The long green line

A quarter century of championing golf and the environment is rewarded as Dan Dinelli, CGCS, claims GCSAA’s top environmental honor.

Terry Ostmeyer

GCSAA’s President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship traditionally honors specific management milestones. This year, the award is more of a career achievement. The 2009 winner, Dan Dinelli, CGCS, is distinguished by a body of work in the golf and environment arena over the last 25 years that is both groundbreaking in its consequence and unrivaled in its scope.

In citing Dinelli’s selection, GCSAA president David S. Downing II, CGCS, noted the third-generation Chicagoland superintendent’s continued commitment to the application of practical environmental management to golf and his leadership in developing many advances in the industry — a commitment Dinelli has pursued in a quest to prove that high-end conditions can co-exist with environmentalism.

Photo by Bill Burlingham

By the time Dinelli took the reins in the early 1990s as head superintendent as his father, Joe, approached retirement, Dinelli had implemented several wildlife support efforts at North Shore CC, including peregrine releases, many of which his family helped out with. Dinelli believes the “... environment should go tongue and cheek with playability, safety and aesthetics.” Photos courtesy of Dan Dinelli

Destiny by descent

The 49-year-old Dinelli has spent a lifetime at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, Ill., where his father, Joe, was superintendent for three decades. Growing up in the superintendent’s quarters on the club grounds, Dan was destined to be where he is today.

“I guess having 170 acres as your backyard had a lot to do with what I became ... I love the outdoors, nature and growing plants,” he says. “I appreciate and enjoy the game of golf, but by far my passion is definitely working outside with nature and the environment. It’s always been a part of me and my lifestyle.”

By the time he was 15, Dinelli was on the maintenance staff at North Shore, learning at the knee of not only his father, but also his grandfather, Frank Dinelli, the longtime superintendent at Northmoor Country Club just up the road along Chicago’s prestigious north shoreline off Lake Michigan in Highland Park.

Golf course management runs thick in this family’s blood — Joe, a 52-year member of GCSAA and now retired, had two brothers who were also superintendents in the area, and one of Dan’s cousins, Jerry, is a Class A GCSAA member who’s been Dan’s top hand at North Shore for the last 26 years.

An idea that blossomed

By 1981, with degrees in park and grounds management and horticulture from William Rainey Harper College in nearby Palatine and a two-year certificate in turfgrass management from Michigan State University, Dan Dinelli was one of his father’s assistants and on the threshold of making his mark in the industry.

With the U.S. Amateur slated for North Shore CC in ’83, Dinelli made his first overture with nature — the establishment of a 1-acre wildflower garden in an out-of-play parcel of club property. However unobtrusive to the golfers, it was
a watershed moment for the club and the then-21-year-old
superintendent.

“We were a traditional parkland golf course, mowed from fence line to fence line. Heaven forbid if there was a grass blade over 2 inches long,” Dinelli recalls of his novel idea that today is pretty much routine at golf courses across the country.

With little negative reaction from NSCC members and unfazed by those — including his peers — who called the garden “Dinelli’s weed patch,” he was off and running. “We tried to spread the success and encourage the diversification of the landscape,” he says. “The environment should go tongue and cheek with playability, safety and aesthetics.”

In the ensuing two and a half decades, Dinelli has made the compatibility between golf and the environment a done deal at North Shore, and as a result, has had a major influence in many things natural on and off the golf course throughout the industry.

Critters and cultivars

For several years, Dinelli was co-superintendent with his father at North Shore, then took the reins on his own in the early 1990s as Joe approached retirement. By then, Dan was fast becoming a tireless volunteer in wildlife support efforts, and, increasingly, more of the North Shore property was evolving into a living laboratory for techniques, ideas and products that help forge the bond between playability and environmentalism.

A licensed falconer, Dinelli has assisted in peregrine releases in the Chicago area, in addition to other wildlife rehabilitation and release projects, and is often joined by his wife, Laurie, and his daughters, Jessie and Carrie, in those endeavors. He also works in area nature centers.

Dinelli’s degree in horticulture and experience as a licensed falconer transferred to North Shore — the club hosts wildlife rehab and release programs (top) and contains a 1-acre wildflower garden, greenhouse (bottom) and tree nursery.

He once lent his expertise and knowledge of pesticides to an effort by the Illinois Department of Conservation to eliminate secondary poisoning caused by attempts to eradicate nuisance birds in industrial areas.

“It’s a two-way street,” he says of his involvement with such causes. “I get to continue to learn more about environmental efforts and issues in the area, but I also get to share with them what golf can do for the environment.”

Meanwhile, Dinelli has conducted myriad research projects at North Shore over the years, including being one of the sites for GCSAA/USGA studies of putting green grasses. Other projects have analyzed the competition between Poa annua and various bentgrasses, compost trials and evaluations of biological controls. He has utilized the club’s 7,000-square-foot practice green to examine different root zones.

Dinelli’s passion for growing things has also saved North Shore thousands of dollars annually through the establishment several years ago of both an on-site greenhouse and a tree nursery (he recently became a certified arborist).

Growing relationships

“These volunteer efforts and the on-site research have led to meeting a lot of well-known turf ecologists and experts in other fields ... learning experiences that have helped me grow and better understand ecology and how to manage turf under all conditions. And, as we share the information, we have helped others as well,” Dinelli says.

The personal connections that developed from the many projects have been especially valuable, he adds, citing a few educator/researchers in particular — Cornell University’s Eric Nelson and Frank Rossi, Ohio State’s Mike Boehm and Michigan State’s Joe Vargas and Paul Rieke.

“(As we volunteer) our time, our space, our efforts and our interests..., our plant health care program has continued to advance (along with) the relationships we now have with so many people,” Dinelli says.

There’s nothing sustainable about golf, Dinelli admits. The goal is to grow healthy plants to play golf on and offer a sustainable playing surface.

A winning team

He’s also quick to note the respective roles played in all of his work by his staff and the North Shore membership.

The maintenance crew includes 16 workers with almost 190 years of experience among them, most of that time with Dinelli. Besides his cousin Jerry, a key staffer has been Juan Villarreal, who has been at the club for 28 years. In many projects, Dinelli also involves golf course architect Rick Jacobson, who has done major renovations of North Shore in 1995 and 2005.

“Great stability, great efficiency ... otherwise, much of it never would have been done,” Dinelli says of the veteran team.

It’s one thing to do what Dinelli and his staff have done for the good of golf course management, but to do it at a prominent old-line private club with minimum negative reaction is something else again. The key, he says, has been to make sure the projects are conducted with sensitivity to play. Save for some fairway grass studies done on a long par 3, the research at NSCC is done out-of-play, but not necessarily out of sight or mind.

“I think it allows the golfers to better understand that there is a science to all of this, that it’s not as simple as home lawn care,” Dinelli says. “We’re dealing with a sophisticated playing surface that’s alive, that has needs. We’re trying to explore how to best address those needs.”

More specifically from a superintendent’s standpoint, Dinelli points out that most of the projects in plant health and environmental awareness usually require a physical change and a capital expenditure.

“I can’t emphasize planning, communication and documentation enough,” he says. “Part of our mission and vision statement is being an environmental steward and a good neighbor, so in all our improvements or physical changes we try to plan for them so they’re not a surprise. The plan is used as a communication tool and we budget for it. It would be very difficult without some level of planning. You can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s still the golfing experience that the members are interested in.”

Professionalism prevails

It’s no surprise that Dinelli’s work has extended to the association he’s been a member of for nearly 27 years. He’s been involved in GCSAA on many fronts, is a past president of the Chicagoland GCSA and is active in the Midwest Association of GCS (winning its 2008 Charles Bartlett Award). He’s also won numerous Environmental Steward Awards and GCSAA/Golf Digest Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards and is a frequent author in industry publications. NSCC is also an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary.

Dinelli is a charter member of GCSAA’s five-year-old Environmental Programs Committee, has been chairman of its IPM Task Group and is instrumental in one of its major projects — the national IPM template expected to be available in the coming year. He’s also working with the association’s Pesticide Characteristics Project that will allow superintendents to assess the traits of various pesticide products.

The obvious summation to all of the above is the President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship, which Dinelli is to receive at the opening of the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show early this month in New Orleans. Obvious, perhaps, to everyone but Dinelli.

“I was very surprised. I’m very appreciative and honored, but still surprised. I think part of it is because all the things I’ve worked on have always involved other people, not just Dan Dinelli,” he says, pointing out — again — his family, his staff, the North Shore membership, the many teachers, researchers and wildlife caretakers who have shared his passion.

“I do want to thank the GCSAA board of directors for selecting me, but if I didn’t have the support of all those people, clearly we wouldn’t be doing some of these things. There is only so much time and resources you can put into it.”

Walking the line

Dinelli likes to say that seeking new levels in plant health is like living on the edge, pushing the envelope to the max. There’s also an edge in his comments on a few issues regarding his profession and the industry. To wit:

“I don’t understand those who say golf has to be ‘brown’ these days because green is perceived as irresponsible. I think we should achieve responsible green.”

“I laugh when I hear people say ‘sustainable golf.’ There’s nothing sustainable about golf. You walk away from a golf course for a week and see how sustainable it is. But, having healthy plants to play golf on offers a sustainable playing surface. That’s our goal.”

“I think our profession is in a continuing evolution. We were greenkeepers, then we were superintendents. It wouldn’t surprise me if we go to something like golf and natural resources manager, as water becomes more critical and as the use of different resources becomes more scrutinized.”

Look for Dan Dinelli to be the first to sign on.

Terry Ostmeyer is the senior staff writer for GCM.