Take a walk

John Feinstein’s “A Good Walk Spoiled” was released in 1995. It was a behind-the-scenes look at life on the PGA Tour in the early 1990s, when players like Greg Norman, Nick Price and Fred Couples dominated the game, and Tiger Woods was still an amateur.

The title was harvested from a famous quote most often attributed to Mark Twain: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Considering Twain died in 1910 and the quote did not first appear until 1948, the words leave you questioning their validity.

Last month, Kyle Callahan, director of golf course and grounds at Thornblade Club in Greenville, South Carolina, urged fellow superintendents, assistants and others to participate in a health challenge. With the help of Tony Nysse, director of golf course and grounds at Mountain Lake in Lake Wales, Florida, they managed to inspire 100 of our peers to sign up and support one another in their endeavors to eat healthier, lose weight, employ healthier lifestyle habits and achieve personal well-being.

One aspect to a healthier lifestyle is walking and it is no secret that Chris Tritabaugh, golf course superintendent of Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, has forgone his personal utility vehicle and walks the golf course daily. In fact, he recently shared with me how Nelson Caron, director of golf course operations at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida, had thanked him for the inspiration. Nelson now spends more time afoot.

When Lee Strutt, Master Greenkeeper, visited the United States in mid-November, his goal was to tour some of the best golf courses on the East Coast and study their architecture along with their presentation and agronomic operations. He accomplished this by meeting with the superintendents, walking the golf course and having a chat.

I was fortunate to meet up with my friend in December when he finally made his way from Boston down to the Sandhills of North Carolina and we toured Tobacco Road Golf Club and Pinehurst No. 2 together. What a treat it was to spend the day walking all 18 holes of Tobacco Road with golf course superintendent Morgan Stephenson. Morgan has worked there since the early days of the course’s construction and its opening in 1998. He shared with us details of the course’s history and evolution of this popular yet polarizing design in the golf course architecture world.

The next day, we walked the venerable Donald Ross-designed Pinehurst No. 2 with course superintendent John Jeffreys. Talk about a history lesson as John showed us some old routings, lost holes and discussed the challenges of maintaining sandy waste areas opposed to traditional rough. Both visits were inspirational and made me think: Why don’t we as American golf course superintendents do this more often?

Course walks are a way of earning education credits in BIGGA’s Continuing Professional Development scheme. I am sure if you polled Morgan and John, they would tell you they got as much, if not more, out of our visits than their guests. Those two days really were two I will never forget.

A few days after Lee returned home to the United Kingdom, Mitchell Driver, a peer from Sydney, Australia, posed a question on social media asking: “It would be amazing if golf courses did history/architecture course walks. … Imagine Royal Melbourne doing a two-hour course tour in the late afternoon in summer … Other historical sites around the world do tours. No reason why golf courses can’t.”

On the same day Mitchell posed this question, I had spent the morning walking Carolina Golf Club with two members, answering their questions about the course, conditioning, presentation and, most prevalently, the architectural evolution as it applied to our renovations and restoration over a decade ago. OK, I confess my walk with my members did involve golf clubs and all previously referenced walks did not. But I could easily see myself offering an opportunity to walk the course and discuss the strategy behind certain features, the maintenance and, more important, the evolution.

Time has its way with golf. No matter how carefully we maintain our courses, Mother Nature will always win out. Grasses not originally planted invade our greens, fairways, tees and native areas. Bunkers erode, change their shape, and sand becomes contaminated with stones, leaves and dust. Mowing patterns migrate, cart paths crack, trees grow and die. A course walk would be a fantastic opportunity to educate members, guests and patrons about these very things, share ideas with peers, and all the while burn a few extra calories and breathe some fresh air.