Maintenance along the wonderful rocks

Nick Lerner is wearing a lightweight black jacket while walking the front nine of Bonnie Briar Country Club on an early September morning. When he reaches the third hole, an uphill par 3 playing over a branch of a serene river, past rock he helped expose and onto a green covered with healthy Poa annua, Lerner begrudgingly removes the jacket. It’s shortly after 9 a.m.

Of all the days, weeks and months since Lerner became superintendent at the private club in Westchester County, New York, many of the toughest have come this year. Lerner documents activity inside “At-A-Glance” planners. He records temperatures, precipitation, sprays and personal observations. He uses a color-coded system to highlight pracitces on greens, tees, fairways and approaches. He has kept daily records since starting at Bonnie Briar on October 20, 2003.

Summer 2022 brought eight straight days at or above 90 degrees, numbers you expect to see in an agronomic log in Memphis or Atlanta or Charlotte, not a greenspace 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan. Lerner isn’t bluffing when he says, “this is the most difficult summer I have ever experienced.”

Throwing a jacket over a blue golf shirt, both sporting Bonnie Briar’s scripted logo (mirrored Bs atop interlocking mirrored Cs), parking a utility vehicle by the first tee, entering dynamite Devereux Emmet-designed golf ground, and walking and discussing gritty work presents a needed change-of-pace morning. As expectations soar because you’re always unfairly compared to other private clubs in one of America’s best golf neighborhoods and crew sizes continue to shrink, superintendents in Lerner’s situation seldom find time to trot, stop, chat, reflect and explain.

Is the third hole too soon to remove the jacket? Will carrying a jacket lessen the enjoyment of a comfortable walk? “I don’t mind carrying it,” Lerner says. “It’s well-deserved this time of year to wear a jacket.”

So much has happened in the 101 years since Edward Lyman Bill established Bonnie Briar Country Club. Heck, so much happened before then, including the British establishing a Revolutionary War encampment on the site in 1776. Some believe a form of golf was played on the land surrounding the ninth tee before the “Apple Tree Gang” knocked shots around the Westchester County land where Saint Andrews Golf Club started introducing golf to the Northeast in 1888. Bonnie Briar and Saint Andrews are 12 miles apart. Famed Winged Foot Golf Club is across the street from Bonnie Briar. Quaker Ridge Golf Club and Wykagyl Country Club are a few par 5s away. Did we mention Bonnie Briar resides in a great golf neighborhood?

Bonnie Briar unveiled its first nine Emmet-designed holes in 1922. The 18-hole course debuted the following year. Bonnie Briar survived the Great Depression and World War II. Artist Norman Rockwell, a mega-celebrity in the pre-digital era, called Bonnie Briar his home club. Golfer Doug Ford, who hoisted a Wanamaker Trophy and donned a green jacket, practiced and played at Bonnie Briar. The club almost lost Emmet’s wonderful routing over and through rocky terrain, but a group of persistent members in saved a significant part of the course from being converted into housing during the 1990s.

As the club faced an uncertain future, challenges recruiting and retaining members led to deteriorating conditions. Weeds and shrubbery stifled Bonnie Briar’s defining features: a series of rock outcroppings along every hole. When resources dwindle, essential agronomic practices are bypassed. The people who deeply cared about Bonnie Briar understood how the prolonged tussle of thwarting the sale impacted the quality of the course.

“There was a wide agreement among all the members that the golf course was the key to the future of Bonnie Briar,” former club president Ira Goldfarb says in the recently released documentary “Bonnie Briar a Centennial history” compiled by former member Paul Lieberman. “Once we were able to save it, we were presented with the challenge of revitalizing it.”

On his first day, which was “cool, clear and nice” for late October, Lerner’s team started the revitalization with a drill-and-fill procedure scheduled by legendary agronomist Ed Etchells, whom the club hired as a consultant. Lerner and his crew worked into darkness and the project lasted multiple days. “The course was in need of a lot of help,” Lerner says nearly 19 years later while walking toward the raised ninth green as his team aerifies fairways. “It was a really intense process, but well-needed. The greens were in really poor condition. From there, it has been nothing but upward.”

Through the years, Lerner has polished the turf and reintroduced at least two acres of rock outcroppings. The first hole is a stout par 4. It plays 451 yards from the middle tees, bends right to left and descends to a green with a front-to-back slope. From the green, a golfer sees a boulder bordering the sixth green that’s actually two boulders with a sliver of rough between the grayish rock. “It looks like it got hit by lightning and split into two,” Lerner says. The second hole descends deeper, with a branch of the Sheldrake River intersecting the fairway. To the right of the green sits a rock outcropping, more evidence of the implausible construction feat achieved by Emmet and his team in the 1920s. After a golfer exits an alley of rocks and trees on the fourth hole, it becomes apparent that unique visuals are omnipresent.

And to think, Emmet’s crew built the course using horses, scrapers and mules. And to further think, a period existed where most of it was hidden.

“Members will say to me, ‘Nick, why did you put the rock there?’” Lerner says. “Those were there from the start. That’s how they were back when Emmet and others wandered the property.”

Lerner uncovers as much rock as time and labor permit. He admits the process has slowed because of less time and labor. Lerner’s summer crew reached 17 workers in 2022, a nearly 30 percent decrease from the pre-pandemic total. The year-round staff includes assistant superintendent Chad Lemere, foreman Carlos Montero, mechanic Leonel Baez, 40-year employee Eddie Garcia and Ricardo Gomez.

Superintendents everywhere, including those in the hyper-competitive New York Metropolitan market, have adapted practices and programs to handle current labor realities. For Lerner, that meant exploring triplexes to mow greens.

“We would verticut with a triplex machine occasionally,” he says. “But to use a designated triplex mower on a regular basis was not a usual practice from my experience. When COVID hit, I quickly realized we’re not going to have labor. As the COVID world forced us all to do, we needed to adapt. It was no different for me in my world. I had to adapt to using a triplex on greens because I didn’t have labor to get done what we needed.”

Bonnie Briar lacked a triplex setup for greens, so Lerner rented a machine in 2020. He studied various models and learned Toro had released the all-electric Toro Greensmaster eTriFlex 3370. Homes with wooded backyards rest on property boundaries and reduced noise levels generated via lithium-ion batteries presented opportunities to mow greens earlier. The absence of hydraulics on the Greensmaster eTriFlex 3370 also intrigued Lerner.

Once he found the right triplex for Bonnie Briar, Lerner shifted his attention to helping operators maneuver triplexes on small, perched greens. Operators have been taught to extend turns into the rough and deploy no-mow backups passes on pinched greens. Walking mowers are used for cleanup passes. Bonnie Briar has two Greensmaster eTriFlex 3370 to maintain three acres of regulation, practice and nursery greens. A worker accompanies each triplex operator, fixing ball marks and blowing clippings and debris as greens are mowed. That worker doesn’t have much time to complete those tasks. Mowing the 13th, 14th and 15th greens took just 22 minutes on the early September morning Lerner walked course.

“We used to mow greens with five guys,” he says. “We’re now using two and a half, or at most three guys. In the world, right now as we are standing here today, the labor situation hasn’t changed. We’re competing against every industry that’s out there and they’re paying more on an hourly basis. We’re in a seasonal business and people don’t want that. They want that year-round position. It’s been a challenge to find staffing and having this tool allows us to get the job done with the same, if not better, results.”

For 101 years, Bonnie Briar has endured. For 19 years, Lerner has quietly found ways to position the club for future prosperity.

“Sometimes you forget all you have done because you’re here every day,” he says.

Sometimes you need to walk and reflect to appreciate it.