Number cruncher

PJ Salter has always loved numbers. He just hasn’t always been comfortable around them.

At the end of Salter’s first day — literally his first day — as an assistant superintendent at the Golf Club of the Everglades in Naples, Florida, superintendent Jason Gurlock wrote a “complex math problem on the board” aimed at figuring out how much product to spray. “‘I’m getting exposed on my first day,’” Salter remembers thinking. “‘My worst nightmare.’”

But Salter thrives with problems that “have exact answers.” And beyond that, Gurlock “is such a teacher.” The complex math problem worked out just fine.

“I remember spreadsheets and him wanting (then-first assistant) Mike (Sankey) to come in to explain to us where he was on the budget, how he was putting the capital budget together,” Salter says. Later in his career, at Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables, Florida, former director of agronomy Eric von Hofen “would bring us to the green committee meetings and go over the numbers from our operating budget every month, have us helping get pieces of capital projects together, calling this vendor and getting a price for that. And then when I was at Ocean Reef with (director of agronomy) Juan Gutierrez, he was very much with us in the office helping us plan projects. ‘Here’s what I think. What do you think?’

“I’ve tried to parlay that as the leader of a department.”

Salter is now director of facility and grounds maintenance at Riviera. He still oversees golf course maintenance and is now in charge of building maintenance and housekeeping, too. The precedent was set by von Hofen, who tossed his hat in the proverbial ring after the previous director of inside maintenance and engineering left the club, and wound up with that position, too. Years later, Salter wound up in weekly meetings focused on rebuilding the clubhouse, and “learned a ton about construction.” After the director of building maintenance left in 2022, Salter, like von Hofen before him, talked with general manager Mark Snure, applied for the open position and landed the promotion.

“The early months were chaotic,” Salter says — but not because of any inexperience. “Within the first month, a typical August thunderstorm came through, the clubhouse took a direct shot of lightning, and it fried a bunch of the electrical systems. Internet, phone systems, connectivity were all down.” In addition to the turf — where he relies on superintendent Drew Nottenkamper, first assistant Mike Smith and second assistant Mike Heinz — Salter was now responsible for repairing most of the club’s major tech systems. “We don’t have a full-time, in-house IT guy, so, effectively, I managed the IT and the company that we sub out some of that management to. It was a little bit stressful.”

Salter turned to a trio of indoor experts — Jose Diaz, Ariel Milan and Nelson Tanquero, all key in building maintenance and mechanics — and leaned on the skills he learned maintaining turf.

“I’ve really realized that by bringing Mike, Mike and Drew in, and over the building side, Jose, Ariel and Nelson, and having that conversation, if I just shut up and listen, these guys are going to have better ideas than I have,” he says. “I continue to learn as much about this business every day from those guys as I hope that I’ve showed them.

“A lot of superintendents — and I was this way up until this promotion — a lot of us sometimes think that our success is based on the fact that we are physically on the golf course 60 hours a week and we know where every inch of grass is. But when you have the chance to grow into a bigger role, in ways very humbling, you realize that’s only possible because you’re fortunate enough to have such great people in all departments, helping you execute the plan.”

Salter remembers faring quite well in Golf Course Budgeting for Superintendents while studying crop and soil sciences at Michigan State. After almost two decades of professional math — and two years into his new position — everything seems to have slowed down. He compares it a little to being a fifth-year quarterback. As a proud Spartan, Salter says, “I’m hoping I’m like Kirk Cousins” — who did, in fact, spend five seasons in East Lansing before his long run in the NFL.

And, of course, working with the right people is important.

“A lot of times in the golf course management and club management world, you have a group of directors in different departments — a controller, a director of finance, a director of accounting — and they play a huge role in building budgets and managing expenditures across all the different departments so that the club is profitable, or at least breaking even. … What Eric really showed me is how to look at budgets and understand budgets, how to look at how you spend things one year, how fertilizer or pesticide management is going to change the next year, and then how you budget for that. You develop that skill that makes you more valuable to the organization.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.