Despite 14 inches of rain in May 1999, Moorhead (Minn.) CC was in great shape for its first season under the guidance of superintendent Thomas John Schmidt.

2001 Leo Feser award candidate

I grew up in Roseville, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul. When I was 10 years old I decided to get a job. What jobs are available for a 10-year-old? A friend of mine worked as a caddie, so I decided I would give it a try.

The training was fun and caddying was great, but I also had a 12-mile bike ride to and from work. The ride didn't turn out to be too bad either, once I had $10 or $12 in my pocket from a day's work. I loved the outdoors, and caddying was a great way to earn money.

Thus, my future in the game of golf and its playing fields was born.

First steps toward course management
I discovered my love for the game after I began to play. On Mondays, play was free to employees at the prestigious Midland Hills Country Club.

Four years of caddying had been great, but when I realized I could earn more money on the grounds crew, I asked to caddie for the golf course superintendent. That position allowed me to talk my way onto the grounds crew for the next season. I worked on the crew for two years and knew that golf was becoming an important part of my life.

Later I enlisted in the United States Navy, which was a great way to earn money for college and see the world. I played golf on the West Coast, in the Philippines and in Japan. I knew golf course management was in my future.

Following my stint in the Navy, I went to a two-year technical school for golf course management in Anoka, Minn., while working for Midland Hills CC. After graduation, I decided to take my first assistant superintendent position -- it was only seasonal, but I was more interested in the learning experience.

The next couple of years brought me to two very different golf courses: a privately owned public golf course and a country club. I knew I had always liked the country-club style. It seemed that excellence and attention to detail were top priorities. After two years of hard work and learning the finer points of golf course management, I accepted my first superintendent position.

Long days and attention to detail marked Schmidt's first year at Moorhead CC. After some trying times in the spring and summer, he says he finally got the course into the shape he had always pictured it.

A tough start: Building a new facility
I stepped into the maintenance facility at Moorhead (Minn.) Country Club and took a good look around: no doors, no heating, no plumbing and no electricity, just a 30-foot-by-80-foot shell. The club had been devastated by the 500-year flood from the Red River. It was Jan. 17, and I had to sharpen all the reels, fix all the equipment and build a maintenance facility before early spring. My main goal was to complete the maintenance building so I could move the equipment from its three locations to one central spot.

Most of the equipment was in the maintenance building, which had been condemned because of the 1997 flood. The triplexes and fairway units were buried under a snow bank near the new shop, and the rest of the equipment was in a Masonic lodge garage a half block away.

I spoke and met with dozens of contractors to get bids on the new maintenance facility and the aboveground gas and diesel fuel tanks. After designing the inside of the shop and making construction decisions, I believed we were ready to start on the maintenance building and finally begin moving forward.

My two-page to-do list never seemed to get shorter. As soon as one project was completed, two were added to the list. Bringing back the assistant superintendent, Brandon Chaffons, was a must. Chaffons had been at the course for seven years and was a godsend. He knew the ins and outs of the golf course and where to find everything.

We traded a membership to a gentleman who was a builder. The builder, my assistant and I framed the inside of the maintenance shop bathroom, break room, pesticide storage and grinding room. We worked weekends and late nights on the interior and used daylight hours for our endless list of tasks.

February came, and the snow began to melt. The mighty Red River was climbing its way to the banks, and we had to secure our drainage ports to keep excess water from backing up on the course. We rented wet suits from our local diving shop and plunged neck-deep in freezing water to secure our discharge ports. We used rubber mats draped over the ports and secured with hand winches. Luckily, hypothermia didn't set in, and we saved some areas from flooding.

I brought in the mechanic to start putting the equipment back together. Five Cushmans were of the 1970s vintage, and the rest of the equipment was an average of 10 to 15 years old. We needed equipment desperately, so we set up a package deal and arranged some trades. We received a rough unit, a fairway unit and a utility vehicle. I strongly believe that without this new equipment I would not be here.

Finally, we had the equipment shaping up, and the shop was moving in the right direction.

Spring prep: The course and crew
Now it was time to focus on the golf course, which also needed some extra attention. We began pruning the front-nine trees -- a job that took most of February. They were desperate for a good pruning.

As the snow continued to melt away slowly, I kept looking for the grass to show up on the greens. The only thing I could see was sand. This worried me a lot. We shoveled seven of our 18 greens, finding them covered with mason sand. I thought that in the spring I would have to seed excessively, but I believe the removal of the sand allowed us to avoid the overseeding.

By mid-March, things were really starting to shape up. We had moved into our new maintenance facility, which was close to completion except for installing some sheet rock, taping, texturing and painting. April brought the first Moorhead Member Cleanup Day. We had a successful turnout, which helped us immensely and gave us a jump on the year. Thirty members showed up to lend a hand raking matted turf areas, cleaning up and hauling leaves.

The training process started as we began to welcome back some of the seasonal workers. The implementation of new programs, mowing schedules and new training procedures paid off when the course was in shape for an early-April start. April 7 was our opening day.

The first summer: Keeping the course up to par
May and June brought their downfalls, or should I say downpours. We received 14 inches of rain in May and 16 inches in June. Besides the rain, the Red River crested over its banks five times. Luckily, only a few areas of the course were affected.

The only good part about the rain was that we never had to use our irrigation system during those months. This allowed us time to fix three major breaks, two of which required us to borrow a jackhammer from a local contractor to cut away the cement that had been poured directly over pipes and wires, couplings and tees. June was great for irrigation breaks. A mere $6,000 was spent on our 20 to 30 breaks, out of which 15 to 20 heads were worn out and not repairable because of years of wear. Piece by piece, we fixed and dug and fixed until the irrigation was on the right track.

July and August were hot and humid without a drop of rain. They were two months of watering -- I was a Toro key holder most mornings. We had approximately 30 heads for which the wires were not working or had been cut or hooked into the wrong satellites. These were slowly fixed as opportunities arose.

I knew we had major problems ahead with budget constraints. August was great for complaints, such as, "What's that weed in the fairways?" People were getting frustrated, and all I could do was explain the situation. The weed in the fairways was knotweed. My explanation was that I had asked the green committee in June for extra money to spray, and the reply was, "Is it in your budget?" Since the answer was "no," I sprayed the worst fairway and ordered a pre-emergent for the remaining fairways.

My goal was for members to understand that you don't get weeds overnight. Knotweed is known to take over areas of severe compaction, so the aerification of the fairways did wonders for the turf and will also help in the future.

A learning year
Finally September arrived, and the course was in the best shape I had seen. It was the way I had pictured Moorhead CC. Every decision I had made -- small or large, right or wrong -- had been a learning and growing experience.

As I look back over the season, I believe I made the right choice in accepting my first superintendent job. Of course, during the more trying times I sometimes second-guessed my decision, but in the future I know I will have more control, along with more experience.

I would like to thank a few people for their generous help throughout the year: Craig Vigen; David Woods; Larry Murphy, the golf professional; and Mike Borgie, the general manager. I have worked for many superintendents -- Scott Austin, CGCS; Steve Shumansky; Jon Christianson; and my friend and mentor Michael Brower -- and I would like to thank them all for the many practices I learned. I hope I can repay them by helping them someday. A special thank-you goes to my wife, who took on the burden of living in a new area, with two small children, while her husband worked 70- to 80-hour weeks.

Thomas John Schmidt, an eight-year GCSAA member, is superintendent at Moorhead (Minn.) Country Club. This information originally appeared in the February/March 1999 issue of Hole Notes, a publication of the Minnesota GCSA.