Still special

Josh Truan remembers the sting of his first winter in Brewster, Washington. Temperatures in the city, situated at the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia rivers, dip into the low 20s and occasionally the high teens during the season, but this was a sting of a different sort. No whipping winds. No frozen beards.

“I got laid off my first winter as an assistant superintendent,” Truan says. “I hated it. Hated everything about it.”

Truan had moved more than 1,000 miles north from The Links at Spanish Bay to Brewster to work at Gamble Sands, now a burgeoning destination resort but then still a David McLay Kidd course under construction. He had not planned for a seasonal layoff. He had planned to work. He had always worked. “Three months when you haven’t had a day off since you were 16 years old?” he says. “It was tough.”

Truan headed home to Bainbridge Island, Washington, located across Puget Sound from Seattle and about six hours west of Brewster, and lived with his parents for the winter. He helped his dad, retired from a career in the U.S. Navy, with his various businesses. And in March, he returned for another season at the course, never to be laid off again.

“I made it a goal of mine to keep as many guys as I could through the winter, keep ’em busy,” says Truan, who has climbed from assistant superintendent to superintendent to director of agronomy during his run at Gamble Sands. “We helped build the clubhouse that first winter. We built all these tables inside. That’s why we took on the plasma cutting, the CNC machine — the list goes on and on — so we could keep guys employed.”

Truan leads a team of about 45, almost half of whom work at the resort year-round. He was promoted to director of agronomy in February after five seasons as superintendent — in large part to help coordinate and oversee construction of a second Kidd course on the property. And when he moved up, so did his assistant, Hunter Cooper, now the superintendent on the Sands Course.

“I feel like it’s a partnership,” Truan says, “not a boss and a subordinate kind of relationship. Let’s throw ideas at each other. We’re both going to have good ideas, we’re both going to have really dumb ideas — which happens a lot. It’s definitely become an element of trust and respect that we both want the same thing. We have different ways of getting there sometimes, but the product’s all that matters.”

The relationship, Truan says, isn’t the kind that develops over a single season. “It takes five years. It takes being here fighting a fire that took over that whole mountain or fixing a pump station at midnight because our pumps were down.” He pauses for a second, then adds: “Both true stories.”

Truan has learned irrigation, maintenance, construction and now people management during his two decades in the industry. His workload has changed with every promotion.

“I’ve had to step away from the day-to-day,” he says. “It’s been really hard to not, I don’t want to say micromanage, but nitpick job assignments. I’ve had to step away and things are a little different. They’re still very efficient, but not being involved has been hard for me.”

By this time next year, Gamble Sands will be home to a pair of 18-hole golf courses, along with a 14-hole short course and an 18-hole putting course.

Truan spends most of his days on the second course, which does not yet have a name and is scheduled to open for play in August 2025, with about 5 to 10 percent of his time overseeing construction of the five new guest buildings. And he still spends plenty of time managing the team.

“There’s this stigma that eastern Washington is cheaper than the rest of the state. But the minimum wage is still the same. We still have the highest minimum wage in the country, by a lot” — $16.28 per hour this year, just ahead of California’s $16 and trailing only Washington, D.C.’s $17.50. “We start guys at $18 on the Sands Course and $19 on the new course because it has no maintenance shop, no facility. We’ve implemented a tier system where the more you know, the more you get paid, and there are certain checkpoints you have to hit.”

Transparency about wages has helped morale and work, Truan says. So has a more individualized approach to people.

“You got to treat everybody differently,” he says. “Everybody has different things that motivate them and drive them. I would say the hardest thing about any job is not the turf. It’s the people. It’s getting people who want to work, and have a good time, and be positive. My style has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. I used to be real hard. You learn over time that doesn’t work, and you don’t want to treat people like that.

“At the end of the day, most people want to do a good job. They want to be productive and they want to feel like their opinion matters. … The fact that you ask them and care and take it into consideration, it makes a difference.”

Truan learned that from his predecessor at Gamble Sands — Chip Caswell, who left in 2019 to become construction manager for Golf Landscapes, Inc. — and other mentors. And, like so many turf pros who have climbed the ladder, he retains plenty of humility.

“If you would have told me 15 years ago that I’d be the director of agronomy and would have built almost three golf courses now before I’m 40, I would have laughed you out the door,” he says. “Being here as long as I have, I’m kind of involved in everything.

“It’s been a great opportunity and a fun ride, and I’ve been very fortunate to work for an ownership” — the Gebbers family — “that has let me be involved. Because they easily could have not. ‘You’re just the grass guy.’ They want to reward people who have been here and that they feel are smart and can help out and work hard. Hunter and I haven’t gotten to where we are because we’ve been at home and not working. We’ve been here when we needed to be here and haven’t when we haven’t.”

That last sentence is one of Truan’s three core tenets.

Be here when you need to be here. Don’t when you don’t.

The others are just as straightforward and sound:

I get paid for results, not excuses.

And also, When it’s not special anymore, it’s time to go.

Does he think the time will come when Gamble Sands isn’t special anymore?

“No,” he says immediately. “I got no reason to go.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.