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In the brick of it
Jeff Stuart, CGCS at the Brickyard Crossing Golf Course, tackles the nontraditional tasks of a superintendent preparing for this month’s Indy 500.
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The unique nature of Brickyard Crossing GC means that its superintendent, Jeff Stuart, CGCS, is responsible for maintaining turfgrass and property inside the race track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Four of the course’s 18 holes are located on the interior of the track. |
When the racecar exhaust clears, the hundreds of thousands of boisterous
fans head for home and the lights and sounds of one of car racing’s most famed events fade out near the end of this month, Jeff Stuart, CGCS, will remain, examining
the damage to the grass inside the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and beginning his routine preparations for the first of three times he’ll reinstall
sod this year.
As superintendent at the Brickyard Crossing Golf Course, the golf course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Stuart knows his well-manicured course is nowhere near the main attraction on this sprawling, 461-acre property. The track hosts this month’s Indianapolis 500, NASCAR’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard (formerly the Brickyard 400) and its first-ever Grand Prix motorcycle racing round, known as the Indianapolis Grand Prix, sponsored by Red Bull. It also hosted the U.S. Grand Prix for Formula One from 2000 through 2007. Next to these profit-drivers, golf course operations provide a few drops in the bucket for this granddaddy of motorways, but today it receives as much care and attention as any single-standing golf course and maybe more.
But in addition to the standard duties of any superintendent, Stuart, a 26-year GCSAA member, also must concern himself with matters unique to the nature of this venue, such as making sure that errant drivers veering off the track don’t end up inundating the infield with irrigation water.
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This month, more than 300,000 people are expected to descend on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Stuart regrasses areas on the interior of the track three times a year because of damage from the traffic of various types of vehicles. Stuart and crew members regularly take maintenance carts for a spin around the track to inspect for problem areas, he says. Photo courtesy of IMS Photo |
In the beginning
This storied golf course got its start in the late 1920s, when IMS owner and flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker hired Bill Diddel to create a golf course at the Speedway. Then called The Speedway Golf Course, the course was built with nine holes outside the track and nine holes inside, requiring a wooden bridge for players to cross the brick-paved track to reach the interior nine.
From 1960 to 1968, race drivers teed it up each May with touring golf pros and celebrities in the PGA Tour’s 500 Festival Open Invitational Tournament held at the course. The event attracted golfing legends such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Billy Casper.
Decades later, in 1991, IMS president Tony George decided to totally rebuild the course with the intent of once again hosting a PGA Tour event, and went to Stuart, who had been working at the Country Club of Indianapolis for 12 years, for help.
Stuart took on the challenge in January of 1991 at the course, and construction began later that fall.
“It was a low-end, low-cost 18-hole golf course,” Stuart says. “And you know, it was pretty easy to make improvements right away. We were looking at one day maybe hosting a tournament again…But as we got more into making improvements, we realized that it was not going to accommodate modern-day crowds. At that point we started talking to some architects and got Pete on board.”
Pete Dye, renowned golf course architect and a resident of Indianapolis, was a natural selection for the course’s designer. In addition to the convenience of his proximity to the site, he also once sponsored a race car here in the 1940s, along with several others for a 500-mile race in 1950. He agreed to design the new 18-hole championship course and planned a massive earthmoving project that converted more than 1,500,000 cubic yards of earth into sculpted, rolling terrain, bunkers and fairways. Much of the earth was used to build spectator mounds for better viewing during tournaments.
“The golf course before just didn’t lend itself to galleries and the other things you would need to host a tournament,” Stuart says. “It had elevated greens and very few areas around them where you could see anything. Now, it’s much more conducive to viewing golf. Lots of mounding.”
The rebuilding called for four acres of Pennlinks greens, five acres of Penncross tees, 34 acres of Pennway fairways and 96 acres of rough. A combined surface area of almost three acres of sand was divvied among 72 bunkers, including 25 on the No. 9 hole. Dye also restructured the holes inside the track, placing 14 of 18 holes outside and holes 7 through 10 on the interior. The bridge was replaced by a tunnel in 1964.
Dye’s overall philosophy of golf course architecture boded well for the course’s maintainability.
“He was very good about looking at things from a maintenance standpoint,” Stuart says. “…he listens and tries to make it manageable…He did listen as far as the greens mix and how that was formulated.”
The newly named Brickyard Crossing reopened for limited play in September 1993, to the public in April 1994 and then that same year hosted its first tournament since the ’60s — the Champions Tour’s Brickyard Crossing Championship, which continued at the site through 2000.
Though no tournament has been held at the Brickyard Crossing since then, Stuart mentioned ongoing discussions with the LPGA for the potential to bring a tournament back to the famed course. It’s a possibility Stuart looks forward to.
“That’d be great,” he says. “Tournaments are fun. It’s actually a nice rest for the golf course the week before they start while it’s closed.”
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Little Eagle Creek, shown here, runs throughout Brickyard Crossing, bringing water elements into 11 holes on the course. IMS Photo by Dan Helrigel |
The ins and outs
For now, his primary focus is on the golf course and preparations for track events.
“I do all the chemical planning, programs and applications for all of the track grounds and control all the irrigation on the track grounds,” he says.
The job does call for Stuart to be available during all the speedway’s race events when the golf course is closed, ready to tackle any unforeseen problem on the track.
“I’m always there on-hand for the events,” he says. “I shut all the systems down, make sure if we do have an accident or an incident where a sprinkler gets broken, we don’t have water everywhere. We work very closely with the track personnel.”
When it comes to the golf course, he generally views the three major races — for which he says tickets are still available — as opportunities to get maintenance work done.
“We’re closed 10 days when most places would be playing golf,” he says. Those include five days around the Indy 500, two days for the All State 400, a NASCAR event in July, plus three days during the inaugural Red Bull MotoGP. Stuart likes to get disruptive cultural practices, such as aerification, topdressing or a chemical application, completed during these events.
As a result of his strategic timing of disruptive maintenance work, Stuart says he’s noticed fewer complaints from golfers, but the break in course play isn’t long enough to completely recover from aerification, for instance.
“You’re looking at a several day recovery period, (so) it’s not long enough to recover…but we certainly try not to disturb as much as we can,” Stuart says. “We’ve got probably 40 to 45 outings scheduled, too, so we can kind of work around those, as well.”
Additionally, Stuart prepares for driver golf outings hosted by Chevy, Allstate, other race sponsors and a championship drivers association, that normally occur before a race.
Preparing for the chaos
In the months leading up to this month’s Indy 500, Stuart and his crew of 14 full-time employees, including first assistant superintendent Troy Zufall and second assistant superintendent Jason Stewart, prepared by installing irrigation mains and grass on the infield, though some other tasks were a waiting game.
“We should start getting some of the other systems in, (but) we’re pretty much waiting on the heavy earth-work people to get out of there,” he said in late March. “And then they’re also doing some drainage at this point — get the mud out that’s in there now and get irrigation in.”
One of the last steps in prepping for the event is one of the toughest.
“The final grade work takes a lot; it’s pretty exacting work,” Stuart says. “It’s not like a golf course where you can have rolls. It’s a lot more attention to detail in the grade work; everything has to be very subtle or nonexistent. Guys are flying around at 200 mph and they go off the track, so it has to be a smooth transition.”
Stuart regrasses areas in the infield three times a year to counter all the damage from the races, but doesn’t expect as much damage from the motorcycles.
With the experience that his staff holds — 10 out of 14 full-time workers have worked at the course from 12 to 22 years — the process of preparing for these events and recovering from the damage in their aftermath is well practiced and established, but there are still challenges.
Stuart learned the hard way that one of the most important jobs to do while prepping for a race is depressurizing the irrigation system around the oval.
“During one of the practices a car went into the wall, and one of the wreckers backed up over one of the heads and broke it,” he recalls. “At that time, we hadn’t depressurized, so we had a nice water display for the fans.
“We adjust our schedules in terms of applications,” he continues, speaking to the adjustments made around the races. “It really doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for us. We bring in most all of the tee and green equipment, the stuff that tends to walk away.”
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Birdhouses, such as this one on a fescue mound between the course’s third and 15th holes, were built to attract Eastern bluebirds, a species viewed as nonchemical pest control because they eat unwanted insects. IMS Photo by Dan Helrigel |
Of course, weather is a major factor that can lead to more damage on the turf. Stuart could be an optimist and hope that May doesn’t bring rain, but as a realist he expects it will.
Rain can cause particular havoc because, in accommodating the expected crowd of more than 300,000 people for the Indy 500, many areas on the property are used for parking.
“That can be the biggest mess, due to parking, if we get rain,” Stuart says. “The 500 is essentially the whole month of May, and we have parking in different lots. Grass gets some damage from those…There’s usually several acres that are used for parking. Some of them aren’t irrigated, some of them are.
“That’s a big issue if it rains, and it usually does,” he adds.
Another challenge is scheduling irrigation. “Not only do we have the races and qualifications, but there’s a lot of other activity on the track,” he says.
Both the infield and the turf outside the track use the same irrigation system, something Stuart says could be improved upon with separate systems.
“That’s one of the things we’re looking at, is to actually separate those and put another pump station in the infield, and we’re probably going to have to do that in the next year or so,” he says.
But a retrofitting of the old station, an improvement that took place this spring, should help.
“(It’s) essentially a new pump station, and that’ll give me a little bit more gallons per minute,” he says. “(It’s) much more reliable than the other system.”
But the benefits of a separate system would mean a decrease in watering time for both the exterior and interior turfgrass.
“(It takes) a lot of time to water all these outlaying areas because we’re limited by the size of the pipe that goes underneath the track, so if we go with the other pump station, we could shorten our water time by half,” he says. “On the infield, if we close it off and separate the systems, we’d have 25 percent of the water going to golf course turf and 75 percent to track turf…It’s just become more difficult every year as we add more track irrigation to get everything watered when it needs to be watered.”
A different beast
While Stuart’s job calls for some unorthodox practices and responsibilities compared to a traditional superintendent job, he also enjoys advantages borne from the same unique nature of his role at IMS.
In addition to the capabilities of the Brickyard Crossing’s crew, members of the track personnel offer in-house solutions for a variety of components of golf course operations.
“There are six people in the paint department, one welder, three electricians, five or six carpenters, two mechanics, a warehouse operations guy, three or four heavy equipment operators, three in the landscaping department, four on the grass crew, which take care of a lot of the irrigated areas, two guys that just do concrete work, two plumbers,” Stuart rattles off. “Telephone guys, communications guys.”
Having all that expertise available for the golf course saves a fortune for the facility compared to the price it would cost a single-unit golf course to contract the same work. Both sets of personnel assist the other in a mutual agreement.
“When they need help or equipment, we’re there for them and they are there for us,” Stuart says. “Just about anything you can run into, it’s pretty well covered.”
Stuart says he also prefers his current reporting structure to a vice president of operations over a green committee or board of directors.
“The pros and cons are pretty much the same,” he says. “You’ve got the freedom and the ability to present a product that is expected…but on the other side, you’re also fully responsible, so it’s a two-edged sword.”
He appreciates the hands-off approach of his boss, Mel Harder, senior vice president of IMS operations, and the freedom to make independent choices on the course. “In comparison, our operation is miniscule in size looking at the other events that come through,” he says. “We go through the budgeting process every year, we go through a replacement program, but as far as the nuts and bolts, our chemical program, irrigation scheduling again comes into play there, I try to do what’s best for the course and accommodate the race track.”
Harder, who has worked at IMS since 1997, acknowledges the role of the golf course operations in the grand scheme of the facility and trusts Stuart’s job in managing that facet.
“Our core business is racing,” he says. “Golf offers a great complement to the facility and events…The grounds are an incredible part of the experience for fans of the IMS. From the details of the grass adjacent to the racing surface, the flowers spread around the facility, the landscaping in the Pagoda Plaza, Jeff and his staff are an important element of the fan experience.”
An unlikely endeavor
In an atmosphere where noxious gasses and hordes of fans are the rule, environmental stewardship may seem a lofty goal. But it’s one that Stuart has pursued and capably achieved. On top of the prep for these unique events and his regular duties of managing the golf course, Stuart ushered the course through Audubon certification in 2001 and has maintained the status as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary ever since.
“I’d say the biggest challenge is promoting some wildlife areas (with) the presence of hundreds of thousands of people (during) races,” Stuart says. “That part’s challenging all the time.”
Stuart monitors several bodies of water on the property and protects the naturalized areas that provide wildlife habitat in an urban setting. Creek banks and shorelines provide habitat for animals such as green and great blue herons, teal ducks and belted kingfishers. For the area’s bat and Eastern bluebird populations, which are viewed as nonchemical alternatives to pest control because they consume undesirable insects, Stuart has installed houses to encourage nesting.
Several environmental advances were made during the rebuilding of Brickyard Crossing in the early ’90s, such as mounds built with drought-tolerant turf species that require little maintenance, nonmaintained habitats for bird nesting sites and wildflower plantings for additional wildlife habitat. Three ponds and a three-acre wetlands area also were constructed to increase aquatic habitat, while Little Eagle Creek runs throughout the golf course, bringing water into play on 11 holes. Plus, a total of 1,500 trees have been planted throughout the course over the last 15 years.
Down the road
In his 17 years at the course, Stuart has seen quite a few changes. With the advent of a new event this year and the potential for additional tournaments coming back to Brickyard Crossing, Stuart is in for more changes and is happy to be along for the ride at this uncommon gig.
“It’s a good job and a good family to work for,” he says. “You can see our proximity to the race track. And when these guys are in here, we go out there and stand right by the fence and appreciate exactly how fast they’re going.”
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