Wonderful weather watchers

From coast to coast, border to border, the conditions may change but the narrative remains the same.

Be it rocky ridges, elevated terrain, arid desert, frozen tundra, windswept prairie, Atlantic coastline, purple mountain majesties — there’s a playing competitor that no superintendent in the history of golf has ever conquered.

And her name is Mother Nature.

The modern-day superintendent is facing a coalescence of factors that place an augmented onus on tracking nature’s patterns, prophesy and whim. The duel and dance with environmental changes and the game’s ascent in participation has superintendents across the union keenly aware of the tasks of preparing for and responding to weather-driven adversity.

“Weather patterns are changing a bit, climates are changing, so, at our location, we’re getting more powerful and wetter storms and creating more of an environment for ice build-up, which we didn’t have as much at all 20 years ago,” says Scott Bower, director of greens and grounds at Martis Camp in Truckee, California.

In concert, the pandemic-era rise in golf participation continues to find a dramatic demand for play. While 2022 rounds, according to the National Golf Foundation, saw a slight dip from the record-setting pace of 2021, the three-year cumulative average since 2020 still accounts for a massive 16 percent rise in domestic rounds played when compared with 2017-19.

More golf, more golfers, more rounds and more weather extremes have all led to an enhanced weight on the shoulders of the nation’s superintendents, with many on the job spending as much time looking up at the sky as down at the turf.

Tools of the trade

More than ever, superintendents are cognizant of weather forecasts dictating each and every day.

For better or bitter.

“It’s 100 percent a constant,” says Tom Caliguire, director of agronomy at Forest Glen Golf & Country Club in Naples, Florida. “I’m looking at the 10-day forecast every single day, winter or summer, and I’m probably checking it six or eight times a day. I’ve been a super for 34 years, I’m a competitive guy, and there’s one opponent I’ve never been able to conquer — the weather.”

For most in the agronomy trade, each day begins with a forecast.

“The weather, it’s a big part of my entire life. It’s every day,” says Bower, whose grounds are soon to host the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship in August. “And because of where we are, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it does get to extremes. But I do get excited to wake up and read the National Weather Service discussions and weather surveys.”

Scott Schurman, superintendent at LaFortune Park Golf Course in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I keep track constantly, and could be considered a ‘weather geek,’ I guess.”

Forecasting often, if not always, dictates agronomic practices.

“Weather is the biggest factor in the life and work of a golf course superintendent,” says Nick Leitner, director of agronomy at Indian Wells Golf Resort, a 36-hole facility in the eponymous city of the Southern California’s Coachella Valley. “It impacts when we go to feed the plant, when we go to fertilize, when we try to regulate growth, when we apply fungicidal applications or preemergent app. There are so many factors in the relationship between weather and agronomic practices.”

John Canavan, the longtime superintendent at Union League Liberty Hill in suburban Philadelphia, experiences a similar relationship with weather.

“It’s everything,” he says. “I start my day with it, check it all day and check it at night, at least five times a day, especially to check humidity levels. Basically, all of my decisions are based on the weather forecast, whether it be fungicide applications or irrigation.”

Whatever the geographic locale, whatever the season, superintendents are both akin to and diverse in the tools used to read forecasts.

“From the University of Maine, they send me weather updates twice a day that’s just for my latitude and longitude,” Canavan adds. “It focuses just on this property — doesn’t care what’s happening a mile down the road. There was a former company called Sky Bid that offered this service. Somebody else bought it and it went away, but this professor at the University of Maine was intrigued by it, so he kept it going. And he doesn’t even charge for it. The program is based on 25 years of logarithms and is self-correcting.”

Along with daily reading of National Weather Service and related National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discussions, Bower delves further into his weather study.

“I was fortunate enough to work under current GCSAA President Kevin Breen, and he’s a trained meteorologist. He taught me how to read the weather charts, how to read the jet stream and how it’s coming down from the Arctic,” Bower says. “A lot of times, it’s about watching the five-day model of the jet stream and the highs and lows of how it’s going to hit the West Coast coming down. It’s fascinating, and it’s usually always right. And it’s also another way to geek out on the weather.”

Using multiple forecasting resources is the norm, rather than the exception.

“You can’t just base your weather forecast off of one source,” says Jeff Simondet, superintendent at The Quarry at Giants Ridge in Biwabik, Minnesota. “Typically, I use my desktop to check AccuWeather, Weather Underground and Weather.com, and then take an average. And I never go two weeks out … say, five days out or three days out. If two or three resources are in agreement, I’ll go with that average.”

Knowing from whence the readings derive makes for crucial comprehension.

“And you really need to look at where the weather station is,” Simondet adds. “If you put your city (in the search), but the weather station it’s pinging from could be dozens or more miles away. For us, that can make a massive difference in the shifting of a pattern.”

For Schurman, the weather geekdom finds a loaded array of phone apps.

“It’s weird, because each resource is a little different,” he says. “I’ve got Wunderground.com, Weather Bug, DarkSky.net, a local Tulsa weather app on Mesonet, and also RadarScope, and then the Lightning Pro indicator and the Heat Index for safety reasons.”

An arsenal of screens and sources is not atypical in weather checking.

“I pretty much use my phone, but I also use my desktop,” says Tami Jones, superintendent at DeSoto Golf Club, one of nine tracks in Hot Springs Village’s Arkansas golf nexus. “I’ll go with AccuWeather, Weather.com and then also the evening TV news. I’ll check every morning, every day before I leave work and then the news at night. And if we have rain or weather systems coming in, I’ll check it more often throughout the day.”

The real-time pulse of social media provides another unique weather insight.

“I use a lot of different things, but I think social media is an incredible tool if used properly,” says Jesse Sutton, superintendent at Fox Run Golf Club in Ludlow, Vermont. “I follow a lot of different meteorologists on Twitter. Some of them are people at weather stations and some are just guys with meteorology degrees who post a lot and have real interest in weather. And I don’t know the intricacies of reading weather models, but these guys do — and these weather models are getting really, really good, even a week out. There’s one guy in southern Vermont who posts frequently, and I’ll send him some messages, gather his thoughts, especially for snow totals.”

Connecting with regional meteorologists is not an isolated act.

“They had a segment on the local news a few years back all about water restrictions at home,” Caliguire adds. “And they had a landscape company on there to do the interviews, and the segment went right after the golf courses. One of the weather girls, I sent her a private message and told her the story was completely false. So, I had the meteorologist come out here and I showed her how sophisticated our irrigation system is. And she’s a golfer, so it was so good to have her come out here and see just how important her forecast is for our business.”

Weather obsession (and acceptance)

With the new millennium finding a computer in the pockets of 97 percent of Americans, the omnipresence of cell phones makes the strive toward work-life balance a constant friend, enemy, tool and terror for the weather obsessed.

“If you ask my wife, she says I need to get off the damn phone,” Schurman jokes. “I’ve been doing a better job lately, just planting it on the bedstand when I get home, instead of carrying the phone around with me or always setting it down on the table in front of me. But if we’ve got some nasty conditions coming in, then I’ve always got it on my hip.”

The son of a superintendent, Schurman says the cell isn’t lost on the generation preceding.

“My dad was a golf course superintendent in Iowa, and it’s interesting to think about how he and his guys would have done things back in the 1970s and ’80s with the same technology that we have now,” he says. “Guess I’m like him in that I’m always thinking about this or that with the course. But I figure it’s like most supers in the country — most supers around the world — in that we take ownership of our courses. And even now, my dad, he’s 80 years old and working 40 hours a week on a mower at a course, he’s now glued to the weather on his phone. I get texts from him all the time about the weather.”

Weather checking — and app scrolling in general — has become a habitual script, on or off course. “I check Weather.com during every commercial of the Phillies games,” Canavan laughs.

A balance of home-and-away weather watching has become a blurred line. Not that everybody minds the info.

“Even when I’m on vacation, I’m always checking the weather, so it’s just habit,” says Jones, current president of her state’s GCSAA chapter. “Just always thinking about the golf course, wherever you are. I just want to know what’s happening, and if something does come up, I want to reach out to my assistant. What we do, it’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle.”

Screen-time finds amplify during seasons of potential course plight. In northern Minnesota, the threat of late-fall rain can lead to eventual spring damage.

“I’ll click the refresh button hourly, and I’m looking at the forecast like, ‘Please change,’’ Simondet says. “So, yeah, sometimes I do feel like I’m checking it too much. But you need to learn to control the controllables. Sure, I carry it home with me sometimes, but I’m working on it. You do what you can to prepare for and prevent disasters, but you just can’t control the weather. Watching the forecast every minute of every hour really isn’t doing you any good — just making for more stress.”

A fine line is swung between vocation and avocation.

“Checking weather is a constant for me, but I think that’s the key,” Sutton says. “And it’s not like I’m always working when I’m checking weather, it’s my curiosity. And, yeah, if it helps me do my job better, then it does relieve a little bit of stress.”

And screen time isn’t always limited to the cell screen.

“The first newscast is at 3 p.m., and my wife will say, ‘You know, the forecast is usually the same when they do it again at the 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock hours. Do you think they’re gonna change the forecast?’” Caliguire says. “I joke and tell her I should’ve married a meteorologist.”

Veteran sky watchers and climate observers employ a mesh of experience and new school tools.

“There’s an internal calendar we have for these practices, but I also pay close attention to the Weather Channel,” Leitner says. “And then there’s the GreenKeeper computer program I really like, the POGO Turf Pro moisture meter app that I use, a Syngenta growing degree app to track soil temps and I also like to use the Sun Tracker AR app, which I use during all seasons.”

Gut instinct on weather reading is a further factor for longtime superintendents, as timely calls sometimes need to be made for labor and staffing choices.

“During a recent winter weather event, I just had five people from our Cortez (Course), three from the Isabella and two from Balboa that came and assisted my crew,” Jones says. “And we had to jump around the course because of the frost. But I didn’t want to hurt the other courses getting ready for play, so it’s a lot about timing; Mother Nature loves to throw curveballs, so it’s oftentimes a matter of having the experience.”

Ultimately, an acquiescence of what one can’t master proves a crucial stage of both weather and turf acceptance. “You can’t control the weather, you can’t change it. All you can do is adapt,” Sutton says.

Adds Caliguire: “Grass doesn’t care if it’s your birthday, if it’s Christmas Day or if it’s New Year’s Day. Grass doesn’t care about the calendar.”

Not that superintendents are wont to toss in the towel.

“If you work outdoors, you have to be a bit obsessed with the weather,” Bower says. “That’s our livelihood. And, frankly, little tweaks, just a few percentage points of relative humidity, a degree here or there, that can make or break a season. We need to be ahead of that curve.”

Even with the massive influence of technology on weather forecasting, the occasional time-tested axiom or well-waxed postulate of local knowledge can still usurp that of any app.

“There’s an old saying around here, ‘When you hear the train, it’s gonna rain,’” Canavan says. “There’s a cargo rail line about a mile from us, and usually when you can hear it, there is rain shortly after. That’s not technical, but it does often hold true.”

Judd Spicer is a Palm Desert, California-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.