USGA Recognizes Sagebrush for "Firm and Fast"

USGA Video on Sagebrush

In the video link above from the 2010 Golf Industry Show, the USGA identified Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club as an example of "Firm and Fast" golf course conditioning. Richard Zokol, PGA Tour player, club founder, and designer, had the foresight and vision to create Sagebrush five years ago. His goal was to create links playability in the mountains of British Columbia. The golf course was designed to be playable, engaging and aesthetically appealing, all while embracing the ground game. We are all proud of the golf course (Golf Digest's Best New Canadian Course for 2009) and the way that Superintendent or  rather, Keeper of the Green, Norley Calder has implemented the maintenance strategies to provide these conditions.

Contrary to popular belief, Firm and Fast conditions can be created on any soil type unless the region is subject to unusually high rainfall. Sagebrush is built on a silty soil. The construction was crafted based upon the maintenance regimes that were going to be required to provide the playability goals.

The Masters, My one and only trip to Augusta

In 1989 or maybe 1990, I was fortunate enough to get to go to Augusta for the Masters. I had a wonderful experience and was fortunate enough to do some things that the average fan wouldn't ever get to do. The golf course was far different than I had expected. It was an amazing piece of ground and in those years it was far more open than I had expected. And those greens had more slope than any greens I had ever seen.

Market Your Course Designer- Score Golf, Rick Young

Score Golf Market Your Course Designer by Rick Young

The Blog Post link above is an interesting article by Rick Young, which I have a different opinion on. Rick quotes Terry McAndrew's Web Street Golf Daily Pulse. Golf Daily Pulse cites marketing data from The Golf Research Group's research suggesting that Top 10 golf designer's projects are more successful than other designers based upon golf course valuation.  

Those of you that have been following this blog understand that I tend to do my own thinking. Below is my response to Rick Young's article.

Is Golf Business an Oxymoron or a Regular Moron in Golf Attire?

It's easy to look back at golf's build-up prior to the collapse and wonder what were they thinking. How did the golf business get to this point? Obviously, this recession has affected businesses across the board and there will be no bailouts for golf. But there is more to Golf's economic free fall than easy financing and a market downturn.

People got into the golf business because times were good and the golf business is sexy. Sexy, you may be shaking your head but think about this, you are at a cocktail party and there is one fellow that owns at a mini-storage warehouse that is extremely profitable and another fellow that owns a golf course that loses a million a year, which fellow will get chatted up the most? A golf course and or development owner will really draw a crowd if he has used a "big name" to design the course. So, we have people that got into the business, that may have had only a cursory understanding of the golf business based upon playing the game and possibly having been on the board at their club and we wonder why our industry crashed.

Richard Zokol Interview- Toronto Golf Show on Golf Course Design

Zokol Interview

Richard Zokol, 2-time winner and 25 year PGA Tour veteran, has some prescient thoughts on what's wrong with golf and where Golf and Golf Course Design are headed. To view the Zokol interview, click on the link above.

 Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club

Golf Digest's Best New Course

Canada for 2009

Zokol is a partner in Suny Zokol Golf Design.

40,000+ hours on Great Golf Courses

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called "Outliers". One of his contentions in the book is that to become competent in any given vocation or profession that you must spend 10,000 hours in your chosen field. I must be slower than most people because it took me over 40,000 hours spent on great golf courses before I became comfortable with my own instincts about Golf Course Design.

There are those in the Golf Design business that talk about how they have "studied" and are "students" of the great golf courses. Their studies have consisted of reading about the course, the architect, looking at pictures,  possibly plans, and a single or several trips to the hallowed ground to play golf. It has always struck me as sincere although incomplete and naive to assume that one can garner much more than the gross strategy and a general sense of a great course in such a short period of time and course of study.

Consider some additional methods to learn more about golf course architecture from a different angle. It takes time at great courses:

*Spend one week on the same course, a month, a year
*Do golf course setup, you may call it changing cups but when done well, its daily design
*Watch thousands of variously skilled golfers play the same course and holes
*Look at the golf course forward and backward day after day
*Look across golf holes and at areas between  and around holes and how they relate
*See the course before the sun comes up, at sunrise, sunset, or after dark, in the moonlight
*Look at contours from shadows created by headlights, you won't believe what's there
*Watch a downpour, where the water flows, and how fast
*See how the snow settles on the course and melts
*Watch the golf course during a wind storm, see what blows where
*See shadows at different times of the day and year
*Look at the golf course as the leaves fall from the trees and the how the shade changes
*Smell the dirt, good soils smell better than bad soils
*Look at the course when its completely dormant or browned off for over-seeding
*Shovel up bunker washouts, fix bunkers on the spot with hand tools and without a master-plan
*Watch tens of thousands of golf shots hit, land, and roll on every part of the course
*Roll balls on every green repeatedly every day and watch the ball roll, exposing all of the contours
*Learn from the people that were responsible for protecting the integrity of these courses, if any are left
*Playing shouldn't be ignored but if you are a skilled player try some shots from where less skilled players may have to play from


Hopefully, it won't take others the 40,000 hours at great golf courses that it took me to feel comfortable with golf course design. But surely, it takes more than a few rounds to learn about a great golf course. Spending significant time on great golf courses has exposed me to many of their subtleties and nuances, while developing a very different and varied perspective on golf course architecture.

Italian Grape Hoes

Quite a few people have asked me the significance of using Italian Grape Hoes to finish bunkers. It's a little bit like the old adage: if you have to ask how much something costs you can't afford it. With the Italian Grape Hoe, if you have to ask why its a better tool to finish bunkers with, then you have never used one.

The Italian Grape Hoe (IGH) has a heavy sharp blade 7-8 inches wide, depending on the manufacturer, and 10 inches high. It typically comes with a handle that is 5 feet long.

With the IGH, when finishing, renovating or edging bunkers, one always works from within the bunker. One simply chops down and pulls back a chunk of what ever material is being worked. It is at least twice as fast as using a shovel. As you can tell by the photo above, the IGH has a curved head, so it allows you to easily create the "right" angle on the edges of the bunkers, even when working on steep faces.

The first time that I saw or used an Italian Grape Hoe was at Merion Golf Club in 1980 when we did a lot of renovation/restoration work on the bunkers prior to the Open. Apparently, they had been using them since Flynn was the Head Greenkeeper and Joe Valentine was the Construction Foreman. When Flynn left, Joe Valentine took over as Head Greenkeeper and then Richie Valentine took over as Superintendent. I was Richie's Assistant in 1980 and 81.

In a future post, I'll describe "chunking" to make repairs and create features in bunkers, another original technique from the early days that was handed down to Valentine and from him to me.

Golf Architecture's Definition of Insanity

Is anyone other than me shocked and amazed at the number of and extent of changes made to new golf courses and renovations shortly after they open? Many golf course architects just keep making changes, trying to get things right. They appear to be practicing golf architecture. How many times does it take to get it right? As a golf course superintendent I spent a lot of time fixing suspect golf architecture. As a golf course architect I spend a lot of time making sure that we get it right the first time.

Perhaps owners and clubs should ask architects vying for design and renovation work, how many changes and how extensive those changes have been on completed projects. Recently I spent some time on a relatively new course by a "name" architect. After the golf course opened, numerous changes were made and more planned.

We've all heard the definition of insanity- Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Golf Architecture's definition of insanity is- Hiring the same Architects over and over again and expecting a different result- getting it "right" the first time.

Another Drawing

Great Golf Courses are a Derivative of Nature First and Man Second!

Great golf courses are a derivative of nature first and man second. That some may choose to study man first and nature secondly and possibly not at all is short sighted. Even courses that are entirely man-made should mimic nature first.

The Excerpt below is from Anarchist's Guide to Golf Course Architecture- Philosophy of Golf Course Architecture

Probably the most bizarre facet of the study of golf course design to me is that most people start with poor assumptions. The typical route for today’s designers and the budding new designers is to study all of the great Architects and golf courses or even perhaps write and comment about it. People spend years and lifetimes doing this. Maybe if you were designing buildings this would make sense, go look at the great buildings of the world. The buildings were all designed and built solely by man. But when it comes to golf courses, I consider it an inadequate course of study. The great golf courses of old were largely produced by nature and the great new ones emulate the great old ones, so whether or not the land was great, the golf holes are created to have that look, feel, and playability. This course of study, learning all there is to know about the great golf courses, is certainly understandable and it is viewed by virtually everyone but me as the proper course of action to “learn” about golf course design. You too can take the pilgrimage to the Mecca of golf and become enlightened. That’s all you need, a ticket and some time and you too can learn all there is to know.

What we are missing is that Mother Nature by and far built those great courses, not man. The only thing that I don’t like at those great old golf courses is the artificial edifice of man and that occurs mostly in unnatural looking man made fixes of bunker edges. If we want great golf courses, maybe we should go back to studying nature, natural landforms, and erosions caused by wind, water, and animals. At the heart of it all isn’t that what we seek to do? Aren’t we trying to find or create golf as it was discovered in nature? Studying great designers and courses as an adjunct to studying nature makes sense, but we need to spend more time studying nature first and then those designers that came before us. Otherwise the only thing that will have changed is that we will have a new “look” and “playability” that at some point becomes conventional. We have a chance to fight our inborn tendencies to go with the herd or I guess to put it in the Scottish golf vernacular the flock and if we can, then we will keep new golf courses less predictable and more natural than ever. If not, maybe we are sheople. Just say and do what the rest of the flock does.

Design Considerations- Greens' Contour Changes from Maintenance Practices

There is a common maintenance procedure that can and does significantly alter the putting surfaces' contours and raise the overall elevation in relation to the green surrounds. The frequent topdressing of greens to improve putting qualities was popularized in the 1980s and continues today. Frequent topdressing can easily add one quarter inch or more of sand to greens on an annual basis. So in 20 years, putting greens may be 5 inches higher. This significant build up is not noticed because it is fairly uniform over the entire green, applied gradually and therefore virtually undetectable. Any assumption that through core aeration, a lot of material is removed, would be inaccurate. In order for the greens to be acceptable putting surfaces and for agronomic considerations, after core aeration, the holes are completely filled and it takes a little extra sand to be insure that the holes are filled.

Topdressing Math, an old grass guy like me can still do the math!

• 125 tons of topdressing sand annually = approximately 2,500 cubic feet of sand
• 2.500 cubic feet divided by 120,000 square feet of greens = 0.02 feet of sand = 0.25 inches of sand annually.
• 20 years of topdressing would add 5 inches of sand over the existing surface

This kind of accumulation is evident on many great old golf courses' push-up greens. Are we so cavalier with the great masters' works? Any thoughts about Pinehurst #2 greens...hmm.

What impact does this unintended altering of contours and raising of greens up 5 inches every 20 years have on the design and playability of the golf course? The tie-ins to the surrounds may not play as designed and intended. In order to protect the playability of the fairway/green and surrounds/green interfaces, it may be necessary to start topdressing out into the approaches and the surrounds. It may also be prudent to start cutting back our topdressing volume on an annual basis and use less nitrogen and more growth regulators to maintain the putting qualities.

Vigorous monitoring of this issue will be a requirement going forward in order to protect the integrity of the golf course. Changes in maintenance practices can minimize the effects of these changes and renovations can restore the intended design/playability the golf course.