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New kid in town
Less than a year after first stepping foot in Tulsa, CGCS Russ Myers welcomes this month’s PGA Championship to venerable Southern Hills.
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The par-4 ninth hole at Southern Hills CC in Tulsa, Okla. Photo by Miller Brown/Rob Brown |
Russ Myers hops into a utility vehicle parked outside of the maintenance facility at Southern Hills Country Club, stomps on the accelerator and tears off into the haze of an early June morning in Tulsa, Okla.
His first order of business is to make sure preparations for a women’s club event that is scheduled for an 8:30 shotgun start are proceeding as planned. But as he steers his vehicle past teams of his own maintenance workers and accepts polite waves from golfers heading to their starting holes, you quickly learn that in Myers’ world, the second, third and fourth orders of business can switch places with the first in an instant.
On the eighth green, for example, the certified superintendent stops to putt a few balls from the center of the green toward a front center pin position, hoping to ensure that the normally treacherous downhill putt isn’t too treacherous for today’s tournament.
But when Myers notices one of his crew members struggling to drag a wet, heavy hose behind him while giving that same putting surface a quick syringe, he hardly waits for the second putt to stop rolling before he jumps into action. He tosses the putter aside and slings the hose around his back, following behind the crew member, back and forth across the green, until the job is finished.
Climbing back into the utility vehicle, the 12-year GCSAA member is asked whether he enjoyed diversions like that, diversions that took him back to his roots in the industry. Wiping water and grass clippings from his hands, Myers smiles wryly and responds, “Hey, we do what we have to do around here.”
For those who know Myers well — and that circle is a wide one within the golf course management industry — that attitude probably comes as no surprise. Whether the challenges are small ones, like helping out a crew member struggling through his morning rounds, or big ones, like prepping one of the top courses in the world for this month’s PGA Championship, Myers readily admits that he’s about the closest thing to an adrenaline junkie as you’ll find in this business — a superintendent who is constantly seeking that next big adventure, that next mountain to climb.
“That’s really what I’ve always looked for — unique situations where I can do something that’s different,” Myers says. “And this is definitely another unique situation, to step into this role at this time.”
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Russ Myers, CGCS, will have been at Southern Hills for just under one year when the PGA Championship tees off later this month. |
Behind the eight ball
The situation that Myers walked into at Southern Hills was indeed a unique one.
Few facilities facing the prospect of hosting a major championship are also saddled with the simultaneous chore of filling a position as crucial as golf course superintendent. But that was exactly where Southern Hills found itself last June after John Szklinski, who had been in Tulsa for 8 ½ years, resigned his position, citing personal and family reasons.
The void left by the departure of the 14-year GCSAA member (who has since landed in North Carolina as the Class A superintendent at Charlotte Country Club) was sizable. Szklinski had prepped Southern Hills for its most recent major turn, the 2001 U.S. Open, and had guided the course through a series of renovations in the intervening years between the Open and the PGA. His departure robbed the club of significant local knowledge, and although he had completed much of the heavy lifting in preparation for this month’s tournament, club and PGA of America officials knew finding the right person to close the deal was crucial to a successful event.
“In my time with the PGA, I’ve never had a change of superintendent at that late of a date (prior to the PGA Championship),” says Kerry Haigh, the PGA’s managing director of tournaments. “But the club was extremely conscientious during its search. We were confident they would find the right person for the job.”
Enter Myers, who first learned of the opening while helping out Eric Greytok at Winged Foot Golf Club during last year’s U.S. Open. He was introduced to Southern Hills General Manager Nick Sidorakis, and the two chatted about the open position for about 15 minutes inside of Greytok’s office.
“He just told me what was happening, gauged my interest in the position and gave me the details about how to get involved in it,” Myers recalls. “I was pretty tired at the time, but I guess I said the right things and I expressed an interest in the job.”
Making the case
Myers did bring more than an interest in the job to the table. He’d spent the previous eight years as the head superintendent at Card Sound Golf Club in Key Largo, Fla., a private club carved into a sliver of the Florida Keys, and the four years prior to that as an assistant-in-training at Augusta National under the guidance of Superintendent Brad Owen and Golf Course Maintenance Director Marsh Benson, both Class A members of GCSAA.
He also had developed a reputation in the industry as a bit of a “tournament junkie,” as his good friend Matt Shaffer, the Class A director of golf course management at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., refers to him. His experiences working The Masters during those years at Augusta whetted his appetite for tournament prep, and to date, he has worked in some capacity at 21 tournaments, ranging from U.S. Opens to Walker Cups to the Memorial Tournament.
“From the point I got to Augusta and went through that first Masters, I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool,’” Myers says. “It was unique and I thought (hosting majors) was a goal that was achievable. It was something I really wanted to do.”
Sure, Myers was young (he will be just 35 years old when the first round of the PGA tees off) and he’d never maintained turfgrass in the Midwest (although he had tended to bermudagrass at Card Sound). And despite his considerable experience around major championships, he’d also never served in the lead role at a facility that was hosting a major.
But in the end, his unbridled enthusiasm for tackling the challenges that he’d face at Southern Hills won over not only the search firm hired to fill the position, but also the club’s top managers and influential members who were involved in the hiring process. On the day after Labor Day 2006, Myers arrived in Tulsa and got down to business.
“I’ve always had a love and an appreciation for the traditional, classic golf courses. And getting the opportunity to maintain a place with the
history and the challenges that come with that, a place where your work can be scrutinized on a larger scale, that’s always appealed to me. It was a great move for me to make,” Myers says.
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No less an expert than Ben Hogan called Southern Hill’s 12th hole, a 458-yard dogleg left, the best par 4 in the country. Photo by Miller Brown/Rob Brown |
First impressions
You could easily forgive Myers if he had privately harbored concerns that he had bitten off more than even he could chew in taking the position at Southern Hills. He was trading a part of the country and a brand of turfgrass management that he had become intimately familiar with over nearly a decade for a region he had hardly even visited before, let alone managed turfgrass in, with the pressures related to the PGA less than a year down the road tossed in for good measure.
But those fears began to abate even before Myers’ first day on the job. Shortly after accepting the position, he received a phone book-sized notebook that detailed the club’s logistical and agronomic plans for the tournament. He also joined several high-ranking Southern Hills officials on a fact-finding mission to Chicago and Medinah Country Club when that club hosted the 2006 PGA last August.
And when he finally did begin his official duties at Southern Hills, his first day was spent touring the course with Szklinski, then in his final week with the club, and Haigh, who was making a previously scheduled site visit to the course.
So what did Myers learn during those meetings?
“For all intents and purposes, this golf course is ready to host a major almost any day, depending on your rough demands,” he says. “A lot of work was done before I got here, we’ve done a lot of work since I arrived and there is a lot left to do for the PGA, but this is not an overhaul type of site by any means.”
From the ashes
Much of the credit for that near permanent state of readiness must go to Szklinski, Myers says, and the renovations that his predecessor oversaw beginning way back in 2000. Using a rash of vandalism to Southern Hills’ greens that took place two years prior to the 2001 Open as an opportunity, the club underwent an almost year-long renovation that included a regrassing of the putting surfaces to an A1/A4 bentgrass mix, the construction of 10 new championship tees that stretched the course’s length to over 7,200 yards and a full bunker renovation that improved drainage and introduced TourGrade Signature bunker sand from Fairmount Minerals to the course.
“If I was going anywhere, I would build (the bunkers) the way these were built,” Myers gushes. “It’s the kind of standard that I believe the industry should adopt.”
In advance of the PGA, Southern Hills closed for nine months, from September 2004 until May 2005, for a few more touchups. Fairways were converted to U3 bermudagrass — “It’s kind of an older variety, but it’s good here in the Midwest. It’s cold-tolerant, holds its color a little longer, greens up a little earlier and … repairs divots at an unbelievable pace,” Myers says — and the roughs to a bermuda/fine fescue blend.
There was also subsurface drainage work done on the greens, and both the ninth and 18th greens were tweaked to create more space for front pin positions.
Turning up the heat
Like most superintendents hosting a tournament in the heart of summer, Myers’ biggest concern as tournament week approaches is the weather. Tulsa in mid-August can be brutally hot and humid, and Myers is quick to admit that cutting bentgrass greens at the heights required for a professional major and getting familiar with potential hot spots around the course are “easily my biggest challenges.”
“I have no background, no local knowledge of this site,” he says. “I’ve been on property since September and I still can’t tell you, for example, where the third area that’s going to wilt is going to be, where most superintendents would know that. I’m still learning.
“I’m fortunate that I inherited some assistants who are really strong guys who have been here (there is a combined 41 years of experience at Southern Hills between assistants Roy Bradshaw, Jeremy Dobson and Chris Wilson) and know the property really well. They’ve been life savers.”
Even with that, it will be a delicate dance for Myers and the team at Southern Hills to keep the tricky, sloping greens on the Perry Maxwell gem thriving while still delivering the greens speeds (11 ½ to 12 on the Stimpmeter) that the PGA is targeting in the middle of an Oklahoma summer.
“There’s the potential to have conditions that require additional watering, which results in a fatter leaf blade, and not have the surface you would have in June,” Myers says. “That’s just the function of an August event and something we’ll have to deal with.”
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The iconic clock tower watches over Southern Hills and serves as the primary logo for the PGA Championship. Photo courtesy of the PGA of America
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“(The greens) are clearly our biggest concern and they’ve been the focus since the first day I met Russ,” Haigh adds. “The club has been very supportive in our efforts to carry out measures that will make sure the greens are as healthy as they can be at that time of year, whether that was removing trees (slightly more than 20 were taken out at various points around the course) or installing fans to improve air movement.”
The rough will also get plenty of attention during the second full week of August, although that attention will probably pale in comparison to the scrutiny paid to the rough at Oakmont Country Club for this year’s U.S. Open. Beginning in June, Myers began maintaining roughs at a height of 2 ½ inches. He and Haigh will evaluate that height regularly leading up to the tournament, but don’t expect it to go much above that.
“I’ll use Kerry’s words: He’s looking for a tough but fair rough where the player has the ability to advance the ball with some strength, but not be able to impart spin and not be able to control the ball,” Myers says. “He’ll come in, take a look and we’ll decide whether it’s not enough where it is or whether it’s too much.”
The accidental superintendent
Myers’ position at a club like Southern Hills and his role in preparing for the PGA Championship can conceal the true accidental nature of his career in the business of golf course management. He even admits to having been on the verge of leaving the business on “three or four” occasions, if for no other reason than a desire to explore those “unique” opportunities he speaks of so often.
The son of a longtime high school coach and athletic director, Myers worked part time during his high school years on the maintenance staff at a nine-hole public course in his hometown of Watkins Glen, N.Y. But his first love was the playing side of the game, and he headed off to North Carolina’s Methodist College to tackle the school’s professional golf management program.
It didn’t take him long to come to the realization that professional golf wasn’t in his future. (“I just didn’t like to practice as much as the other guys,” Myers laughs.) So he headed back to New York and resumed working on the golf course while going to school part time, “just trying to figure out what I wanted to do.”
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Southern Hill members refer to the view from the clubhouse of downtown Tulsa as the “best view in town.” Photo courtesy of the PGA of America |
The push toward golf course management came from one of the regulars at the course in Watkins Glen, who suggested he explore the turf management program at nearby State University of New York, Cobleskill. He took the advice and enrolled in the school’s two-year program, completing internships at a pair of New York courses along the way.
Upon graduation, though, Myers appeared ready to dump his newly earned degree to follow in his father’s footsteps. While at Cobleskill, he served as a student assistant coach on the school’s basketball team and was bitten by the coaching bug. With the head coach’s assistance, Myers began looking at graduate assistant openings.
On a whim and as little more than a nod to the last two years of his life, Myers sent out four résumés looking for work in the golf industry. He shot for the moon, too, sending them to Oak Hill, Pebble Beach, Pine Valley and Augusta National. “I never expected to hear anything and never really cared if I heard anything, to be quite honest,” Myers says.
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Myers relies on every member of his staff — from longtime assistants to interns in their first week on the job — for intel on the status of conditions at Southern Hills. Photo by Scott Hollister |
But he did hear, from Benson and Augusta. One of Myers’ former employers gave the process a bit of a jump start — Jim Hengel, CGCS, who at the time was the superintendent at the Links at Hiawatha Landing in Apalachin, N.Y., placed a call to Benson, asking him to take a special look at someone he considered an up-and-comer — but Myers did enough on his own to impress Benson and earn an offer to become an assistant-in-training at Augusta.
After four years in Georgia, the itch to try something new returned. He held another offer from the basketball coach at Cobleskill to join the staff there as a full-time assistant, but had agreed to interview for the head superintendent job at a course in Florida facing an upcoming renovation, largely as a favor to Shaffer, who was a partner in a job placement company that had been hired to find the club a superintendent.
Myers was sure the hardwood would win out over turfgrass this time. He really wasn’t interested in moving to the Sunshine State, and full-time college coaching positions, even at the Division III level, don’t come around every day. But one visit to the Florida Keys and Card Sound quickly changed his mind and his career plans.
“The place was just amazing, extremely unique, basically just sitting in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” he says. “It was fantastic, and I fell in love with it almost on sight.”
Basketball would have to wait. He had found a new home at Card Sound and, clearly, in golf course management.
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