No need to be salty about adaptation

Roughly 13 years ago I was riding with my director of golf to-be on the Links Course at the Resort at Longboat Key Club during my second interview. The course name was different. The nines were reversed, and the turf conditions were something out of a “Twilight Zone” episode. We exited 13 green and the PGA professional who moved his young family from a forever job in the Northeast asked if I could fix what I was seeing. I responded: “With a boatload of dynamite, I can.” His fear meter pegged.

Knowing all too personally the footprint of interview hari-kari, I quickly pivoted, placing an arm around his shoulder and offering the locally famous prophecy to a person I had just met. I gestured with my free hand and said: “Terry, when you and I get done with this place, there will be two statues on this island. One of you, Terry O’Hara, here where the island starts, and the other of me where the island ends.” To all of you on the way up in your turf career, don’t ever underestimate the pure unadulterated narcissism of your interviewer, especially when he or she might be or has been a golf professional.

Needless to say, I landed the gig, which was good and bad news. On the surface, I doubled my salary and received a fancy title at a unique private resort with 45 holes on the Gulf of Mexico.

In reality, it was the most messed-up golf course maintenance operation I had ever encountered. As a second-career superintendent, I matriculated based on new projects and/or renovations. I was further specified as a fixer of projects gone bad. But nothing I encountered in past job experiences could have prepped me for this place.

I had two separate courses with separate crews and superintendents. One course I named the “Graveyard” for its work culture and its agronomic acumen. The other, a 27-hole facility which received most of the play, I gave the moniker “The Gang Fight.” This shouldn’t have been a surprise during my initial interview. The general manager truncated the process after nine holes of disgust. He basically said the rest of the place looks about the same. Inside of this rested a giant maintenance facility that at the time of my hire housed a temporary superintendent. A parasitic management company promised the daily management contract and a guerilla crew headed by an equipment manager who orchestrated an overthrow of the poor chap before me.

Thank God I had three months of free housing, rabid workaholism and florid alcoholism. Although it was a brutal start, the above combination proved unbeatable to the countless naysayers and ne’er-do-wells.

I don’t remember too much from turf school, but fundamentals that stuck included air, water and nutrients. I punched tons of holes, started using the water without the sulfur burner and went to a water insoluble nutrient plan. It was a plan that had minimal short-term yield – or so I thought. For immediate impact, I went after things I could control such as membership rapport.

I quickly and most importantly learned that I was playing chess, not Jeopardy. Having all the answers was not going to keep me employed; having a plan was. I quickly delivered on the controllables such as course setup and detailing. That slow agronomic approach must have been so unique it made everything instantly pop.

I delayed my first overseed to after Thanksgiving. When everyone returned from Christmas, I looked like the chosen one. About two months before it should, the ryegrass crapped out and I looked like every other promising startup director of agronomy. But I managed some good putting surfaces. Unfortunately, the membership was sold a bill of goods, I thought, on paspalum grass and anything short of that represented a letdown.

The ryegrass took a dump because the water at Longboat is crazy salty and rainfall is literally half of what my inland colleagues experience. These two factors are very limiting for long-term, sustainable golf turf. They had the potential to send highly decorated superintendents into other careers.

Longboat Key was a place where superintendents went before they literally got kicked off the island. The irrigation water and possibly the worst delivery system of that water drove that bus.

After three years, we ended up with our current ownership group. My regime showed glimpses, but it was like a sports team that couldn’t get over the hump – until I went all-in on paspalum. The running joke was they added another body part to the statue and then construction was halted. I did not have an ah-ha moment regarding paspalum conversion. I had a Margaret Laughman moment, a “tell-it-like-it-is” conversation with a longtime member at Longboat. In a Montauk, Long Island, accent she asked bluntly, “What are you fighting it for?”

The “Graveyard” superintendent had been patching bad spots before my arrival on greens at Links with paspalum for several years. The different textures made the surfaces unsuitable for any consistent roll. But Margaret was right, because two of our 50 greens were around 85 percent paspalum and they were the healthiest greens we managed.

New ownership bought the idea. Eleven years later, in dribs and drabs, the courses are wall-to-wall Platinum Paspalum. Truth be told, I didn’t like the grass. Its counterintuitive nature on so many levels proved maddening. I was always an aggressive turf manager seeking the best greens possible. This overly dense, lush grass type shite the bed often after seemingly textbook cultivation practices while asking to be mowed lower and lower.

Fortunately, for me, although far from my understanding at the time, I got sober a little under two years into our 11-year renovation process. The side effect of the things I do on a daily basis to stay away from a drink helped me be open to innovation and led me to change regarding our grass, especially on greens.

My aggressive Bermudagrass-like management approach gave way to a freefall mowing approach that had us mowing at the width of a dime as often as possible, with scalping and crown injury eventually producing less than healthy greens. It wasn’t unlike when we previously managed Bermudagrass in the salt. I could quickly go from hero to zero, first in my own mind, then I let the naysayers get me down. It was a hell of a rollercoaster, but I never gave up. I did look at a bunch of jobs and psychologically I don’t think that is unhealthy or wrong. Much of what we try to steward is out of our control and the job hunting provided a much-needed diversion and a chance to have hope in a perceived hopeless situation.

By happenstance, I attended a talk on rolling on Michigan courses by Dr. Thom Nikolai. My takeaways were that daily rolling reduced mowing, established moisture uniformity and increased soil bacteria, leading to less disease and better overall greens performance using Stimpmeter measurements.

I came up believing the Stimpmeter was not an agronomic tool and rolling created compaction and mechanical stress. Allowing myself to be open to change and committing to daily measurements convinced me otherwise in many ways.

In 13 years at the Resort at Longboat Key Club, the courses have gone from their worst to their current best. I went from hate to great love for Platinum Paspalum. Personally, I came from a dark, dark place to a sober and clear existence sans statue.