Editor’s notebook: Escaping temptation for turf

It took a bit of planning and searching because temptation lurked at every turn.

The PGA Merchandise Show might be the only place where somebody bumps into six-dozen appealing quarter-zip shirts, drivers with draw and fade functions, and the real-life Chi Chi Rodriguez in the same aisle. Call it massive, chaotic, maddening, gluttonous, obnoxious and fascinating. Also, call it the most important business gathering in the golf industry.

Deals occurred inside booths and on the show floor. Products and ventures affecting everybody in the golf industry, including, yes, superintendents, are launched and touted in Orlando.

Anybody who doesn’t think that side of the business can affect your side of the business missed the gruesome images captured in the spring of 2015. The images are tough to forget: aggressive, steep cleats creating craters in greens.

The PGA Show served as the launching point for those shoe models. Superintendents who saw the images originating from Orlando last February raised immediate concerns. Angst followed, especially because multiple parts of the United States and Canada experienced saturated springs, thus magnifying the problems caused by aggressive cleats and shoes.

Fortunately, Chi Chi Rodriguez played his final Champions Tour round in 2007, because the last thing anybody needed was somebody with shoe bottoms built for soccer celebrating like Zorro on their greens. So instead of speaking with Rodriguez in Orlando – a temptation resisted – we met with people such as Mark MacNeill and Nick Tarasiewicz, a pair of energetic and engaging representatives from CHAMP, which bills itself as “The World Leader in Sport Cleat Technology.”

MacNeill and Taraseiwicz are exactly the type of people we wanted to speak with in Orlando. Their company is the leading OEM provider to FootJoy, Nike, ECCO, New Balance, Under Armour and OGIO. Think about the PGA Tour players for a moment who are represented by one of the above companies. There’s a good chance this Sunday’s winner will be digging into turf with spikes produced by CHAMP. 

We saw four spike models at the CHAMP booth – the Pivix, Zarma Tour, Helix and Stinger. The Pivix, a new model scheduled for a spring release, features six legs. The legs flex and rotate upon hitting the turf. The spike isn’t steeply digging into the ground. The action allows golfers to keep their feet closer to the turf. It appears to be a win-win scenario, as superintendents should see less impact on their turf while golfers should slip less.

CHAMP also redeveloped its Zarma Tour to make it more flexible and green friendly. In fact, the words “green friendly” are actually printed on the Zarma Tour page of the CHAMP catalogue. MacNeill and Tarasiewicz used the words “very durable and less aggressive” multiple times in our conversation. They recognize a balance exists between golfer stability and turf health, and superintendents should be encouraged by the progress being made in spike technology.

Before visiting the CHAMP booth, we met with Jesper Thuen, the global marketing manager for ECCO. Thuen explained to us how ECCO’s new offerings are meeting golfer demands for shoe flexibility, and he also sounded legitimately concerned about what rests on the bottom of the company’s shoes. “If spikes are too aggressive, they damage the greens,” he says. “That’s something we take into consideration.” Thuen adds that ECCO’s research shows that shoes can support seven or eight spikes without having a negative impact on a golfer or turf.

Finding a technical representative – or anybody who wanted to speak to a non-qualified buyer – proved more difficult at the Adidas booth.  The Adidas Adizero Tour released in 2013 opened the ultra-aggressive spike era. A peek at Adidas’ new offerings brings mixed reviews for superintendents. The spike profile is being lowered, but the number of points of contact remains a concern.

Because the PGA Show included around 1,000 exhibitors and more than 42,000 attendees, we had plenty of diversions from staring at shoe bottoms. Some other things that caught our attention:

*** GolfBoard is going to stick. The boards are clicking with facilities in the South and Pacific Northwest, and the company inked a deal with Billy Casper Golf last year.

Don’t fret superintendents. A GolfBoard won’t shred your turf. A GolfBoard weighs 75 percent less than the average golf cart and wear patterns are widely distributed, according to director of communications Jim Black, a 20-year superintendent. “You don’t get two guys pounding off the golf cart into the turf at the same spot on every hole,” he says. 

Could the day be approaching when a superintendent swaps his work cart for a GolfBoard?

“As a superintendent, I would love to get on this and ride around and check the crew out,” Black says. “I can go places a cart can’t. I can certainly see the turf mechanic retrofitting something on the front to carry stuff around such as a little bag of tools. It would be perfect for the irrigation tech. Just cruise up and have tools in the front or in a bag on the back and check heads.”

*** Multiple organizations are serious about making facilities more welcoming for women, junior and disabled customers. U.S. Kids Golf, for example, purchased Longleaf Golf Club & Country Club in Southern Pines, N.C., and renamed the facility Longleaf Golf & Family Club.

Architect Bill Bergin is working with U.S. Kids Golf to make Longleaf junior friendly. Part of his renovation included spacing seven sets of tees approximately 600 yards apart. The course plays 3,241 yards from the shortest set of tees and 6,602 from the tips.

“It’s interesting,” Bergin says. “Technology has caused golf courses to be long for a very select few, less than 1 percent really. But clubs still want to do that. When we are working on a renovation – and that’s mostly what I do – we are always adding back tees. But for every back tee we are adding, we are adding two or three forward tees. We are adding much more in the forward direction.”

*** Work at Mossy Oak Golf Club has been brisk, and the Gil Hanse-designed course could be completed by this fall, according to Old Waverly director of golf Chris Jester. Mossy Oak and Old Waverly are both in West Point, Miss. Old Waverly is a private club with stay-and-play opportunities while Mossy Oak will be open for public play. The new course will feature TifEagle greens, TifGrand approaches and 419 fairways.

“Our tagline is nature’s golf,” Jester says. “The golf course is real natural. It was there. They just knocked the rough edges off of it. Everybody realizes it’s going to be outdoorsy. Mossy Oak’s mission is to get people outside. Our mission is to get them outside and playing golf.”

Hanse might have been the most discussed architect in Orlando. He’s also designing the third course at Streamsong Resort, an expansive property between Orlando and Tampa. The Black Course is scheduled to open in 2017. The Mosaic Company CFO Rich Mack says it will feature the same firm turf conditions director of agronomy Rusty Mercer developed on the Tom Doak-designed Blue Course, and Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw-designed Red Course. Turf conditions, though, might be the only similarity between Streamsong’s third and first two courses.

“Red and Blue are more intimate,” says Mack, whose fertilizer company owns the property. “This is a very, very big canvas. Thematically, we are trying to make sure that when you are on Black, that you are not on Red and Blue, yet the same underlying playing characteristics and philosophy about golf is there.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s assistant editor.