the environment, which has its own ideas of what kind of turf care products should be used at its parks and golf courses.
“We’re limited as to what inputs can be used on the golf course,” Kappelman says, adding that pesticides are especially frowned on, although not banned.
Vermeulen points out that Kappelman maintains a sophisticated IPM program, including a lot of organics, plus a number of checks and balances.
“It’s a challenge in that you have to be forward-thinking,” Vermeulen says. “You have to anticipate using a particular product at least six months in advance so it and its intended use can be reviewed.”
Kappelman is quick to note: “I must say, in many regards I agree with putting the environment first. I think we’ve struck a good balance here. We use organics when we can and when we have to we use some of the other products — fungicides, herbicides ….”
He adds that the city oversight has become understanding as the critical eye of the world of golf nears its doorstep.
“They’ve been very cooperative. There are a few things that normally they probably wouldn’t accept and now they are,” Kappelman says.
Harding Park, one of California’s golden oldies that dates back to 1925, was basically rebuilt in 2002 in advance of hosting the 2005 American Express Championship. When Kappelman fled Silicon Valley, he wound up on that construction crew, then stayed on as an assistant to superintendent Pat Macaulay through the World Golf Championship event. Shortly thereafter, Macaulay retired and Kappelman took over.
“The players really liked Harding Park (in 2005) and at some point they wanted to return and play another event there. The Presidents Cup was a good fit,” says Vermeulen. “Wayne, more so than anyone else, is very familiar with the course as it is now. He knows where everything is underground and that’s very valuable.”
Kappelman’s crew, which numbers 25 in peak season, is a project in itself, comprising mostly park district gardeners who are steadily learning the art of golf course maintenance.
A lot of the current focus at Harding Park has been ongoing since the American Express — continuing capital improvements and enhancements such as leveling and replacing greenside collars, coursewide bunker renovations, irrigation infrastructure repairs, overseeding (perennial rye) tees, fairways and rough and general grounds beautification.
Harding Park’s Dominant X-treme bentgrass greens are susceptible to invasion by Northern California’s chief golf course pest, Poa annua, but Vermeulen says it continues to be a minor component of the greens’ turf, and Kappelman is confident of his management techniques. Only the long summer ahead will tell.
“We feel we have everything in place now. It’s going to be largely a matter of training and scheduling staff and acquainting them with the routines for advance week and tournament week,” Vermeulen said in late March, adding that come tournament time the regular staff will be beefed up by crossover city park employees and volunteer superintendents from the area.
Kappelman has gleaned much from the tour agronomist in the last several months and says he is thankful for Vermeulen’s time and effort.
“He’s been very helpful. He has tremendous knowledge from all the venues he works with throughout the year. It’s great to have another pair of eyes around here,” Kappelman says. “One thing I really appreciate is that Paul works with us very well, especially concerning the composition of our staff and adapting to what we can do best with what we have.”
PGA Tour Agronomy staff
Cal Roth, senior vice president
Denise Elliott, administrative assistant
TPC agronomy
Collier Miller, CGCS, director
Dennis Ingram, CGCS, regional director
Mark Johnson, CGCS, regional director
Barbara Black, coordinator
Competitions agronomy
Paul Vermeulen, director
Tom Brown, agronomist
Bland Cooper, CGCS, agronomist
Jeff Haley, agronomist
Brian Maloy, agronomist
Harry Schuemann, CGCS, agronomist
Jay Sporl, agronomist
LouWayne Filson, coordinator
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