It’s a Minnesota thing

This past summer, I had the opportunity to return to one of my favorite cities and one of my favorite courses, Hazeltine National Golf Club. I spent a day working with golf course superintendent Chris Tritabaugh as he and his team prepared for the Ryder Cup.

As many of you know, I’m a big hockey guy and often use that sport as the benchmark against which to measure all others. So here goes: Other than the Stanley Cup, the Ryder Cup is the greatest team championship in sports. Yes, it’s that big, that important and that good. And Chris will have the course just as good when the first tee shot is struck Sept. 30.

Minneapolis is a great city for many reasons, not least of which is its love of spectator sports – Twins, Wild, Vikings, Timberwolves, Gophers – and the active participation in all sorts of games year-round.

Golf is central to the life of many Minnesotans, both as players and keen spectators. Championship golf has come to “The Land of 10,000 Lakes” before, including the Walker Cup, Curtis Cup, Women’s Amateur, Girls Junior and many other events. Hazeltine is the best of the best, having hosted both the 91st U.S. Open (1991, won by Payne Stewart) and 91st PGA Championship (2009, when Y.E. Yang upset Tiger Woods).

Hazeltine’s first big event occurred just a few years after it opened, when it hosted the 1970 U.S. Open won by Tony Jacklin. That tournament might have been best known for Dave Hill’s comment that all the course was lacking was “80 acres of corn and a few cows.” Hazeltine has come a very long way since its early days: Rees Jones has fine-tuned his father’s masterpiece and Chris’s team will bring it to perfection.

A native Minnesotan, Chris was born in St. Paul, educated at the U (University of Minnesota), and furthered his career by staying in state. He started at Albany Golf Club then moved to Town & Country Club (St. Paul), where his first job was to walk mow the nursery green. After two years, he moved to St. Cloud, then back to Town & Country Club, under the legendary Bill Larson. Northland Country Club (Duluth) offered his first head superintendent position, and in 2013 – with a Duluth-raised wife and two kids – he accepted the position of a lifetime at Hazeltine.

Like all natives, he loves his home state and is proud to show it off. “We take pride in hosting events,” he says. “It’s really cool that the focus of the golf world will be on our state, and our club, hosting the Ryder Cup.”

It wasn’t without sacrifice. Already limited to a short season, Hazeltine’s members had to give up their golf course for the last month of summer. “Plus, they’ve been hitting off mats, cart traffic has been limited, they’ve been playing to alternative hole locations so we can protect those identified by Kerry Haigh of the PGA of America and captain Davis Love,” Chris explains.

Just one walk around the course proved to me that he and his team are on target to produce optimal conditions that will test the teams and bring TV viewers into the middle of the drama that is the Ryder Cup. So how did Chris prepare for this challenge? First and foremost, he lauded his staff.

“I’ve never asked them for a thing; never told a soul when to stay or when to go home,” he says. “They’ve just done what they’ve needed to do at the level required, all the time. I once heard a jockey interviewed after his horse won easily: ‘I never had to ask my horse for a thing, he just knew it was time to race,’ was what the jockey said. My staff knows when it’s time to race.”

He also observed how other clubs prepared for big events. At the U.S. Open at Oakmont this past June, Chris noticed the focus of the entire staff was on tackling the task at hand. He also noticed how well superintendent John Zimmers knew his golf course. Taking a page from Zimmers, Chris re-learned his golf course and acquired a new focus for himself and his crew. “I became more emotionally involved, and in doing so, my pride and passion increased,” he says. “The very idea of hosting the Ryder Cup brought me to tears.”

Chris also gave thanks to his corps of consultants, all of whom shared the mutual goal of making the course better each week, in sync with the requirements of Haigh and Love. “It’s kind of like your wedding,” is how Chris imaginatively puts it. “Friends, family and everybody in one room gets to know one another and have a good time.”

Of course, this home boy wants Team USA to win, but even if it doesn’t, “I will know that our crew gave it our very best shot,” he says.