Keystone project

A record 91 USGA championships and counting have rolled through Pennsylvania. The state’s golf terrain ranges from soothing country landscapes outside Harrisburg, Lancaster and Allentown, sites with rocky underpinnings in and around Philadelphia, and steep hillsides in the gritty southwest and northeast corners. One of golf’s most charismatic champions, Arnold Palmer, learned the game and industry in Latrobe. A philosophical school of golf course architecture honors Philadelphia.

The state also wields enormous influence in the golf maintenance business. Legendary superintendent trees feature Pennsylvania roots. Industry companies emanate from warehouses, offices and outdoor plots in places such as Wayne, Martins Creek, Center City Philadelphia and Lebanon. In the middle of the state resides Penn State University, a turfgrass management talent development and research blueblood.

Neither Chase McEvers nor Mark Harrison are Pennsylvanians. Under the guidance of Andrew Dooley, a meticulous Pennsylvanian who attended Penn State, they devoted an entire season of their promising careers to bringing something unique to the state’s revered golf scene.

McEvers and Harrison are part of The Union League of Philadelphia’s expansive stable of turf talent. They spent last year shifting clay and then growing bentgrass and Bermudagrass atop the soupy subsurface to help build The Landing, a 9-hole, par-3 course at the Union League’s Torresdale location in northeast Philadelphia. When The Landing opens this month, it will make Torresdale the first private club in Pennsylvania with an 18-hole regulation course and a 9-hole, par-3 layout.

Situated on 21 acres with 70 feet of elevation change adjacent to the club’s Donald Ross-designed course, The Landing was routed by Steve Weisser to play both clockwise and counterclockwise. McEvers, an aspiring golf course architect from Georgia, joined the Union League team in 2022 as a project manager and guided in-the-field decisions. Harrison spent 2023 at Torresdale on loan from his assistant superintendent role at Union League National Golf Club, the Union League’s ballyhooed 27-hole, sand-supported course in southern New Jersey. McEvers (The Lido in Rome, Wisconsin) and Harrison (Union League National) were involved in mega-construction efforts before The Landing. “I have basically fallen into something you can’t even dream of doing,” Harrison says.

McEvers and Harrison, coincidentally, previously worked at Chicago Golf Club, although their time at the famed C.B. Macdonald design never overlapped. Union League director of agronomy Scott Bordner worked as Chicago Golf Club’s superintendent before heading East to build what has quickly become a formidable turf department across three locations. Bordner strives to provide employees paths for professional growth, and constructing and growing in a new course like The Landing presented a huge résumé-boosting opportunity for the Union League team.

McEvers’s and Harrison’s presence eased the burden on Dooley, whose role as Torresdale’s superintendent required bouncing between daily maintenance of the regulation course and The Landing in 2023. “I relied heavily on Chase and Mark,” Dooley says. “Every day they were on this course overseeing the big details and the small details.”

The project consumed more than 12,000 internal labor hours according to Dooley, with clearing debris from the site and grooming the subgrade to support golf turf presenting the most arduous assignments. The crew received external construction assistance from Mottin Golf, Middletown Sprinkler Company, Turf Equipment and Supply Company, and golf irrigation guru Paul Roche. “It has been a family affair,” McEvers says. “Any way you could support each other, you did. You asked what my title is. … It’s whatever is not being done.”

The team aspect of golf construction produces enduring memories and close bonds. The crew sodded its first green surround with Tahoma 31 Bermudagrass on May 10, 2023. The hole is No. 4 when playing the course clockwise and the green is shaped like … well … a pizza slice. The crew celebrated the occasion by ordering pizza from the nearby Brick House Bar & Grill. A day later, they seeded the green with a blend of L-93 XD, Piranha and Coho bentgrass.

The shaping, sodding and seeding of the green led to Harrison experiencing a revelation: a once-cluttered site was becoming a golf course. Harrison enthusiastically contacted Union League turf alum Ryan Moore, the director of agronomy at Hidden Creek (New Jersey) Golf Club, a week after the pizza party.

“When we had the first green shaped, you’re thinking, ‘Well, that’s a green site,’ and then there’s grass on it,” Harrison says. “I called Ryan, and I was like, ‘Ryan we just seeded our first green. It’s a week old!’ We were then putting a fungicide on it to make sure it’s damping off. It’s like a recipe, it’s awesome.”

Crews hustled to seed one green per week. The surfaces average around 5,000 square feet and they are designed to accept shots from both directions originating from varying elevations. Holes will range from 100 to 125 yards for daily play. And holes can be played entirely on the ground. “There’s an option to putt every one of those holes,” McEvers says.

Shots will be trickling onto greens via a turf species not associated with Pennsylvania. The Landing features Tahoma 31 Bermudagrass fairways, tees and surrounds, meaning Dooley’s team maintains warm- and cool-season fairways. The regulation course and practice facility has 31 acres of bentgrass/Poa annua/ryegrass fairway- and tee-height turf. Numerous Philadelphia-area courses have installed Bermudagrass on practice range tees, but The Landing is the first par-3 course in Pennsylvania with warm-season turf hitting surfaces.

Tahoma 31 sprigging commenced June 6, 2023, although a cold June raised concerns about obtaining the growth required to establish Bermudagrass within the project timeline. The final six acres were handled using a sod-to-sprig machine. A total of 8.86 acres of fairways and tees were sprigged, with another 1.84 acres of Tahoma 31 sod placed on surrounds. Establishing and maintaining Bermudagrass in a northern state offers tremendous learning opportunities for the Union League team.

“We developed a group of talking heads that all worked in Tahoma 31 and we’re planning on doing annual developments where we all talk about things we have done, and what worked and what didn’t work,” McEvers says. “I’m looking forward to that stuff and being able to keep growing with how the turf is managed this far north. It’s an opportunity more than anything.”

Opportunities are the essence of par-3 courses. Union League officials view The Landing as a setting to introduce new players to the game while connecting generations in a fun, relaxed, creative environment. The course features an aeronautical-themed brand as windsocks are replacing flagsticks as aiming points. Northeast Philadelphia Airport borders Union League Torresdale, and members and staff frequently encounter small aircraft overhead.

What succeeds at one club is frequently emulated by others in markets oozing golf tradition like Pennsylvania. Don’t be surprised if Bordner, Dooley, McEvers and Harrison field regular calls from turf neighbors seeking short course construction and turf establishment guidance.

“The whole purpose of this par-3 course is to get the younger generations who want to play or that social member who’s on the fence of joining as full golf members hooked on a par-3 course and give them a chance to play the game from all perspectives and angles,” Dooley says. “Hopefully we can then keep them for the next 50 years.”