Editor’s notebook: That other desert

Kirk Christensen maintains and manages a golf course in the California desert.

He doesn’t overseed fairways with ryegrass, because ryegrass covers the fairways year-round.

The tee sheets Christensen examines aren’t filled with snowbirds, because the houses surrounding the course are occupied year-round. 

The design his team maintains is neither lavish nor impractical, because William F. Bell designed solid courses everywhere he worked.

Christensen holds a superintendent/general manager role at Green Tree Golf Club in Victorville, California. Victorville (pop. 135,900) sits in Southern California’s High Desert, less than 100 miles from the Low Desert glitz of the Coachella Valley. A native of golf-rich Monterey County, Christensen first passed through Victorville returning from his Las Vegas honeymoon while in his mid-20s. Nine years ago, his company, Sierra Golf Management, sent him to the High Desert to oversee Green Tree, a municipal course owned by the City of Victorville. “Never thought in a million years this is where I would end up,” says Christensen, whose uncle Jeff Christensen founded Sierra Golf Management.

Despite a sizable population that has doubled in the last 40 years as Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego sprawled outward, Victorville has just one public course inside its limits. Green Tree opened in 1963 and the layout demonstrates why Bell’s Southern California work endures. Bell, a protégé of his father, William P. Bell, who worked for George Thomas and Willie Watson, thoughtfully used rolling terrain to give Green Tree variety and strategy.

The uphill first hole, for example, gently bends right with an approach playing to a green flanked by bunkers on both sides. Generous greenside bunkers protecting sloping greens are a Bell staple. San Diego puncher Torrey Pines is Bell’s most recognizable work.

Compared to courses in other parts of California, Green Tree offers residents a tremendous bargain: the highest walking rate is $30 on weekend mornings. Walking a High Desert course comes with peril, especially in July and August, when the average highs exceed 90 degrees and temperatures reaching the 100s are common.

The climate represents the biggest difference between Southern California’s two deserts. As jarring as the above numbers appear, the High Desert is a more golf-friendly summer environment than the Low Desert. Winters are colder in the High Desert and Green Tree, just under 3,000 feet elevation, and the area experienced multiple snow accumulations this March, although temperatures are still warm enough for year-round golf. 

“We’re open 365,” Christensen says. “Now they’re also open down there in the summer, but if you go down to the Low Desert in August and you’re not teeing off before 10 a.m., you’re not teeing off because the pro shops are shutting down. Golf is more accessible year-round here, even though we don’t have the ‘premium season’ like they do from October to March.”

The climate brings myriad challenges for Christensen and his crew.

For starters, Victorville averages less than 5 inches of annual rainfall. A soggy start to 2023 resulted in more than 3 inches of rain through the first three months. Christensen joked in mid-March that the zany weather was starting to align with a scheduled aerification later in the month.

“In the nine years I have been here, I have had snow on aerification, I’ve had rain, I’ve had dust storms,” he says. “If it can happen, it has happened, and it’s always happened on the days we go to aerify greens in the springtime. The spring weather is so crazy. You just never know what you’re going to get.”

Christensen and other savvy water managers in the region view the past few months as an anomaly. Green Tree has removed 1.25 million square feet — just shy of 29 acres — of peripheral turf over the past decade. Aesthetics are straightforward: green down the middle and brown around the edges. Playing surfaces are irrigated with a blend of municipal and well water.

“Of all the things we deal with, and all the struggles, and all the costs we have, nothing outweighs water,” Christensen says. “It is by far the most precious commodity that we have.”

In the High Desert, getting water onto the turf during the hottest stretches of the year can be cumbersome. Summer winds exceeding 30 miles per hour make working outdoors on 100-degree days tolerable.

“When the wind is blowing 30 miles per hour, I don’t care how much you water, most of that water is not hitting the ground, so we do fight the winds a little bit in the summertime,” he says. “We’ll take 103 degrees and no wind over 90 and 20 mile-per-hour wind, because 90 and 20 mile-per-hour wind means we’re drying out by 3 in the afternoon. We syringe our greens every day in the summertime to minimize our water and minimize the wetness of the golf course.”

The hand-watering season on Green Tree’s bentgrass/Poa annua greens stretches from late May to mid-October. Consider Christensen a rare superintendent who relishes dragging hoses.

“It’s the best job out there,” he says. “When it’s 100 degrees and I have a hose in my hand, I’m a pretty happy guy.”

Happy when hand watering? Details, please.

“We have very little humidity here,” Christensen adds. “In the middle of the summer, on a bad day, we’re typically at 10 percent. On a normal day, it’s 4 percent. There’s almost no humidity to speak of usually.”

The periods shortly before and after the hand-watering season present the best golf and outdoor working conditions in the High Desert. Approaching a decade in his position, Christensen has learned the importance of pacing himself and his crew to handle the demands of year-round golf. Seeing family at work, terrific views and being involved with a game he has spent his entire life appreciating are among the perks of the job. Christensen’s wife, Alyssa, helps him manage the golf shop and the couple’s work surroundings include sunrises over the San Bernardino Mountains and sunsets over the San Gabriel Mountains. 

“I honestly can’t imagine myself doing anything else,” he says. “It’s a great way to live. This is a great career to raise your family around and the people are great to be around. I just really love everything about it.”

Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s editor-in-chief.