Product for the People

The 84-acre lake doesn’t come into play or require any golf-related maintenance. It does make eyes wander, whether they are supposed to focus on a mowing pattern, shot or speaker.

Once gawking concludes, veteran customers of Miami Whitewater Forest Golf Course, one of seven courses operated by Great Parks of Hamilton County (Ohio), begin noticing this isn’t the eighth hole they played as children.

Under the direction of respected Ohio-based golf course architect Brian Huntley, a crew consisting of Great Parks employees rebuilt the tees to provide playing options from 134 to 174 yards. To make the hole more enjoyable for a diverse clientele, Huntley had crews replace one expansive right greenside bunker with three small, easy-to-maintain bunkers. The peripheral of the hole also has changed, with course managers deciding last year to allow native grasses to emerge.

The well-coordinated tweaks unveiled in 2012 turned a solid hole flanked by a scenic lake into a symbol of a successful municipal golf operation. The hole has something for everybody: a natural view, open routes to the green, enough bite to test a low-handicapper and customer value created through efficient maintenance practices.

West District superintendent Jim Westendorf is standing on the eighth tee watching a pair of regular customers play the hole. After they hit their tee shots, Westendorf walks 20 yards up a slope to the seventh green. He looks at the fairway below and points out the bentgrass fairways to a visitor. Westendorf, who has spent 36 years with the park system, says the fairway didn’t always look this tidy. In his early days working for the parks, the fairways were bluegrass – and they weren’t irrigated.

Veterans of solid municipal golf systems such as Westendorf are perhaps a bit more bullish on the industry’s future than many others. Westendorf remembers what now seem like primitive times, when using technology to combine maintenance resources across an expansive park system, filling managerial positions with candidates holding turfgrass science degrees, using ASGCA members to properly alter a course and, yes, irrigating fairways seemed like far-fetched ideas.

The progression creates value. Playing the eighth hole as part of an 18-hole weekend round via foot equates to $1.39. The value creates an affordable golf entry point in the 2.1-million resident, three-state Cincinnati metropolitan area.

“We try to get as many people involved that we can playing,” Westendorf says. “One of the things that shows that is our value and our price. We’re not looking to be a $100 greens fee golf course and we’re not trying to deliver a $100 greens fee golf course.”

Great Parks attracted 202,310 golfers to its courses in 2014. The combination of daily fee players and golf merchandise pumped nearly $6 million of revenue into a park system that receives 56 percent of its funding through taxes. Exact golf expenditures are difficult to determine because of shared labor and equipment throughout the system, but by all accounts the presence of golf raises the profile of the parks and lowers the burden on taxpayers.

“It connects a lot of people to what we do as a park district,” operations superintendent Jackie O’Connell says. “They might come into the parks for golf, which is part of our mission as far as recreation, but they might stay and do other things. We are getting them out, we are getting them exposed to the game and we are giving them a good value for their dollar. We are also turning a profit on it and there aren’t a lot of municipal courses that are able to do that effectively. It helps in the whole mix of things. Some of the golfers that get to our courses associate the quality of our courses with who we are as an organization.”

GCI spent an entire day in early June touring Great Parks facilities and meeting employees. We saw and heard numerous things that can benefit everybody concerned with the industry’s future.
 

Be who you are

For Great Parks, golf is part of something bigger, which makes a municipal system similar to a country club. Great Parks operates 21 parks, with entertainment options such as multi-use trails, playgrounds, recreational fields, campgrounds and fishing/boating. How many successful country clubs operate on a golf-only model? We’re guessing where you work is more like Eastside Country Club than Sand Hills Golf Club. The same concept applies for successful resort and public courses – most offer attractive options outside of golf.

Within that diverse structure, Great Parks maintains its golf courses accordingly. Greens are kept at moderate speeds to appeal to customers with wide-ranging skills, rough is maintained at comfortable heights, and bunkers, tees and fairways always look presentable. When changes are made, they are done with the natural settings of the parks in mind. You’re not going to see artificial rock walls or water features installed along fairways. Three words immediately resonate when visiting the Great Parks’ courses: affordable, natural and playable.

“I hope customers realize we aren’t going to be Muirfield Village or some of these TPC courses as far as budget-wise, but I think the product we deliver to golfers here in Cincinnati is great,” PGA golf manager Doug Stultz says. “We are medium-priced with our pricing. I think these courses at other locations of the country would justify a lot higher rate, but you have to look at the market we are in. Cincinnati is a conservative market and there’s a lot of competition here from other golf courses. So we have to take that into account with our pricing.”

A defined niche means district superintendents and park managers aren’t working 90-hour weeks to make their courses resemble what customers see on Golf Channel. The highest green fees are found at the Michael Hurdzan-designed The Vineyard Golf Course, and they don’t eclipse $33.50 on weekends. “We all want to deliver something that looks like Muirfield Village, but we have to kind of have an expectation of what it should be and what our golfers are expecting so we can match that in our pricing and what we can afford,” Westendorf says.
 

Something for everybody

Think about the programs your facility offers. Do you have an offering for every potential customer? Are gaps in your programming driving customers elsewhere?

Escorting a visitor and group of park managers through Meadow Links, Stultz, a 25-year PGA member in his 14th year with Great Parks, rattles off the programming offered at Meadow Links, arguably the most important piece of the Great Parks golf collection.

The facility features a pay-by-the-hour, pick-your-own-experience grass practice range, synthetic turf mats, covered bays heated for winter use, secluded bays to operate instructional programs, short game practice areas, putting greens and a 2,210-yard, Hurdzan-designed course tailored for novices. Practice areas are expansive, and satisfy the needs of time-crunched low-handicappers who make six figures and beginners requiring donated clubs to try the sport.

Meadow Links doesn’t have an 18-hole course, but it does provide access to SoloRider carts, pieces of equipment Stultz proudly showcases to visitors. The one-seat carts, which are considered turf friendly, are leaner than the standard golf cart and they allow Great Parks to offer programs for disabled golfers.

Great Parks courses also host high school tryouts and matches, middle school tournaments, and family events. More than 6,800 children annually participate in a formal instructional program or event.

“What we have done is look at all the programs that are in place and adjusted and modified kind of based on what the demographics are like today and what the people are expecting today,” Stultz says. “Some of those programs have been modified to a degree to include families more. It’s not just a kids’ program, but a family program. We have to adjust with what people are asking for and getting a feel for people. I feel like we have some sort of program for everybody.”

The programs aren’t a mystery to park managers. Stultz’s staff, which includes 15 PGA members, provide weekly calendars to park managers. And park managers provide daily maintenance reports to members of Stultz’s staff. “Something like aerification, we do one course at a time and we plan that a year in advance,” says Jason Rahe, an assistant park manager who works on The Vineyard. “We make sure the course schedule is clear and they can tweak that schedule as they move forward throughout the year.”
 

Share your resources

The seven courses include 159 acres of managed greens, tees and fairways. The overall system employment swells to 1,050 staff members during peak season, and at least 200 of those employees will work on a golf course at some point.

The management structure includes an operations superintendent, superintendent of projects, three district superintendents, six park managers and four assistant park managers. Superintendents, park managers and assistant managers aren’t only responsible for overseeing golf course maintenance, they are responsible for all 17,000 acres operated by Great Parks. Crews split time between golf courses and other areas of their respective parks.

“You’re probably doing some course setup, changing cups, moving tee markers, working your way up to mowing greens, tees and fairways, roughs, those sort of things,” North District superintendent Dan Shaw says. “You would also have a healthy dose of janitorial trash collection, park mowing, string trimming, weed eating, because a lot of the same things we do in the park happen on the golf course as well, so we need string trimmers everywhere, riding mowers everywhere.”

Shaw, a 32-year Great Parks employee, says mentalities have changed as the operation evolves. Specialization exists when needed – he calls full-time spray technicians “highly specialized positions” – but employees are willing to contribute wherever needed within the parks. The labor situation also remains stable compared to many golf facilities. Full-time employees work past retirement age because of continued fulfillment and seasonal employees return to positions with little coaxing.

Seasonal employees aren’t fiercely competing for the same jobs. When Shaw, Westendorf and East District superintendent Carolyn Pottschmidt started with the system, a clear hierarchy existed. “In terms of the old days when we were mowing with Parkmasters, the top dog was the person mowing fairways,” Shaw says. “Everybody aspired to get that level and would think, ‘I want to be mowing fairways because that’s the best thing out there.’ That’s not the case any longer. It’s not just the turf has improved every year, the equipment we use to maintain the turf and the things that are available have improved dramatically over the years.”

Openings for full-time positions attract widespread interest from qualified candidates, and Pottschmidt, a 27-year Great Parks employee, says “a lot of good turf backgrounds are coming our way.” Miami Whitewater Forest park manager Andy Grau and assistant park manager Tim DesJardin, for example, joined Great Parks after working at private golf courses. Employees with turf backgrounds observe stark differences between Great Parks and their previous stops. “You might have a golf course in private industry and that’s it,” says DesJardin, who has worked at Traditions (Ky.) Golf Club and Long Cove (S.C.) Golf Club. “You focus all of your time and all of your personnel into a golf course. Here, you have a wide array of what you do on a daily basis. You’re always doing something new every day, and that’s very enjoyable to me. It’s refreshing and challenging.”

Great Parks features many characteristics of its own golf management company, according to Stultz Personnel and equipment exist to perform projects such as bunker and tee renovations without hiring outside contractors. Unforeseen problems are often solved through internal phone calls, emails or visits.

“Some of the municipalities that have management companies … the choice has been made because they don’t have the right people in place to run it themselves,” Stultz says. “When you look at our organization, we are our own golf management company with what we do and everything we offer. Why would we ever go to the outside for somebody to come in to do what we are already doing?”
 

Look forward

With a table of loyal Mill Course customers chatting behind him and co-workers sitting to his right and left, Shaw grabs a device that symbolizes the evolution of Great Parks’ golf operation: an iPad. Shaw flips the cover, opens an app and begins describing a sophisticated project illustrating how effective communication, technology and resolve are solving a problem affecting numerous parts of the parks, including the golf courses.

Great Parks has embarked on a comprehensive emerald ash borer management plan. The app shows users, in this case superintendents and park managers, trees that are slated for treatment and removal. The Vineyard, one of the most popular courses in Southwestern Ohio, efficiently removed 800 trees and treated 152 more from 2012-14 with little fuss.

“That was a total team effort,” Stultz says. “It was a huge project. You have golfers in and out, contractors in and out, park staff in and out. The communication to the guest to what was happening was flawless.”

Scenes like the one he witnessed at The Vineyard are among the many reasons why Stultz expresses confidence about the viability of well-organized municipal golf. “I don’t have any worries to be honest with you,” he says.

Annual rounds played from 2011-14 hovered around 200,000 after surpassing 277,000 in 2002. Irrigation systems are aging, and O’Connell says there isn’t a huge reserve to pursue full-blown replacements. Customers seeking major course renovations – or a new Tom Doak-designed course in the Cincinnati suburbs – are looking at the wrong place.

Skeptics looking for signs of municipal golf’s demise are also looking at the wrong place. Sharon Woods, the oldest course in the system, has hosted 2.7 million rounds since Bobby Jones hit a ceremonial first tee shot before the Board of Park Commissioners in 1938. Calculated operational and maintenance decisions ensure Great Parks will continue to offer viable options for golfers of all levels.

“I don’t see us moving to the ‘Wow’ factor or, ‘We can build it because we can,’” Westendorf says. “We’re going to be about playability, we are going to be about fun, we are going to be about making it accessible to everyone that we can.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s assistant editor.