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Taking the long road
Before a century-old Canadian club could spruce up its greens, it had to deal with problem trees and the challenges presented by a local river.
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Photos courtesy of Mississaugua G&CC |
Bob Brewster loves a challenge.
When the 34-year GCSAA member came to Mississaugua Golf & Country Club in February 1999, the 93-year-old course was ready for a facelift, and the club’s long-range renovation plan had the veteran superintendent fired up.
“I applied for the job knowing they were going to make some changes,” he recalls. “That spurred me on.”
What also motivated Brewster was the rich history of the Toronto-area club. Having worked at three other facilities in and around Toronto — Toronto Golf Club, where he had spent 13 years, as well as Weston Golf and Country Club and St. George’s Golf and Country Club — he knew well Mississaugua’s résumé, which included six Canadian Opens (1931, 1938, 1942, 1951, 1965 and 1974). A 20-year-old Mike Weir won the Ontario Amateur there in 1990, and Michael Jordan has also walked its fairways.
“My main objective when I arrived at Mississaugua was to provide members with improved playing conditions,” Brewster says. “At the time, the weakest part of the course was its greens.”
However, before those greens were tackled, Brewster faced a sizeable task that was higher on the club’s priority list — curing an erosion problem along the Credit River, which cut through the property.
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Bob Brewster, superintendent at Mississaugua G&CC in Toronto, knew what he signed up for in 1999 when he started at the club. It had already begun a major project to control an erosion problem and also needed to tackle the club’s problematic greens. |
Realigning the Credit
At the end of a typical long Ontario winter, the club routinely faced flooding from the thawing Credit River and suffered damaged from blocks of ice that broke loose during the thawing and floated downstream.
But the most notable issue caused by these natural occurrences was erosion and the subsequent sediment loading of the river, which threatened the river’s aquatic life. The erosion was especially pronounced along two sharp bends in the river near the fourth and ninth holes. In the mid 1990s, a concrete block wall was built adjacent to the fourth green to try to protect it from the river, but this was a short-term solution. It eliminated erosion in this particular area, but more erosion problems occurred farther downstream past the wall.
So in 1998, just before Brewster arrived, the club decided it was time to find a long-term solution. In March of that year, after consulting with the Credit Valley Conservation Authority (CVCA), the landscape architecture firm Schollen and Co. was hired to design a solution and help to secure the necessary permits from the four regulating agencies who needed to approve their plan to tackle the erosion problem — the CVCA, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Canadian Coast Guard.
The ambitious $2 million plan called for a combination of the realignment of nearly 900 yards of the river, the stabilization of the banks and a grade-control structure to help create a new stable river channel. Permits were submitted in July 2000, and 26 months later, after many modifications, approval was granted. The construction work had to be completed during the winter months to minimize disruption to fish habitat and spawning runs.
“We restored the river back to where it was originally positioned 45 years ago,” Brewster says. “We removed the stone walls, which were causing the river banks to erode from side to side. Then, we put brownstone in and all-natural plantings such as willow and dogwood to hold the banks. Now the river is designed to flood in an area on the golf course to take pressure off the banks and prevent erosion.”
Other tree species such as red maple, white pine and American larch were planted along the riverbanks. “This project added enhanced beauty to the course for members, solved an age-old problem of flooding while also improving the natural habitat for the aquatic life,” he says.
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After receiving two independent, professional recommendations to remove trees from the course, the club voted in 2005 to remove trees around four holes and prune others for better sunlight exposure as a temporary solution before later undergoing a $1.6 million project that redesigned and replaced all the greens. |
Going for the greens
The course celebrated its centennial in 2007, and with the erosion project in the rear view mirror, Brewster and the rest of the management team were ready to tackle the greens.
A myriad of golf course architects had put their “green” stamp on the course over the years, including, but not limited to, Donald Ross, Stanley Thompson, Robbie Robinson, Bill Robinson, Howard Watson, Graham Cooke and Doug Carrick (a Canadian architect who consults for Mississaugua and put together a master plan to reshape and restore the bunkers on the back nine holes early in Brewster’s tenure). Each had his own vision, and the result was 18 different greens in terms of look and feel.
Earlier greens projects had come in many shapes and sizes. In the mid-1980s, Mississaugua rebuilt greens on holes 10, 13 and 14 due to the aforementioned flooding of the Credit River. Then, a decade later, the club rebuilt greens on eight, nine and 12. The majority were the original natural-soil, or push-up, greens, with the exception of 16 and 18, which had been rebuilt in the late 1960s.
Brewster says that Mississaugua’s greens have historically been the smallest in the greater Toronto area, with just over 80,000 square feet of putting surfaces, well below the average of 130,000 square feet at other championship courses. “Six of the greens measure only 2,900-3,200 square feet,” he says. “The smaller greens suffered in the summer months due to limited pin positions and entrance and exit points around the green surfaces.”
The course wanted to keep the character of Mississauga’s small greens but increase the size enough to allow Brewster and his team more areas to place pins. USGA consultant David Oatis prepared a report in 1997 that recommended trees be removed to allow more sun on some of the green surfaces, but the club decided against the tree removal project. So in the fall of 1999, the club started overseeding greens and continued to do so three times each season to establish more bentgrass. In 2004, drains were installed in the most soil-contaminated greens to help move water.
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The project, which rebuilt 19 green complexes, finished on time and on budget, and the new greens opened for play last summer. |
The final straw
In 2005, the course and especially the greens did not winter well because of ice damage and winterkill. The 15th green required resodding, and several of the smaller greens also suffered. A humid summer that year caused summer patch in August, and the greens were once again, as Brewster says, “in trouble.”
This time, the club brought in James Baird, Ph.D., with the USGA Green Section, and Eric Lyons, Ph.D., from the University of Guelph, to help.
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“We now have 18 greens that all putt the same, and the golf course flows better ... you don’t have two to three different looks in terms of architecture.” |
“They concluded the greens did not receive enough sunlight due to heavy shading on the putting surfaces,” Brewster explains. “They also noted that the limited size of the greens did not allow enough pinnable areas given the heavy foot traffic.”
As a start, based on these and earlier recommendations, in the fall of 2005 the club removed all trees around holes two, three and nine, as well as the majority of trees on No. 15 to provide year-round sunlight. Trees around greens throughout the rest of the course were also pruned to allow better exposure to sunlight.
Brewster recalls this was a difficult decision for the club as many members did not want any trees removed. However, it was only a temporary solution. The club knew it was time to address the “greens problem.” After much committee work, plans were presented to the membership by Carrick; membership voted 70 percent in favor of a $1.6 million project to redesign and replace all of the greens on the course. General manager Ian Scott says no other course in Canada has undergone such an extensive greens renovation.
“We needed a 50 percent vote, were hoping for 55, and we ended up getting 70 percent,” Brewster says. “We had two town hall meetings, put up nice drawings and explained why we wanted to do it. We did a real sales pitch. That was the key to getting it approved. Many of the members who didn’t vote for it, two months after construction were saying, ‘I was very selfish, I like what you are doing, and it’s going to be great.’”
Getting down to business
Spearheaded by Carrick and the overwhelming support of the club’s members, bids were taken from three companies before Canadian golf course construction firm Evansgolf was chosen as the contractor. Scott Kirby of Symphony Golf was hired as project manager to organize the meetings and come up with a daily plan for the contractors.
In the space of 10 weeks in the fall of 2007, from Aug. 7 to Oct. 3, Carrick Design and Evansgolf rebuilt and sodded all 19 green complexes (the course has an extra short hole) using sod that had been grown a full year ahead of time, an A1/A4 bentgrass mix on sand that was later transplanted onto greens built to USGA recommendations.
Also, the first hole was lengthened by about 20 yards, new tee complexes were added to both the third and fourth holes and some minor changes were made to the bunkering. Work started daily at 6:30 a.m., Monday through Saturday, and ended at 6:30 p.m. or later; the course remained open during the renovations as members used temporary greens.
“There were a number of factors we wanted to achieve with the greens renovation project,” Carrick explains. “No. 1 was to help Bob and the club have 18 consistent greens in terms of soil structure, grass type and playing character. No. 2, we wanted to try and increase the drainage character of each green, and we achieved this by elevating the greens anywhere from 12 to 18 inches above the existing surfaces.
“We also brought the river into play on a lot of holes where the river was always there, but you would never see it.”
Raves for the final product
When the project was completed, on time and on budget, the total size of the greens was increased to almost 110,000 square feet, an addition of nearly 30,000 square feet. “The new greens have more slope to them, and double the number of pin positions are now available, which reduces turf stress around them,” Brewster says.
Brewster adds Mother Nature played a key role in getting the project done on time and on budget.
“We had very little rain in August, September and October of 2007,” he says. “The precipitation we did get was usually at night and did not exceed a quarter of an inch. More substantial rain did not start until late October after all the sod had been put down. The greens wintered well except for a small amount of pink snow mold on various greens due to a heavy snow cover in March 2008.”
Another factor in the project’s success was the relationship Mississaugua struck up with the CVCA for the cut-and-fill permits in the river valley.
“When we first started this project, many people told us that we would never get our permits, but I have nothing but positive things to say about the Credit Valley Conservation Authority,” project manager Kirby says. “They were helpful, cooperative, timely, and we got our permit in early July for an August start. A lot of it was establishing that we are stewards of the valley — if anyone cares about this Credit River Valley, it’s Mississaugua members. It’s a vested interest for us to do what is right environmentally within the valley, and we have always done that.”
The new greens opened for play on May 28, 2008. Brewster says members are “ecstatic” about the newly transformed greens.
“Our members got used to putting up and down slopes this year that didn’t exist last season,” he says. “They had to make some sacrifices during this renovation project, but it has brought the level of the course up. We now have 18 greens that all putt the same, and the golf course flows better … you don’t have two to three different looks in terms of architecture. There is now one look all the way through.”