The little things

Justin Hunt piled up plenty of golf course construction experience early during his career but when he interviewed almost seven years ago for what would become his first head superintendent position, at Mission Hills Country Club, he acknowledges something else likely earned him the job.

“I think it helped,” he says of his background executing projects. “But I think the main reason why I got hired was I came from places that really focused on playability, and that’s what they were looking for. You don’t sometimes find that at country clubs, but this is a very competitive membership. We probably have some of the best players in the state, and it’s fun to watch.”

Hunt had never even visited Kansas City before landing at Mission Hills. Now he feels entrenched — and he knows the course well enough to help plan and pull off any number of major and minor projects. The most recent, which wrapped up last fall with the assistance of golf course architects Keith Foster and Kevin Hargrave, included full bunker and minor tee renovations. Foster guided a full course remodel back in 2007 that updated the original 1914 Tom Bendelow layout. The latest project further enhanced an incredible course, removing some bunkers, widening some fairways, adding tee areas, squaring tees, and giving a thoroughly Midwest course a somewhat East Coast aura. Hunt says the course feels like some in Virginia that he remembers playing and working on when he was growing up.

The tight layout contributes to that feel. Mission Hills is surrounded by homes — more on that later — and the property is only about 110 acres, with about 100 of those devoted to the course. The fairways are narrowed and now squared. The course measures just 6,454 yards from the back tees. And the topography is rolling enough to make you question whether you’re still in Kansas.

“One of the things we kind of changed was the style of the fairways: The zoysia fairways run right into the bunkers,” Hunt says. “By doing that, we got more width. And by getting more width, it just feels bigger.

“It was Foster’s idea to widen the fronts to make it feel bigger. I think our look is trying be a picture frame at the front.” Hunt pauses. “I just came up with that,” he adds. The revisionist phrase works just fine.

Hunt studied Transition Zone science before and during the renovation, breaking down the difference between warm- and cool-season grasses, and how different varieties might react to weather and maintenance. All tees and fairways are now Meyer zoysiagrass, with tee and approaches mowed at .300” and fairways mowed at .375” — which he calls “probably some of the shortest Zoysia around.” A1/A4 bentgrass is reserved for the greens.

“We have three to four guys who can walk mow the tees in about four hours,” Hunt says. “The benefit of the forward tees is we mow them with a fairway unit. I couldn’t have another fifth or sixth box and have to walk mow them. That would have been eight more boxes to walk mow, so this is huge.

“But when you have a lot more cool-season grass than warm-season grass, it’s just naturally more labor-intensive. There’s more push mowing, there’s more walk mowing. We walk mow greens, approaches and tees, whereas on a warm-season golf course you could probably get away with a couple triplexes in there to help out your labor budget. I like the combination. I really like being in the Transition Zone for that reason. You can have different looks. When the zoysia is going dormant, the leaves are changing and the rough is dark green, it’s a really cool contrast.”

Hunt loves showing off the course and the work of the crew. With two young children at home, he has far less time to play than he used to, but he still breaks down each hole as if he played three or four rounds in the last week.

“This is 334 yards and we have at least 10 guys who can drive the green,” he says while heading toward the 14th green. “But you have that big bunker in the front now with the little trail, you got the creek coming into play, you got the oak you have to sail, and then if you bail to the right … and the rough, hitting out of the rough, we have the greens pretty firm. It’s pretty hard to stop.”

“This is a pretty nasty green complex,” he says a few minutes later about 15. “If you go for it, you’re probably going to bogey. When I got here, there was a little bubble of zoysia, but we ran the zoysia all the way up to the approach.”

On the next hole, he says, “I was trying to get Foster and Hargrave to put in some kind of Hell’s Half Acre scenario and they both looked at me like, ‘Are you an idiot?’ And I said, ‘OK, this is where I’ll stop talking. I’ll just grow the grass.’”

Mission Hills Country Club is almost exactly the same age as the most famous Hell’s Half Acre, but its origins are far different. Like many more modern courses, Mission Hills was designed to help sell real estate.

According to A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, Volume 5, by state historian William Elsey Connelley, real estate developer J.C. Nichols “realized … the immense loss sustained by larger cities through the shifting and declining of residence sections as a result of the intrusion and encroachment of business and factories. Thus, in the development of these residence districts around Kansas City” — the planned Mission Hills neighborhood among them — “he has worked out restrictions to anchor and protect permanent residence sections. Wide open spaces are carefully provided.”

In short, Nichols added a golf course in the middle of a neighborhood with every intention of using it as a natural lure to sell homes. More than a century ago.

The city of Mission Hills is just two square miles but remains among the wealthiest anywhere around Kansas City. That should provide Hunt with more than enough capital for some more projects in his seventh year at the club and beyond.

And what might be next? More fairway connections, for starters, in an effort to make the admittedly tight layout feel and play a little bigger. The first and the 18th, the second and the fourth, and the fifth and the 16th should all be connected by the end of the 2023 season. There will definitely be more fairway squaring, too.

Off the course, Hunt will soon help build a wall, of all projects. The club is starting to incorporate more of what Hunt calls “the pickleball scene.” He says he doesn’t mind what is often described as the country’s fastest-growing sport. “The only thing I don’t like is that it’s very loud,” Hunt says. “The plastic ball and the plastic paddle, when you get four groups going down there, it’s so loud we’re putting in acoustic fencing around the courts.”

Oh, and Kansas City Country Club, which was designed by A.W. Tillinghast and later redesigned by Robert Trent Jones Sr., is within sight across Belinder Avenue. Brush Creek runs through both courses. The most errant of shots sometimes cross the street.

“We just need to buy them,” Hunt says with a laugh, “and then build one massive golf course.”

A pipe dream, of course — and one that would require every last nugget of project experience.

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.