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What does a retired
superintendent do?
A long-time superintendent reflects on how he and a friend created Brush Creek Golf Course.
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Peter Kendrick, GCGS (far right), decided that retired superintendents should get back on the mower, so he designed and built Brush Creek GC, which he operates with (from left) his son Tom, daughter Liz Chapman (holding then 9-month-old Cooper Chapman), and her husband, Steve (holding then 4-year-old Caitlin). |
My dad was running a sawmill when I got out of the service. I’d never played golf, but we had heavy equipment, so if a golf course needed a bridge, we built it.
When I finally played for the first time, I saw that the course wasn’t in good shape. I told my friends, “I could do better than this.” A few days later they called me and said, “Do you want to try to do better?”
I’d been a logger until then, but that work was pretty dangerous. We’d just had a couple of people hurt and killed.
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No one doubts what the signature hole is at Brush Creek GC. It’s the second hole, the one with the telephone pole in the middle of the fairway, just shy of the green. Photos by Eddy Montville/Rockford Register Star/Copyrighted/Used with permission. |
I thought the golf course work was pretty easy; I made more money logging, but that was a tough job. For every dollar you make logging, they want a dollar in insurance. I decided it was a good time to make the change. I moved to the golf business in 1970.
30 years later
In 2000, my friend, GCSAA Class AA member Duane Kloepping, CGCS, and I were in our late 60s. I had recently undergone an angioplasty, and Duane, who had served 20 years at Lake Carroll (Ill.) Golf Course, was on dialysis because of failing kidneys. Neither of us was what you would consider a good insurance risk.
The men who hired and befriended me 26 years earlier assured me I had a job as long as I wanted one. However, by 2000, most of them were pushing up daisies.
Newer and younger members were running the greens committee. These new committee members started asking me when I was going to retire, and I could see the writing on the wall. It’s become commonplace in business to want to employ someone who is younger, presumably more current with the times — and of course, cheaper.
What do you do with a superintendent when he stops being a superintendent? I loved my job. I had started this career relatively late in life, and I didn’t want, nor could I afford, to just play golf and live on a golf course, which is what my wife and family wanted at the time. When I first started out in Wisconsin I couldn’t afford to pay a crew, so my wife and kids became my crew. It was hard work for little pay, but we survived.
One evening, Duane and I were talking about all the changes, good and bad, that had occurred in our business. I confided in him something I had been thinking about for a long time.
“Hell’s bells, Duane,” I said. “I’m thinking about building my own golf course!”
“Are you nuts?” he answered. I expected him to react this way, and I knew my wife and family would agree, but that wasn’t a deterrent for me.
A motivational push
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The tree-lined fairway looking down at the first hole at Brush Creek GC is at the bottom of a hill. |
I was off. I began adding up what I thought the least expensive 18-hole golf course would cost. I hashed my figures over with Duane, who was at least willing to hear his crazy friend out. We both agreed I’d need at least a half million dollars. We also agreed that the interest alone on this amount of money — if we could come up with it — would kill us.
Around the same time, the chairman of my greens committee informed me that they had decided to let me “retire,” effective the first of the year. This was my motivational push. I called Duane with the news, and he said if I was really going to try to build my own course, he’d have to help me. We thought we’d see what all the hours of GCSAA seminars had taught us.
After many long hours of deep thinking and discussion, we decided that maybe we could build a nine-hole course, rather than an 18-hole one.
We agreed on several requirements, including finding acreage that wouldn’t need a lot of dirt work and using old equipment, which would mean trade-ins or cobbling pieces together.
We put a $50,000 limit on each of five categories, for a total of $250,000. The five areas included 60 to 75 acres of land; equipment; irrigation (tees and greens); a practice range, putting green and golf cars; and a pro shop.
During the next six months, Duane started buying equipment that he and my son Tom repaired, combined and rebuilt.
I found 75 acres of great land with a fabulous view, a farmhouse, barn and large metal Quonset hut near Orangeville, Ill. I was able to convince my daughter Liz and her husband, Steve, to move into the house so there would be someone on the property. I then worked on getting investors, an appraisal, appropriate zoning, and of course a good mortgage.
One year later, after everyone worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, we had six holes that could be played only on foot (or in a tank!). We were feeling a little down until the golfers in Orangeville (bless their hearts) started coming out and playing the six holes we had completed, for a dollar per hole. They even formed golf leagues and played all year. They also put in untold hours doing everything from moving rocks to planting flowers — even helping to build greens.
Encouraged, we moved on with our plans, putting up a 24-foot by 30-foot Cleary building for our pro shop.
Five great years at Brush Creek
Now, five years later, we’ve started making a little money. We pay ourselves $7 to $8 an hour (when we can), and we are almost breaking even after paying bills, taxes, payroll, etc.
We’re doing pretty well now. We’ve had good support.
I let the area superintendents know what I was looking for — mowers and tractors. Tom is a good mechanic. We can’t afford to send anything in for service, we just fix it ourselves.
We have our own watering system at Brush Creek — we do it with a gravel pump. It’s pretty weak by the clubhouse.
We mow our tees at 3⁄8 inch, the greens at 5⁄32 inch. There’s a lot of slope on them, they run at 8 or 9 on the Stimpmeter. We’ve got Penncross A1 bentgrass greens. We have bluegrass tees, but I hope to change that someday. The fairways also are bluegrass — they’ve got good bluegrass these days.
We mow the rough at 1¾ inches. Twenty years ago everyone started putting double-row irrigation systems in their roughs — everything is green, but the rough is cabbage. If you’re Tiger Woods you can handle it, but the rest of us have to turn sideways and punch out. We don’t water our rough like that here, and we just mow the spots we have to mow.
Our fairways are more landing areas than fairways. We mow greens every day, fairways three times a week — there’s just two of us who do that.
As I look back on five hectic and stressful years, I realize how hard we worked. But we were fortunate to have God and the Orangeville faithful golfers on our side. We have many new friends, and we are all much richer for the experience. We currently have nearly 100 seasonal members, and are considering an expansion of our pro shop.
What does a superintendent do when he retires? He hops right back on a mower, and after that he teaches his granddaughter the great game of golf.
Leo Feser Award candidate
This article is eligible for the 2008 Leo Feser Award, presented annually since 1977 to the author of the best superintendent-written article published in GCM during the previous year. Superintendents receive a $300 stipend for articles. Feser Award winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Golf Industry Show, where they are recognized. They also have their names engraved on a plaque permanently displayed at GCSAA headquarters.