Not your normal neighbors

There is a lot made about the golf course superintendent fraternity but in few instances does it match the lived experience of Bill Davidson, CGCS, and Matt Taylor, CGCS. It is going on 17 years that Davidson, at the Country Club of Naples, and Taylor, at Royal Poinciana Golf Club, have been professional neighbors. If not for the chain link fence between their shops on Solana Road, you could literally putt from the doorstep of one to the other.

Remarkably, though, they might be closer still in spirit.

Each refers to the other as the brother they never had, the counsel they trust implicitly and the “shrink” they don’t have to pay. “These are the relationships we’re supposed to have in our lives, right?” Taylor asks rhetorically. The kind that Davidson says keeps you upright when you need it and always honest with yourself. “Matt must have told me a hundred thousand times, ‘Shut up! You don’t have any idea how good you have it,’” he laughs.

While they have been hip pocket neighbors since early 2007, their professional relationship dates beyond that. Taylor was assistant superintendent to Tim Hiers, CGCS, at Collier’s Reserve Country Club when Davidson interned there in 1995. It took a week or two before Taylor realized they’d met earlier still.

“One day, Matt says, ‘Hey, Davidson. Do you have a sister named Toni?’” Davidson laughs. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, yeah, I dated her.’” That was back in middle school and while Taylor clearly recalls, Davidson, 10 years younger, was very much Billy the kid at the time. “I don’t ever remember that, thank God!” he says.

Naples was a smaller presence on Florida’s golfing landscape then. Taylor says there were only three high schools. “Everybody knew everybody,” he adds. “It was a sleepy, sleepy town many moons ago,” Davidson says. “And Matt grew up here like I did, hunting and fishing and just being a beach rat. We have so much in common, in our personal lives as well as professionally.”

Today, U.S. News and World Report says there are 19 high schools in Collier County and the National Golf Foundation says that, per capita, Naples is the most concentrated golf market in the country. It’s not just that there are 92 courses in and around the city on the Gulf of Mexico, it’s that so many of them are so high-end. Keeping them that way demands a similar concentration of highly talented, highly motivated superintendents.

All of which has allowed those “beach rats” to rise in the profession without having to roam like so many of their peers elsewhere. And neither could be more grateful for being able to retain that proximity to their roots as well as to each other.

“Billy and I go way back,” Taylor says. “We’ve always been friends. We know each other’s families. We have a deep mutual respect for each other. We have a lot of the same friends in the business. We fish together. We have a good time together. I never had brothers, but Billy is one of those guys for me.”

After graduating from Lake City Community College, Davidson returned to Collier’s Reserve in 1996 as a spray technician working closely with Taylor, then an assistant, for about six months before Taylor moved to Bonita Bay Club East. Even then they saw plenty of each other. Davidson was good friends with some of Taylor’s assistants.

“I would run into Matt all the time when I would go play golf with them or to check out some project they were doing,” he says. “And because we were both Tim Hiers’ disciples, because we had that in common, we would always catch up with each other at meetings and events.”

Like Hiers, and very much at his instigation, Taylor and Davidson both served long stints at an association level, including terms as president with the Everglades GCSA and Florida GCSA. “Matt and I never talked about serving, we just did it because Tim was always conscientious about developing that in us,” Davidson says. “Having both worked for him, being raised in that discipline of involvement and his standards, we just drank the Kool-Aid and we bonded over that.”

That bond holds like glue today, at work and away from it.

In May, Taylor was about to round out preparations for the Florida State Mid-Amateur Championship when he had a roller go down. “It was about as critical a time as it could have been for us,” he says. “In five minutes, I had a roller from Billy and it really kind of saved my bacon.”

Sometimes, the phone call, either way, is asking for a second set of eyes on a turf issue. Sometimes it’s for simpler things — a hydraulic fitting, an irrigation fitting, a hose, an oil filter, whatever it might be.

“It’s always, ‘Yeah, come and get it from the parts room,’” Davidson says. “And that’s extended beyond us to our employees fostering great working relationships with each other. My mechanics are good friends with his mechanics, just like our assistants. They’re always collaborating, bouncing things off each other.”

Sometimes the phone calls are more earnest.

“You know, this is not the easiest profession. Sometimes you need a shrink,” Taylor says. “There are times when you really don’t want to take it home. And it helps to talk to somebody who understands and maybe can help you with your perspective. It goes both ways. I may be 10 years older, but there are times when I’m in his office.

“There’s been times when one of us has said, ‘I don’t think you really want to go about it that way.’ The fact we are such good friends means we’re able to take that with a grain of salt, and maybe we don’t agree right then, but if we think about it a little bit …”

Davidson recalls Taylor being an enormous help during a divorce some years ago. “I’d call Matt and he would come and play doctor and I would play victim,” he says. “And at the end of it, he would say, ‘Right, you’ve got five minutes. Then quit feeling sorry for yourself and suck it up. Life goes on.’ He’s played a lot of roles for me, but most importantly as a great friend.”

There was also a time when Taylor had to come to the rescue far from the golf course. It was late one afternoon when Taylor was hosting the whole family for Sunday dinner. Davidson called. He’d been boating and, almost out of gas, headed to Snook Bight Marina in Fort Myers Beach to refuel, only to find the marina was closed.

“He was screwed,” Taylor says. “His truck and boat trailer were down in Naples.”

Taylor grabbed his youngest son, a couple of gas cans from his storage shed and kissed his wife on the way out the door with the news he’d be back in a few hours. “She knows Billy. She knows the relationship,” he says. “There was no ‘Where the heck are you going on a Sunday?!’ She never questioned it. Billy was in a bind. ‘Gotta go.’ And he would do the same thing for me, I know.”

That trust is absolute.

Davidson, who is in the midst of a major renovation, was spraying out fairway grass when his sprayer gave up the ghost. As has happened countless times between both properties, a loan was requested. This time, for once, not for long, but for a few seconds, Taylor admits having to think about it.

“That’s kind of a huge ask. I mean, I’m kind of weird about it but I would never put Roundup in a sprayer,” he says. “Not when I use it on greens. I know you can clean it and neutralize it and stuff like that but …”

Even so, Taylor told Davidson he can use it. “That’s because you know. You know the guy is going to do the right thing,” Taylor says. “We have the utmost professional respect for each other, not just personal respect.”

All of the above speaks to the kind of relationships that Davidson says every superintendent needs to have and needs to work at.

“It’s never a question of whether you are going to need friends, it’s a matter of when,” he says. “I tell my assistants, God forbid our building burns down and one day we show up and we have nothing. But I can make three phone calls and I’ll be able to get enough equipment here to take care of business. Whether it’s for someone who can do that for you, or be a mentor, a counselor, a confessor, you need to develop friends like that.”

Taylor concurs.

“When you spend any sort of time in this profession, you go through some things,” he says. “It’s nice to know that when stuff hits the fan, that there’s somebody on the other side of the fence to go talk to.”

Trent Bouts is a South Carolina-based writer and frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.