Clearing the way

Construction superintendents lay the groundwork for golf course management.

Terry Ostmeyer

On the whole, the golf course superintendent profession is a unique calling requiring an equally distinctive individual — a different breed of cat, as they say. Then there’s the breed apart, the
industry’s most
notable crossover, the construction superintendent.

Both breeds have the golf course’s best interests at heart — one from the conception of a venue through birth and often until growth is established, and the other coaxing maturity and establishing a personality to last a lifetime.

The construction superintendent, though often overlooked, plays a vital role in the golf course management industry’s developmental evolution.

It’s good to note early on that the more golf course superintendents and construction superintendents seem the same, the more different they become. Perhaps that’s because the ranks of construction superintendents are full of former course superintendents, and to a lesser extent, vice versa.

Erin Stevens gained status early in his career as an accomplished construction superintendent — he’s currently in the Bahamas building a Jack Nicklaus signature course on Royal Island. Photos courtesy of Royal Island Bahamas

Peripatetic plus

“You’ve got to be willing to travel and put in a lot of time on the job,” is the short and to-the-point job description of the construction superintendent provided by Pat Karnick, who’s in his 18th year with Wadsworth Golf Course Construction and is currently a vice president in the company’s Atlantic division.

While golf course superintendents are no strangers to long hours on the job, their own considerable nomadic nature pales when compared to that of the construction superintendent. The latter moves from job to job with a frequency ranging from a year to a year and a half on new course projects, to a few months for renovations, barely smelling the roses in between.

“We do a lot of traveling, and just on the face of it, that is a huge difference,” says Chris Kelley of Landscapes Unlimited in comparing the construction superintendent with the course superintendent.

“We both manage a lot of people for different tasks and a lot of different situations every day. The course superintendent not only manages people, but has to manage the course according to owner and player expectations at all times, while we have to deal with continually changing processes,” adds Kelley, who notes that if his company is also an owner in a new course project, he may add building subdivision roads and other such infrastructure to his duties.

The natural

Kelley has been with Landscapes Unlimited since 1998, working out of its regional office in Pinehurst, N.C. His address is Centre, Ala., his hometown, but he lives wherever the job takes him.

In many ways, Kelley is a prototype of what the major golf course builders are looking for in modern-day construction superintendents. The 45-year-old is a typical crossover. Early in his career he had stints as an assistant superintendent at Cherokee Country Club in Centre and at Coosa Country Club in Rome, Ga. He then went back to school and got a turfgrass management degree at Auburn University, yet decided to go into the construction side of the industry.

“I liked the idea of moving around the country and seeing a lot of different places and still having the security of working for one company,” he says. “And if I find the area that I might want to settle down in one day, maybe I’ll go back to the other side and work on a golf course.”

Kelley has led the construction of seven new courses and nine renovations in his decade with Landscapes Unlimited and has developed the reputation of a construction/grow-in specialist in an age when many builders are gravitating toward more “turnkey” services because of employees with myriad talents such as his.

“A construction superintendent with a turf background can be a huge asset during the construction process,” says Landscapes Unlimited’s director of agronomy, Steve Merkel, CGCS. “Having an eye for detail and potential maintenance challenges can pay dividends in the long run.”

Many construction superintendents say they favor the course superintendent coming on board during the clearing stage of a project, if possible.

A superintendent’s superintendent

To that end, Kelley, who runs a core staff with both construction and turf maintenance experience, favors the course superintendent of a new course coming on board during a project as early as possible — earlier than the prevailing preference in the business that the superintendent should be there in time for drainage and irrigation installations.

“During clearing,” says Kelley, who has maintained a GCSAA Class A membership the past 13 years and also is a member of the Alabama and Georgia state chapters, “that person needs to be involved in that process as long as they can be there. Usually, it’s according to the extent of the project. In renovations, the course superintendent is the liaison between me and the owner and the architect, and that interaction is immediate and daily.”

He adds that the best golf course superintendents he’s dealt with are those who have been through renovations.

“They’re the best to have on a new project because they know all the pitfalls and know what to look for. A new project can be pretty overwhelming for a course superintendent,” Kelley says.

Typically, a construction superintendent is the on-site ramrod tending to major tasks that include scheduling, layout work, earth work and installing infrastructure. Guiding nearly every aspect of a new course job is the grassing date, which is sacrosanct.

“Before the first tree is ever cut down, I know what my grassing date is. You have a grassing window no matter what part of the country you’re working in,” Kelley says. “You schedule to get all the processes done by that date. Everything evolves toward that date.”

Short-order friendships

More and more these days, a construction superintendent’s job is far from done once that all-important date arrives. Most supervise the grow-in and, as Kelley points out, even do some course management to a certain point before handing over the property.

By then, Kelley must pull up roots and move on. In many cases, the roots run pretty deep.

“I rent houses instead of apartments; it helps me become part of the community,” he says, adding that he nurtures a strong involvement in golf course management’s key points such as water, the environment, pesticide use, etc., and also participates in GCSAA surveys and national and chapter seminars. “We have to be cognizant of all of today’s issues in order to do our jobs. You have to be good neighbors from day one, and that’s what we try to do.”

Golf course construction projects are a bevy of activity from start to finish. Photo by Jeff Tourangeau/MacCurrach Golf

Landscapes Unlimited’s Curt Grieser (left) and Judd Chatelain. Photos courtesy of Landscapes Unlimited

Construction superintendents learn many facets of the golf course business, says Steve Merkel, CGCS, director of agronomy for Landscapes Unlimited.

Chris Kelley of Landscapes Unlimited (left).

Brian Almony, president of MacCurrach Golf. Photo courtesy of MacCurrach Golf

The deal-maker

An even more pronounced case of Landscapes Unlimited reaching into the golf course management ranks to find someone who fits their bill is Curt Grieser, whose 30 years in the golf course industry has been a mixed bag of construction work and course maintenance.

Grieser has been a project manager for the Lincoln, Neb.-based builder for the last several years and will be the first to tell you that he’s found his niche — the best of both worlds, as he sees it.

In 1984, the travel associated with the construction side was appealing to a young Grieser when Landscapes Unlimited hired him off the maintenance staff at Lincoln Country Club. But, after a half-dozen or so years, that attraction waned as Grieser was overseeing the building of Champions Club (now Champions Run) in Omaha, and he and his wife, Mary, had their first child. So when he finished the project he stayed on as course superintendent.

About five years later, enter Bill Kubly, founder of Landscapes Unlimited, who asked Grieser to return to the firm as a project manager.

“I did it on the condition that the work wouldn’t require me to travel in the sense that we had to move,” says Grieser, who is the overall administrator for as many as five or six projects at once, travels to sites during the week and is home on weekends.

If the hat fits

Grieser, who says he’s worked or visited projects in all but three states in his career, adds that he often fills in if a superintendent hasn’t been hired yet on a job, working directly with the architect and owner. His preference is to have a course superintendent hired in time for input on the construction of the irrigation system so he can tend to other matters — cost estimates, the bidding process, administering contracts, change orders, assembling staff and equipment, and working the budget.

The major plus has been Grieser’s experience in both camps.

“When I’m on a (construction) project, I’m always looking at it in the best interests of both sides — the golf course side and the construction side,” he says. “It’s a big advantage to have both views. In a sense, I build it like I’m going to take care of it afterwards.”

Still, after three decades, Grieser continues to be pulled from both forces.

“I miss making my morning rounds, being on the golf course every day, while on the construction side I have the chance to be able to see the creation of a golf course and implement the vision of the architect,” he says. “I really enjoy going to different parts of the country and being in on the evolution of a golf course.”

Adapt and prevail

Wadsworth’s Karnick has spent much of his career preparing for that next level in golf course construction, increasing grow-ins and extended management, leading to the complete package — turnkey projects or, as he says, “reacting to the economy, offering different and better services to our clients.”

Karnick started out more than 20 years ago with a landscape architecture degree in hand from the University of Illinois, first working for golf course designer Dick Nugent and then hooking up with Wadsworth in 1990. He spent five years as a construction superintendent in Hawaii and another five years in California and has also worked in the field in parts of Asia.

Karnick learned the craft on the job, being exposed to many varieties of soils, grasses and golf courses and the people who take care of them.

“A lot of it was on the go, just being involved in the business. I worked with golf course superintendents on every project and I still do,” he says.

For the past 10 years, Karnick has been a Class A GCSAA member and also holds memberships in the Northern California, Mid-Atlantic and Philadelphia chapters. Nowadays, he lives in Philly and oversees three to four projects at a time in Wadsworth’s Atlantic division with a core staff of a primary construction superintendent, a couple of assistants and an irrigation superintendent. Most important, he’s aiming what he has learned in two decades toward where he believes his niche in the industry is headed.

“I don’t consider myself a maintenance superintendent by any stretch of the imagination. I understand the basics of what they do, similar to the way those who manage golf courses understand the basics of what we do in construction,” he says. “I’m trying to get a breed of people who understand both. To me, that’s what grow-in superintendents are. There are a lot of differences between building a golf course, growing it in and then taking care of it on a daily basis. In my experience, there aren’t a lot of people who have what it takes to deal with a grow-in with all the stresses and inconsistencies of a construction project and the different levels of maintenance throughout the course for a period of time.”

Archaeologists probe the ruins of an 18th century plantation on the Royal Island golf property — a necessity before clearing for the layout can begin. Photos courtesy of Royal Island Bahamas

Chasing a dream ...

Another key figure in today’s golf course construction business who had a previous life, so to speak, in golf course management and then put that experience to work in the game’s development sector is Brian Almony, president of MacCurrach Golf.

Almony is the epitome of the jack-of-all-trades superintendent who took a chance on a career redirection and climbed the ladder to a top executive post with one of the country’s leading golf course builders, all while not forgetting where he came from and, in fact, using his past to his advantage.

Back in 1981, Almony graduated from Lake City (Fla.) Community College’s turfgrass management program. For the next 15 years, he toiled as both course superintendent and club pro at small facilities in north Florida, including a pair of five-year stints at Pine Ridge Country Club in Beverly Hills, Fla., a course he helped his father, Charles — a 40-year superintendent and PGA pro — design and build in the early 1980s.

That project planted a seed that slowly but inevitably came to fruition.

“I’d always been interested in construction. To be honest, when I was young I wanted to be a golf course architect,” Almony says. “I was lucky enough to design and build some things with my dad and I just became interested in doing it at a higher level.”

... Catching a dream

Thus, in 1997, Almony was hired on as a laborer with MacCurrach, which was building the Slammer and Squire layout at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine. Over the next eight years, he was a construction superintendent on several projects, adding that his past experience at golf facilities was mostly helpful in an overall manner.

“I’ve really learned most of the (construction) part of the business since I’ve joined MacCurrach Golf, but just knowing the ins and outs of the golf business helps in the construction business too,” he says.

Almony, who has been a GCSAA Class A member for nearly 18 years, says his course management experience has been more valuable as his company has expanded its services in recent years.

“We’re doing more grow-ins, plus most of the projects that we do now we’re still there doing work for the owners pretty much after the place is grown in — helping with wash-outs, resprigging or resodding ... smoothing things out,” he says, adding that he prefers that owners bring in the course superintendent on new projects in time for the drainage work and no later than irrigation system installation.

Almony has been company president the past three years, managing several projects in that time, including a memorable one, the all-out renovation of the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. That project featured under-drainage work on the famed venue’s fairways, which were cored out, covered with 4-inch perforated pipe, capped with pure sand and then resodded — all while retaining designer Pete Dye’s original layout and contours.

“It was a very unique project,” Almony says. “We did some things on that golf course we’d never done before.”

Almony says that the slowdown in golf development over the past several years has forced the construction business to focus much more on renovation work. But that, too, can get pretty involved. He notes that the remodeling of TPC Avenel in Potomac, Md., with MacCurrach has been a virtual reconstruction.

“We’ve done a lot of that lately — building a new course on top of an old course,” he says.

A rare breed indeed

If anything, the construction superintendent is a hybrid, and more so in these times with construction firms offering more complete packages to owners, and those with turf management backgrounds are better equipped to deliver the package and on time.

And, that said, Landscapes Unlimited’s director of agronomy, Merkel, a member of GCSAA for 24 years, points out that it can’t hurt the other side either — golf course superintendents learning a few things from the builders in order to do their jobs better.

“I like to impress on young people who want to be golf course superintendents that they work on a construction team for a summer or at a facility that has a major project taking place,” Merkel says. “In my early career as an assistant superintendent, I worked for a city that was having a second course built. Even though I was not directly involved with the process, it was an invaluable experience to watch and see the systems being constructed underground — utilities, wells, drainage, irrigation and soils — the unseen systems that are directly responsible for the success or failure of a golf course.”

Terry Ostmeyer is the senior staff writer for GCM.

Niche with an itch

If anything, Erin Stevens probably needs an agent, although he seems to be doing quite well on his own.

Stevens is a self-made construction superintendent, and probably an accidental one, too. He’s also a golf course superintendent when time and the opportunity allows, but far from a Regular Joe.

The nine-year Class A GCSAA member’s résumé is relatively short on roots and long on relationships — he’s rubbed shoulders with an impressive list of greats in golf and golf course management.

There was the six-year run out of the University of Maryland Institute of Applied Agriculture when Stevens was a roving superintendent for Paul R. Latshaw, helping the famed superintendent-turned-consultant serve his clients, including some of the top-rated venues in America. Then, in 2002, with Latshaw’s blessing, Stevens hooked up with another highly regarded consultant, Terry Buchen, CGCS, MG, whose expertise is supervising high-profile grow-ins. Buchen needed an enterprising superintendent to take on a project in the Bahamas — establishing wall-to-wall SeaIsle paspalum turf at a Greg Norman development, Emerald Bay Resort.

It was a successful project for the young Stevens, and a couple of years later Norman beckoned him to do a similar construction/ complete paspalum grow-in at El Camaleón Golf Club at Mayakoba, a Norman design for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula (See “Fast Track” in the June 2007 issue of GCM). Even before the hurricane-delayed project was finished, it was selected as the site of a PGA Tour event, the Mayakoba Classic.

Stevens took the Mayakoba project beyond grow-in into operations and prepped for the inaugural 2007 Classic. But, about a year ago, he was back in the Bahamas laying the groundwork to build a Jack Nicklaus design from rock-bottom scratch through the scrub forests of Royal Island at the behest of Cypress Equities and the Staubach Co.

The project is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. No. 1, it’s to be the first-ever Jack Nicklaus Golf Club —25 such signature Nicklaus designs are to be built around the world featuring that special designation. No. 2, it’s another wall-to-wall showcase for the salt-tolerant and disease-resistant paspalum and will feature the new Platinum variety developed by Ron Duncan, Ph.D.

“I guess that’s become my specialty, my niche,” Stevens says of his run of paspalum construction/grow-ins. “It’s also exciting to be moving into one of the new varieties.”

Although the Royal Island project didn’t begin clearing until last month, Stevens has been on-site for a year as the owner’s representative, setting the stage for the construction processes by handling such affairs as environmental permitting (the course will have 14 ocean holes), center-line clearing, mulching for future landscaping use, presenting the layout for home sales and developing operating budgets and bid packages.

While Stevens admits the task ahead is challenging, his reputation precedes him for being able to bring a golf course in from beginning to end and beyond in places where even the simplest construction, labor and governmental issues can be daunting.

“Your commodity is exactly what it is,” he says. “You’re the guy who builds the golf course, sets the standards — the environmental planning and forecasting, Audubon certification, staff training, developing maintenance facilities and implementing management programs ... It becomes the whole package.”

In addition, Stevens has had to hire a team of archaeologists to sift through the remnants of an 18th century plantation on the property to determine what must be preserved.

“There is a bit of history here, and we are required to investigate it prior to permitting for construction,” he says. “It’s all part of being a jack-of-all-trades. I’ve even overseen some of the dredging for boat docks in the harbor, cleared land for private home lots and cleared trails for real estate sales visits. It’s been pretty amazing.”

Stevens has managed to sustain a safe and sane family life, the bane of many construction superintendents. It helps, he notes, that his hectic pace the past half-dozen years has been confined to the Caribbean region. He and his wife, Ana, have three children. She’s Costa Rican, plus everyone is bilingual or trilingual, and life in the Caribbean is their way of life.

“There are a lot of pros and cons to moving around. You’ve got to make it comfortable for your family,” he says. “If you have a tight, close-knit family, you’ll do well.”

So what’s next? Stevens, who says he indeed misses the U.S. now and then, is between a rock and a hard place. Being superintendent at the first Jack Nicklaus Golf Club is very alluring. Yet, it’s his nature to look down the road to the next challenge. It’s also likely that the next owner/developer will come calling once the course opens sometime in 2010 and Montage Hotel & Resorts takes over the management of Royal Island Bahamas.

“For me to say I’m going to stay here for the rest of my career ... I can’t say that,” Stevens says, leaving an awfully large window open. “I’m definitely going to do the whole turnkey package here through to operations. After that, I really don’t know.”

— T.O.

They said it

GCM: What are the key changes in the golf course construction business in recent years?

Curt Grieser, Landscapes Unlimited: A shorter time frame for scheduling; irrigation improvements; more sophisticated bunker construction; newer and better varieties of grass; the cost of fuel, equipment, materials, labor and lodging.

Pat Karnick, Wadsworth GC Construction: Advances in equipment technology, like GPS systems and laser leveling; addressing water-use issues such as golf courses’ use of effluent water produced by adjoining real estate developments.

Brian Almony, MacCurrach Golf: Many new developments are going on without golf, while courses across the country continue to close — a corrective reaction that’s “not necessarily a bad thing;” the use of unused golf course property for real estate to fund course renovations.

Chris Kelley, Landscapes Unlimited: The definitive increase in course renovations as new course projects dwindle — “I think that’s a trend we’ll see from now on.”

They said it

GCM: It seems to be a consensus that one of the major hazards of being a construction superintendent is the toll the travel and frequent moving takes on one’s personal life.

Grieser: His decision to stop being a traveling man and return to course superintendent work once he and his wife had their first child caused his construction company boss to eventually offer him a job he couldn’t refuse — weekday site visits and home on weekends.

Karnick: After a decade or so on the go, he’s settled in as a regional vice president and now lives in Philadelphia — the longest he’s been in the same place in 20 years. “I got married six months ago and I’m 42 years old.”

Kelley: “You stay single or you end up single.” (He’s single.)