Editor’s notebook: Different is fun

John Reilly views golf, turf and life differently than most of his peers.

Standing on the eighth hole of the Links on Longboat, on a wickedly windy early winter day, Reilly riffs on the above trifecta. Staring north as he talks provides a glimpse of an oddity: two greens for the same par 3. Or at least two greens for a par 3 seems odd to you.

“We built a new green here. Some days we play that green,” says Reilly, pointing to the closer of the two surfaces. “Some days we play the other green.”

The methodology toward dual greens — and everything else — becomes apparent a month later while staring at your notes from an afternoon with Reilly, the director of agronomy at Longboat Key Club. The 45-hole facility Reilly oversees includes the 27-hole Harbourside Golf Course hugging the east side of Sarasota Bay in Siesta Key, Florida. Siesta Key is a pricey and pristine slice of high rises, homes, yacht docks and golf. Four miles separate Harbourside and the Links on Longboat.

Reilly scurries between the courses in a black pickup truck. Sudden stops on Gulf of Mexico Drive — or sometimes cart paths — are part of the fun when visiting Reilly.

The 18-hole Links on Longboat is where Reilly introduced paspalum to the club. The club’s transition to paspalum, which dramatically enhanced the product presented to members and guests, started when Reilly introduced the turf species on the fourth green in 2013. “We had some of the worst water in the world here,” Reilly says, “and Harbourside was twice as bad.”

Paspalum represented one of Reilly’s first major wins at Longboat Key Club. Taking risks and succeeding means receiving further opportunities to innovate.

Two greens on a par 3. Dormant range turf to conserve water. Ambitious data-collecting trials. Examining data while using a computer mouse backward. A forthcoming transition to an electric mowing fleet. Reilly even helped Longboat Key Club design logos.  

Every industry needs people like Reilly. Somebody must adopt new practices and technologies, or stale solutions will permeate.

Reilly views success differently than you. He’s not chasing money, titles, prestige or a work-life balance. He doesn’t care about what his peers think, although he’ll generously and enthusiastically help anybody who reaches out.  “I guess if I get to come back and I get to continue to innovate, that’s success,” he says.

He continues by describing the external noise surrounding his recent agreement with a once-prominent turf equipment manufacturer looking to rebuild its brand in the United States. “Going all-electric with a company that we wouldn’t have given the time of the day a year ago … it’s the ability to be free with that. You have people telling me you’re going to spend millions to take your shop to electric, and they’re never going to support. I don’t care. I’ll find a way.”

Longboat Key Club has seven pump stations to help irrigate 45 holes. Reilly is experimenting with incorporating oxygen into the water cycling through one of the pumps. Finding a course infusing oxygen into water and preparing to electrify its maintenance equipment might be as tricky as affording a place on Siesta Key, where the median home sale price exceeded $1.1 million in December 2023, according to Redfin. 

The members and guests Reilly strives to appease will likely never see a pump station or new fairway mower. But they notice the social putting green Reilly worked on with shaper/designer Toby Cobb to add outside the Links on Longboat clubhouse last year. The paspalum surface rolls like the greens on the course, with putts traveling intended lines at double-digit Stimpmeter speeds.

“There was a time when these guys who live here were like, ‘I’m only here, Reilly, because my wife likes this area,’” he says. “They would drive somewhere else to play golf. Now all of them stay home. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve made the changes or because we have these kinds of conditions. It’s probably a cocktail of the two.”

A native Philadelphian who learned the game on the city’s renowned Golden Age courses, Reilly worked at multiple Florida resorts and clubs before landing at Longboat Key Club. He turned a daunting job into a destination gig by thinking differently. He’s now surrounded by sun, sand, glistening water and palm trees amid a year-round golf climate.

The palette of possibility remains immense. He gestures to a half dozen tees primed for relocation to illustrate why his job satisfies the urge to tinker. The tees are within sight of the par 3 with two greens. 

“Welcome to the world our team has to live in,” Reilly says. “It’s a forever moving target for us.”

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