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The rebirth of Sawgrass
Following an extensive facelift, the TPC’s flagship venue is ready for its unveiling at this month’s Players Championship.
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Ancillary amenities completed at the Stadium Course along with the layout’s facelift include a new state-of-the-art clubhouse. Photos courtesy of TPC Sawgrass |
Talk about back to the future; golf has a real-life candidate for that trip — the Stadium Course at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
There are full-blown renovation projects going on around the country every day. Then there’s last year’s whirlwind, no-expense-spared renovation/restoration at the flagship venue in the PGA Tour’s Tournament Players Club Network and home of the game’s “fifth major,” the Players Championship.
Only the inestimable resources of the Tour could bring together some of its best field people with perhaps the savviest match of superintendent, architect and builder on the planet to turn back the clock on one of golf’s more prominent layouts, while at the same time provide a prototype for high-level tournament courses for years to come.
“We’ve been tweaking this place all along over the years, but this is probably the most extensive renovation that’s ever been done in the country,” says Fred Klauk Jr., (Class A), who’s in his 21st year as the superintendent at the Stadium Course.
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The 12th green was rebuilt entirely. |
The finished product will be officially unveiled the second week of May at the 2007 Players (May 10-13). It’ll be a dramatically changed golf course that will greet what is traditionally the strongest field of the year. For those old enough to have competed in most or all of the championships, however, things will be distinctly — maybe even eerily — familiar.
“The Tour drove the project with the objective of continuing to elevate the Players Championship,” says David Pillsbury, chief operating officer of the PGA Tour Golf Course Properties, which owns the TPC Network. “We’re returning the golf course to the kind of conditions meant to be played on — firm, fast and fair for all types of players. It’s about shot values, working the golf ball and club selection. That’s what we set out to accomplish, and I think we have.”
Project scorecard
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, a rundown of just what came down at the Stadium Course — from last April 1 to a remarkably quick reopening on Nov. 6 — is in order:
- All 18 fairways were stripped, re-capped and re-grassed. The top six inches of the fairway turf was shaved off to extract organic matter buildup from a quarter-century of overseeding. New drain tile was installed throughout each fairway and backfilled with coarse sand first and then a straight sand mix. Care was taken to preserve the original design of the fairways.
- The fairways were re-grassed (sprigged) to 419 Tifway and the greens to Mini Verde, one of the newer bermuda ultra-dwarfs. The rough, basically untouched during the project, remains, as Klauk describes it, “Heinz 57.” Once grown in, none of the turf was overseeded.
- All the greens were laid bare; as well, new drainage was installed, plus a SubAir System for each. Using precise grid work, the putting surfaces were painstakingly restored to their original designs within a tenth of an inch or less. When agreed upon by all parties, some subtle modifications were made to preserve some hole locations.
- A mile and a quarter of weather-worn bulkheads were removed and replaced new.
- A new irrigation system was installed wall-to-wall and features the capability to water fairways and rough separately.
- All greenside bunkers were deepened to counter bottom- sand buildup over the years.
- Holes 1, 8, 11, 14, 16 and 18 were moderately lengthened (122 yards in all) by moving the championship tees back. The course can max out at 7,215 yards for this month’s tournament.
- The other major design modifications were the 12th green, which was rebuilt entirely, raised 2½ feet and shifted somewhat to the left, and the addition of three pot-style fairway bunkers along the right side of the seventh fairway, positioned at 275, 290 and 305 yards from the tee.
- New golf car paths (necessitating 370 truckloads of concrete) were built, and new bridges installed.
- Many of the course’s trademark spectator mounds were reshaped and several leveled off at the top to better accommodate the installation of sky boxes. The mound work required nearly 3 million square feet of new sod.
- Ancillary amenities include a new state-of-the-art clubhouse, an expanded practice facility with new putting and chipping greens (complete with SubAir Systems), a new 2,000-square-foot Tour Academy teaching center and a new halfway house.
The Players’ players
Though the research for this article entailed separate interviews, a literary roundtable discussion of the project’s nuts and bolts, philosophical and physical, seems to be a good fit from here on. “Seated” at the table are:
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Improvements to the renowned 17th hole included brand new bulkheads. Using precise grid work, the putting surface was restored to the original design within a tenth of an inch or less. Photos courtesy of TPC Sawgrass |
The superintendent: Klauk, a member of GCSAA for 31 years, whose management leadership at the TPC Sawgrass includes both the Stadium and Valley courses.
The architect: Pete Dye, who was hired by then-PGA Commissioner Deane Beman to create the Stadium Course in 1979. It opened in ’81, and in the early years there was as much criticism as there were raves because of the layout’s penal nature. But annual changes and modifications eventually placated most of the critics.
The builder: Allan MacCurrach III, president of MacCurrach Golf Construction Inc. in nearby Jacksonville, who knows the Stadium Course like the back of his hand after many years of tweaking with Klauk and Dye. He was the general contractor for the 2006 renovation.
The company man: Pillsbury, whose job it is to oversee the business affairs, development activities, operations and marketing of the TPC Network. His background includes executive positions with American Golf Corp. and Nike Golf. He currently is chairman of the board of trustees of The Environmental Institute for Golf, GCSAA’s philanthropic organization, and also is the PGA Tour’s representative on The Institute’s advisory council.
The go-between: Steve Wenzloff, the PGA Tour’s vice president of design services and player liaison. He communicates with Tour players and Tour rules officials concerning golf course design changes at tournament venues and oversees those changes. He worked long and close with Klauk during the Stadium Course project.
The agronomist: Cal Roth, vice president of agronomy for the PGA Tour. A former superintendent and a 27-year member of GCSAA, Roth was part of the project’s planning brain trust.
All the ducks in a row
The general consensus among course and Tour officials is that comprehensive advanced planning was the key to the project’s successful outcome in an amazing seven months so the layout would be in prime shape for this month’s Players Championship.
“Knowing the complexity of what we were getting ourselves into, we actually started working on this in 2001, and it was an evolution of the infrastructure program, the renovation process and eventually the magnitude of where we are now,” says Wenzloff, whose primary mission early on was to seek out input from Tour players concerning impending changes to the Stadium Course.
“The players in general wanted fast, firm conditions to allow the most talented person on that particular week to rise to the top,” Wenzloff says, adding that bunker restoration was a goal, as well, to bring back more difficulty from those hazards.
“Some wanted more length, others didn’t,” he says. “We ultimately did a little in select areas for select reasons.”
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Improvements to the renowned 17th hole. |
While noting that the Tour impetus is an ongoing mission to elevate the Players brand, Pillsbury also acknowledges the importance of the players’ wishes.
“What drives how we think is what our players want,” he says. “They’re saying they want firm, fast golf courses that challenge the skills of a golfer so you can’t win by just hitting it a long way.”
“The project was well-planned; it was very well-orchestrated,” notes Roth. “When you have someone like Fred Klauk as a superintendent who was on the ground day in and day out making it happen along with the whole Tour design and construction departments ... it was just a great team effort.”
Adds Dye: “I’ll tell you, Fred did a hell of a job. He got all the grass there, all the sand there, all the material there — all on site and in advance. I can’t tell you how important that was for a project like this.”
Wenzloff also notes that MacCurrach’s familiarity with the Stadium Course after several years of overseeing smaller projects on the property was a big plus. “There were many meetings, and I remember Allan finally saying he ‘needed to get a plan for his work so he could work his plan.’ And that’s exactly what transpired,” he says.
Drainage, drainage, drainage
The renovation set out to restore drier, firmer fairways and greens more than anything. Plus, it didn’t hurt that this year’s Players Championship was moved to early May from its traditional late-March slot.
“Twenty-five years of organic matter buildup from overseeding and topdressing, along with the usual March rains, were making it very difficult to have a dry golf course for the championship,” says Klauk, who, like the others, points out that it was no coincidence that when the tournament date was changed, the renovation was put on a fast track, and the course was not overseeded again once completed.
“We’re playing this tournament on bermudagrass and it’s never been played on bermudagrass before,” the longtime superintendent says.
Great grass
Besides the fresh experience of managing bermuda in the early spring in Florida, there’s the Mini Verde on the greens and it, too, has been a learning process, if only because there is such a short track record on the grass.
“The Tour and the players got their first real look at Mini Verde at the Zurich Classic at the TPC of Louisiana in New Orleans in 2005,” says Wenzloff, who, as an aside, points out that verdi is Latin for great. “We first researched it then, and Fred also did some of his own research, including how the grass came back in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”
(Interviewed for this article in March, Wenzloff added that Mini Verde would be in the spotlight again in April at the 2007 Zurich Classic. Damage to the TPC of Louisiana from Katrina forced Tour officials to move last year’s tournament to English Turn Country Club.)
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All 18 fairways were stripped, re-capped and re-grassed. The top six inches of the fairway turf was shaved off to extract organic matter buildup from overseeding. Photo courtesy of TPC Sawgrass |
“We’re treating the Mini Verde very carefully to have it right for the (Players) championship. We’ve had to protect it from getting worn out from resort play,” says Klauk, who notes that 120 to 150 rounds a day have been played on the Stadium Course since it reopened.
Klauk’s greens strategy early on included light vertical mowing and topdressing and then progressed to the use of growth regulators to guide the Mini Verde toward the firm and fast conditions desired. Covers also were utilized a couple of times to protect the non-overseeded greens when temperatures hovered around the freezing mark.
“We were fortunate to have a mild winter until late January and February,” he says. “We pretty much grew grass all winter long — never thought we’d ever do that.”
Two slices of nitty-gritty
Down the road — and most infer it’ll be a short one — it appears the project at the Stadium Course is sending a couple of messages to the year-round portion of the golf course industry and anyone else around the country bent on hosting a PGA Tour event in the future, near and far.
Message No. 1: The overseeding issue has been fervently debated more than ever in recent times, but the renovation at Sawgrass has come through loud and clear in favor of rethinking strategies, even abandoning the practice in some situations.
“What we set out to do here had the unanimous support of the players — restoring the course to its original design strategies ... Pete Dye’s masterful fairway angles that cause shots just off line to release through the fairway ... forcing shaped shots from many tees,” Wenzloff says. “That has not been able to manifest itself in the latter part of the history of the golf course because of the buildup from overseeding.”
Dye has been notoriously outspoken on such industry issues as rising golf course development costs and the distance the modern golf ball travels. Overseeding can be counted among the things that stick in his craw.
“I’ll get on my soapbox ... I’m one of the advocates of getting away from overseeding,” he says. “I favor something like using tarps on the greens, which is a lot less expensive. Overseeding costs a lot of money, for one thing, then there’s the period of growing it in in the fall and people hate it and you got the transition period in the spring and people hate that.”
Overseeding has been part of Klauk’s golf course management regimen for nearly his entire three-decade career, but now that he has bitten the bullet, he likes the taste.
“Never say never, but long-term, this golf course is better off on a 365-day-a-year basis because we’re not overseeding any more, having to transition in and transition out,” the superintendent says. “If you grow one monostand of grass, it’s easier to manage. It’s the best thing they could have done for the golf course here.”
Message No. 2: In direct relation to the first message, the PGA Tour is not pulling many punches in pointing out to other tournament venues what the players expect and what Tour officials expect and what has been accomplished at Sawgrass.
“Commenting from the TPC Network, our focus is on firm and fast. It’s about drainage, it’s about sand, it’s about the right overseeding strategy to ensure that we’ve got the kind of conditions our players want when they play a golf course,” says Pillsbury of the move to return to a premium on shotmaking skills that may have been lacking because of soft conditions.
“We want this game to be played the way it was meant to be played. We want our golf courses to be played the way they were meant to be played,” he says.
Pillsbury points out that there is a conscious effort to upgrade the quality of turf conditions within the TPC Network, even to the point of shedding some venues from the portfolio. The message is expected to be heeded beyond the TPCs. Tour patience is taking the short road, too.
“We overseeded at Tampa (TPC) this year for the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am (Champions Tour) and we’re now debating that overseeding strategy because the golf course was too soft,” Pillsbury says.
Wenzloff adds: “It ultimately comes into the agronomic hands who do our advance work. They’re our liaisons with the superintendents.”
Advancing Tour business for 10 years now, Wenzloff also adds a cautionary note.
“There is a lot of risk management in overseeding and that’s a big challenge for us,” he says. “Most tournament venues don’t have the ability to irrigate overseeded rough to competitive standards while not over-watering the fairways like we now have at the Stadium Course. We also have to be respectful to the fact that the TPC clubs and other courses applicable to the situation have a business to run the other 51 weeks out of the year.”
Favorable early returns
The Stadium Course was closed from April 16 to the week of the Players Championship, beginning May 7, for final preparations. Leading up to that, a lot of folks in the neighborhood, famous and near so, have played the place. The feedback has been good.
“The reaction thus far has been very positive, mostly from the players who live in or near Ponte Vedra and play and practice at Sawgrass,” says Wenzloff in his liaison mode. “They’ve said they’re pleased to see how the golf course is playing itself out.”
Adds Klauk: “It’s been well received. The professionals who have played it have complimented what they consider very subtle changes.”
Roth is also upbeat. “From our perspective, agronomics, the changes made to the golf course are fantastic,” he says. “It’s already been able to take a significant amount of rain and the fairways mowed shortly thereafter. The objective there was certainly year-round, but also very much directed toward keeping the course very firm and dry during the week of the Players.”
The final step, and certainly the most crucial, will be how the rebuilt layout plays under tournament setup.
Right on cue, Dye says, “The agronomics of the course are great right now. We’ll just have to wait and see what the boys think. We added a little length and some other things, but the big difference is that compared to what it was, it’ll be like playing on a rock. They’ll either want to kill me or something. I don’t know what will happen.”
Final question
Few would argue Klauk’s claim that the renovation was an unprecedented, “monstrous undertaking,” done in an unprecedented time frame. But many would like to know just how much the undertaking really cost.
“Plenty,” he says with enough finality to put notions of any elaboration to rest.
From all accounts, it was worth every penny.
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