Slopes and swings

Overseeing a highly regarded public layout in Minnesota, the most stressful part of Jeff Simondet’s calendar isn’t when players are on the golf course his team maintains.

Rather, he sweats it out amid the sub-zero temps of the dead of winter.

Simondet, golf course superintendent at The Quarry Course at Giants Ridge in Biwabik, Minnesota (three hours north of the Twin Cities), maxes out a 28-week golf season by keeping a close watch on his agronomy scorecard across the property’s sister season if skiing.

“The season doesn’t necessarily stop after the courses close,” says Simondet, the superintendent at The Quarry since 2013. “The most stressful part of my season is not the summer — it’s the winter. If we can get past November and December and into January without any rain, we’re gonna be good. And then there’s March and April, with the spring season melt. There can be all the snow runoff, and if it freezes hard at night, that’s where the winterkill can come in.”

The calendar has no time for excuses.

“It’s a pretty short window, and people expect the best conditions. They don’t want the excuses of, ‘The weather’s bad,’ or ‘We’re short-staffed,’” Simondet says of a taut golf timeline that runs from early May to mid-October. “People coming to a top facility, they want and expect the best of the best. They want results.”

Expectations at Giants Ridge come across dual calendars. Ski season is similar in length to golf, starting Thanksgiving weekend and going through early April. Downhill ski snow is human-made across 35 runs and twin terrain parks for both snowboarding and freestyle, while cart pathing (and beyond) on The Legend Course, the resort’s other layout, further sports 37 miles of Nordic and snowshoe trails; so vast and detailed is the trail system that it was originally designed as training nexus for the U.S. Ski Team.

A season-to-season baton pass requires the mindset of goodness for both goose and gander. 

“There’s always gonna be … well, I wouldn’t call ‘em tiffs, but you just have to have the communication between both sides, and do your best to make everybody happy,” Simondet says. “Even though you’re never going to make everybody happy. You just try your best to work with everybody. In the end, we’re all a team. If ski has a good season, it will benefit golf; and that goes both ways. It all benefits Giants Ridge as a whole.”

Come the annual close of the golf campaign, Simondet gets shredding on his winter work.

“The first thing we do is break down all our signage, whether it’s a tee block, a traffic post, all the cart direction and yardage signs. And all of that is made in-house with our wood carving machine,” he says. “We break that all down, re-stain everything, re-paint everything by hand, and then re-make anything that needs fixing or repair or changes. That all takes about a month.”

The golf off-season work ensues with keeping a clean scene for ski guests.

“We’re responsible for snow removal at all our maintenance shops, taking care of snow removal at The Lodge and the onsite restaurant,” Simondet says. “And it can be a lot. Last winter was probably the most we’ve had for snow. I think we broke the all-time Minnesota record with close to 10 feet of natural snow. And it didn’t leave. On April 28, we were blowing snow off the fairways on Quarry.”

Turnaround time? This past year, Simondet was asked to be open by May 11.

“We have walk-behind snowblowers that we’ll use on greens and, luckily, we also have these Ventrac tractors, with all of these different utility attachments, which I’ll mainly use on fairways,” says Simondet, adding that, while meeting the date, he still had snow on tees upon opening. “I took a Snapchat video on our ninth hole, and I had my operator go in all the drain swales and take up the shoot so it would melt quicker — and there were 22 inches in there.”

Operating with a staff of approximately 25 for golf season, in winter, Simondet’s crew is down to himself, an assistant and equipment manager.

Not that a deep cache of his crew strays far. Amid golf’s ongoing, national oncourse labor concerns, Simondet has increasingly advantaged the pairing of powder and P-wedge.

“A big chunk of the staff is dual season,” he says. “In the winter, they range from lift operators to groomer operators, snow removal, grooming cross-country trails. A big portion are year-round, which benefits both golf and ski. For years, we struggled to retain employees. We were having to hire 70 percent new staff every year, and that was a struggle in the spring, finding 20 new people to hire and retrain. We went from that to having about 15 people now all ready to go.”

Keeping staff onsite across the year starts from the hiring outset.

“If an employee is new to the property, we’ll discuss that in the interview, talk about the potential for year-round work, with benefits,” Simondet says. “And if we do have a candidate come in who has experience on both sides, which is rare, we’ll do a dual interview with me and the ski maintenance director. And we actually did just have one who we hired. She came in with experience as a spray tech, but also with experience as groomer operator.”

Employees retained equals crucial time-saved in such a short swing season.

“It’s a huge blessing. After doing this such a long time, retaining staff is such a big issue,” Simondet concludes. “We’re doing the best job we can — and it’s working. We keep seeing more and more people that we’re retaining. It’s huge for all of Giants Ridge, retaining all of these valuable employees and not spending a quarter of your season with training. It’s benefiting the entire property, with all the attention to detail and everybody taking more pride in the work, with people on staff here for years and years.”  

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