After discussing the future for the better part of an hour, longtime turf pro Matt Gourlay considered some specific things that might be happening in 2035.
“World War III?” he asks.
“I’m so bad at this,” he adds. “I read about Bitcoin back when it was a penny, and I should have done something then. I read about stuff, but I’m very slow to jump on the bandwagon.”
World War III would be earth-shattering for everybody. Bitcoin has been earth-shattering for some. A move across three states, 22 hours and nearly 1,300 miles was earth-shattering for Gourlay and his family. Earth-shatteringly positive.
Gourlay headed west and north with his family a little more than a year ago, from Colbert Hills Golf Course in Manhattan, Kansas — which his father, David, grew in, and where Gourlay worked for nearly 20 years, the last 17 as superintendent — to Hillcrest Country Club in Boise, Idaho. His wife, Jenna, and their son, Payne, had lived in Manhattan their entire lives. Gourlay had interned in three other states, but he only worked professionally at Colbert Hills. “Earth-shattering change can be good,” he says.
One thing that Gourlay hasn’t changed around a new job, a new home and new agronomic challenges is his commitment to continuing education. He still attends local, regional and national sessions, still reads industry publications and scrolls through social media, searching for best practices. And he still implements new technology whenever he thinks it will help him, his team and the course.
High on his list of new tech? The USGA’s Deacon app and GS3 smart ball — its data helped him show Hillcrest members that, despite aerification holes still covering the course, trueness and smoothness on the greens had returned to pre-aerification levels within eight days — and turfRad soil moisture mapping, which he hopes will eventually pair with irrigation systems to automatically increase or decrease runtimes based on parameters.
Oh, and artificial intelligence. Gourlay is all in on AI.
“I’m toying around with ChatGPT, Grok, some other ones, and I’m trying to learn how to utilize those the best possible way for us, whether to become a better communicator to the membership, or to help create action plans and standard operating procedures. If we want to train staff, it’ll help with safety and training for them. The opportunities are endless.”
Gourlay already uses AI to help him write weekly and monthly newsletters to members — he lists the topics he wants to cover, then modifies what the tech produces — as well as a five-page report on tree maintenance. He even used it to write a response to an email that riled him. He still read it, still edited it, but the tech helped him remove the emotion. Who knew AI could be the 2020s equivalent of stepping away from the keyboard and counting to 10?
Gourlay still relies plenty on his assistant superintendents, Ernesto Gamez and Robert Archbold, who have worked at Hillcrest for 12 and seven years, respectively, as well as the rest of 12 year-round full-timers and his own decades of experience. He’s excited for the future, but he “doesn’t see a whole lot of change in 10 years.”
“Automation is going to change things — automation as in some sort of robotic mowers to help us maintain some areas so the people can focus on more of the detail work. We’ll figure out how to implement some of this AI for us,” he says. “Ten years just seems so far away, but I know it’ll go in an instant. My son just turned 7 and it went by in a flash.”
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