Tag: greens

Labor, Capital Spending Top 2022 Budgets

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Budgeting for 2022 is complicated by rapidly changing circumstances and market conditions. GGA Partner Henry DeLozier offers insight into areas where budgetary impact will be greatest. 

Budgeting for 2022 is complicated by rapidly changing circumstances and market conditions. For most experienced hands, anticipating changes within their industry and business is far easier than predicting the breadth and depth of the impact the changes will have on their budgets. Here are two significant categories where budgetary impact will be greatest:

1. Labor costs

Historically, the cost of labor and employee benefits represent the largest line item in a golf course’s operational budget. A trend toward a $15-plus per hour minimum wage and desperately low labor supply conditions will only increase the budgetary impact of labor and benefits. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting impacts on labor, two truths are becoming evident:

  • Those clubs and courses that kept staff on the payroll and continued long-term relationships with their employees are being rewarded in two ways. First, those courses are not having to search a tight labor market for replacements. Second, course care and upkeep have been sustained by committed and knowledgeable employees who have a running head start on those clubs that have been forced practically to start over.
  • Working knowledge of your specific course and conditioning expectations promotes a more cost-effective recovery process.

But what if circumstances and decisions beyond your control have forced you into a game of agronomic catch-up? Here are some remedial actions to consider:

  • Update your agronomic plan to state your expectations for course conditioning. New employees need (and want) to understand what is expected of them. Be thorough. Be enthusiastic. Show how much you care.
  • Plan for robust new hire training. Pair experienced hands with newcomers. See that the veterans describe the values and standards of the work to be done with the same clarity and as enthusiastically as teaching the job’s “how to” components. Train the trainers to ensure across-the-board engagement and understanding. Plan daily technical training for your round-up sessions to bring new hires up to speed and promote consistency.
  • Hire veterans. There are approximately 19 million veterans in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As the increasing number of veterans mustering out of service expands, many trained and mature workers are searching for jobs. Some three-quarters of these veterans saw wartime service. Take the steps to learn more about those who have given so much and see how much they can give to your operation.

2. Capital maintenance

Capital spending for most golf facilities has expanded decidedly as an improving economy loosened purse strings and made more money available for deferred capital maintenance spending. Financial analysts at our firm note that capital spending is up by more than 55 percent at U.S. golf facilities, with most projects focusing on course renovations and restorations of historic designs, greens reconstruction and new bunker projects.

With the upsurge in golf’s popularity in the wake of the pandemic, many facilities have experienced growth in rounds played and membership enrollments. According to Golf Datatech, rounds played in 2020 increased by 13.9 percent over 2019 and through the first quarter of 2021 are up another 24 percent. The increased demand for tee times has given owners and managers new confidence to expand facility spending.

What are the smart moves being made by superintendents? They’re updating capital project rosters and renewing long-awaited requests for capital to upgrade facilities. And they’re not waiting. They’re describing the features and benefits of the intended projects and supporting financial projections with trustworthy third-party analysis.

In these uncommon times, it is important for turf pros to remember the sun does not shine on the same dog’s back every day. Market demand will shift. Access to labor will change. But the self-imposed high standards for most superintendents will remain and the expectations of enthusiastic golfers will expand. Prepare your 2022 budget carefully and with a broader understanding of social, economic and market conditions.

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Staffing For Success: Part 3

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Game Plan – Henry DeLozier‘s monthly column in Golf Course Industry Magazine – continues its series on staffing for success with the third of three installments. After looking at how the pandemic has afforded club and course managers the opportunity to reevaluate their teams (Staffing for Success: Part 1) and strategies for finding and hiring the right team members (Staffing for Success: Part 2), we turn to creating a culture that inspires and retains top performers.

Culture: The Secret Sauce of Success

A Supreme Court justice once defined obscenity by not defining it. “I know it when I see it,” Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964. It seems that an organization’s culture might fit into the same category: difficult to define, but obvious once illuminated.

The difficulty in defining organizational culture is because it is so many things at once. An amalgamation of personality, values, reputation, purpose, style and traditions framed by a set of written and unwritten rules developed over time and considered inviolable. Put them all in a pot, let them simmer for a while — a few years or maybe a few decades — and what’s left is culture!

Culture then is nothing less than an organization’s heart and soul, and its importance rivals any other asset or advantage. It is the glue that holds the organization together. It inspires loyalty in employees and motivates them to act consistently and pridefully. It influences them to perform at a high level because they feel a responsibility to uphold their end of the cultural bargain.

Culture is also an important factor in retaining top performers. Randstad, the international employment and recruitment firm, lists toxic cultures with poor pay, limited career opportunities, lack of challenging work, lack of recognition and work-life imbalance as the leading reasons people leave their jobs. There is an urgent need to pay attention to the culture growing around your club or course or risk losing top talent.

If this amorphous entity known as culture is so critical, what steps can you take, what keywords can you prioritize for search engines and what KPIs do you elevate to bake it into your organization? If only creating or transforming culture were so easy. Every winning culture is part of a unique set of attributes and characteristics that cannot be invented or imposed. It must be discovered from within.

But that doesn’t mean you should sit back and wait for culture to reveal itself — or for it to form in ways that could be detrimental to your future success. The road to a sustainable and winning culture ensures that employees:

 

  • Understand the club’s/course’s vision and how they contribute to it. When everyone knows where their leaders are steering the ship, it’s much easier to get people onboard and for employees to feel good about rowing.
  • Know how their performance is measured and what their personal success looks like. What results are expected? Are there both quantifiable and qualitative measures?
  • Are consistently recognized for contributions that meet and exceed goals. Nothing is more motivating than recognition in front of colleagues.
  • Recognize a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Employees of color and minorities want to see evidence that their opinions and work is valued and that they’re on a level playing field.
  • Feel that their managers are taking steps to safeguard their health and well-being. In a post-pandemic world, employees want to feel confident that their job is not putting them and their families in danger.
  • Are rewarded through a set of personal, flexible, creative benefits. Baby boomers, millennials and Gen Xers think about benefits and perks differently. To make them meaningful, managers must understand what each employee values most.

In addition to helping retain top performers, an engaging and embracing culture also has competitive advantages, particularly when it comes to sustaining high performance. Bain & Company research found that nearly 70 percent of business leaders agree that culture provides the greatest source of competitive advantage. In fact, more than 80 percent believe an organization that lacks a high-performance culture is doomed to mediocrity.

Culture may not be the easiest thing to define, but you can take steps that encourage a culture in which your organization thrives. You can’t rush culture, but you’ll know it when you see it.

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Staffing For Success: Part 2

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Game Plan – Henry DeLozier‘s monthly column in Golf Course Industry Magazine – continues its series on staffing for success with the second of three installments. After looking at how the pandemic has afforded club and course managers the opportunity to reevaluate their teams and redefine job descriptions in Staffing for Success: Part 1, we turn to finding and hiring the right team members.

As businesses reshape themselves into leaner and more efficient operations, top performers are the best value their money can buy.

A great many Americans are currently unemployed and looking for a job. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.7 percent of the labor force — more than 10 million people — is out of work. Finding top performers for rising needs in club management roles should be easy work, right? If only it were a simple matter of statistics.

As management professionals in any business know, the magic is finding the right person for the right job. With the war for talent continuing to escalate, we turn to three experts to help us identify the best practices for optimum staffing in these turbulent times.

Jim Collins: Get the right people on the bus

Step one, as management thinker Jim Collins advises in his bestseller “Good to Great,” is to start by “getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats” before heading down the proverbial highway. In other words, focus on “who” before determining “what.”

Those who build great organizations make sure they have a busload of people who can adapt and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next. Selecting the right people is a matter of clearly deciding what types of people — attitudes, talents, backgrounds, skillsets — are needed to enable your team to accomplish great things.

Jeff Bezos: Ask these three questions

The Amazon founder uses a straightforward three-question guide for hiring key employees. Bezos’ three questions offer direct application to the management of golf and private clubs and are particularly useful during unpredictable circumstances.

1. Will you admire this person?

“If you think about the people you’ve admired in your life, they are probably people you’ve been able to learn or take an example from,” Bezos says. This discipline requires that management first knows who he or she is and has a clear-eyed understanding of the strengths and benefits that are needed for any position. Hiring managers do well to ask themselves:

  • What traits and attributes inspire me to be my best?
  • What do we need?
  • To what do we aspire?

2. Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they are entering?

Will the candidate increase the efficiency within the organization? Is he or she able to see around the corner and anticipate needs? Are they willing to challenge established norms and traditions? (Should course setup be executed in the afternoon instead of first thing each day? Can mechanical work be executed after hours by veterans who need extra work?)

3. Along what dimension might the person be a superstar?

Listen to candidates’ answers. Push for details. Ask follow-up questions to understand how your candidate thinks and imagines your operation. One is more likely to be a superstar when he or she is encouraged to make others better.

Regina Hartley: Hire the scrapper

Throughout her 25-year UPS career — working in talent acquisition, succession planning, learning and development, employee relations, and communications — Hartley has seen how people with passion and purpose will astound you when given the opportunity. That’s why she says, “Hire the scrapper.” She defines scrappers as people who have had to fight against the odds to get ahead. They differ from those she calls the “silver spoons” — people who have had clear advantages in their lives and from birth seem destined for success.

Before tossing the résumé of someone who has obviously scrapped his or her way to the experience and skills that qualify them for a job in your organization, at least give them an interview, Hartley says: “A résumé tells a story. A patchwork quilt of odd jobs and experiences may signal a lack of focus and unpredictability. Or it may indicate a committed struggle against obstacles.”

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Read Staffing for Success: Part 3

Staffing For Success: Part 1

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This month, Game Plan – Henry DeLozier‘s monthly column in Golf Course Industry Magazine – kicks off a three-part series on staffing for success. First in the series is a look at how the pandemic has changed staffing needs and why superintendents and managers should consider reorganizing their teams and redefining job descriptions. Parts two and three will look at finding, hiring and retaining the right team members and creating the culture that inspires and motivates top performers.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” is a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill in the days following World War II. Scholars question whether Churchill ever spoke those exact words, but as we make tentative steps to emerge from a pandemic-induced crisis of our own time, the lesson it implies — finding opportunity amidst great difficulty and challenge — rings as timely and as relevant as it would have in Churchill’s day.

In the still-churning wake of the global health pandemic of 2020, maybe the first place we should look for opportunity is with our own staffs. As COVID-19 raced through communities across America, thousands of golf clubs and facilities found themselves on either side of a dilemma. For those places where golf was booming, stretching tee sheets, golf car fleets and maintenance staffs to their limits and beyond, the question was whether to staff up to handle the surge or stay with current staff levels, figuring the wave would eventually crest and return to some semblance of normal. For places the boom never reached, the questions were: How long can we manage to keep our current team intact before payroll takes too much of a bite from dwindling revenues? And among those eventually let go, who will we bring back and who no longer has a place on our team?

By now, many of those calculations and decisions have been made and the ramifications felt. But the lessons they taught should not only endure, but also inform future staffing plans. In the heat of crisis, owners and managers learned who on their teams could take on more responsibility, who had leadership potential and who had reached their ceiling. They learned where they needed additional resources and where resources might be redeployed for better coverage and results. Now it’s time to put those lessons to work with redesigned organization charts and job descriptions.

One thing is for sure: a dynamic job market has changed even more in the last 12 months with continued disruption on the horizon. “The fallout will fundamentally change recruiting and hiring practices long after the pandemic has passed,” recruiting strategist Jack Whatley recently told Forbes.com.

Another certainty is that the war for talent will continue to escalate. Top performers will be in even greater demand because as businesses reshape themselves into leaner, more efficient operations, those top performers are the best value money can buy.

“Twenty years ago, all interns had mechanical skills and no computer knowledge. Now it is just the opposite. They all know how to operate computers, but they can’t change a spark plug,” says Rick Tegtmeier, the long-tenured and highly respected golf course superintendent at Des Moines Golf & Country Club. “It sure doesn’t hurt someone to work at a lesser-budget golf course operation and learn more of the skills that help you become a more rounded superintendent.”

There will never be a better time to take all the names off your org chart and rethink the needs of the club and course, the time and talent required of each of those needs, and the right names to place in those roles. As you go through that exercise, be aware that the pandemic and its economic reverberations have also changed employees’ perspectives.

Workers have had a lot of time recently to reevaluate their careers and question their next moves. Am I in the right job in the right industry? Where could I find more happiness and greater security for me and my family? Is this a stable environment and can I count on a stable paycheck? Where will I be exposed if (or when) another crisis emerges?

“Safety and job stability are at the top of mind for the job seeker now — and that changes what they want in a job,” Whatley says. “Businesses will have to become employee-centric as well as customer-centric.”

Hopefully, you and your facility have weathered this crisis without too much damage. Now’s the time to take advantage of an opportunity it has afforded.

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Read Staffing for Success: Part 2

What Are You Doing to Develop Future Leaders?

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One of the most important responsibilities for managers is developing the next generation of leaders and preparing them for the professional challenges they will face. The most obvious way to develop leadership qualities is simply to pay your knowledge forward by identifying the most important lessons you’ve learned — often the hard way — and passing them on to your team.

That responsibility starts with acknowledging that agronomic knowledge is simply table stakes. Knowing how to grow turf and keep it healthy is expected of anyone in the superintendent role, and most up-and-coming turf managers come to the job well prepared. GCSAA educational programs and the generous teaching of consulting specialists and suppliers go a long way in helping to lay this foundation. Certainly, the college of hard knocks provides its lessons as well.

But what lessons will you teach your assistants and crew members? And how can you help prepare them for their next opportunity to move into more responsible positions? In addition to making yourself available as a mentor, you can also broaden your own knowledge by paying attention to what your most respected peers consider their priorities. Here are suggestions from two of the best in the business.

Bill Cygan is the exceptional young superintendent at Silver Spring Country Club in Ridgefield, Connecticut. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Bill spent six years as an assistant at Innis Arden Golf Club in Greenwich and another six years caring for the West Course at Winged Foot.

Build strong relationships and communicate often.

“This is not easy and doesn’t happen overnight, but the stronger your relationships are at the club, the smoother the ride will be, especially during times of adversity,” Bill says. “Relationship building should include department managers — especially the golf pro, controller and general manager — as well as certain key members of the club, including the green chairman and treasurer, who can be important allies.”

Trust your teammates.

In addition to the administrative leaders with whom a successful superintendent works, Bill adds, “Be sure to build a strong team responsible for the daily golf course maintenance operations.” The strength of the team is your strength.

Carlos Arraya, the assistant general manager at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, began his career as a golf course superintendent and over two decades has grown into a key leadership position at one of America’s finest clubs, having hosted the 100th PGA Championship in 2019. Carlos teaches several key points of focus:

Lead the way.

“Understand your leadership style and voice,” he says, adding that managers who favorably influence the next generation of leaders practice mindfulness, leaving their ego at the shop door, putting the interests and needs of their crew ahead of their own and recognizing a job well done. Further, he recommends continue evolving as a leader to best handle the needs of a changing workforce.

Be present.

Some managers are overly focused on the next job, but Carlos counsels: “Focus on being great in your current role.” One can never know too much; by the same token, one can never know everything, so don’t pretend that you do.

Hone your own character.

Superintendents and managers of all descriptions work in the proverbial glass house. The key to being effective at each level is understanding that one is setting an example for others up and down the organizational chart. “Know the difference between an excuse and a reason,” he says. “And don’t fall into the trap of professional jealousy.”

Rely on science.

“(Superintendents) are trained in the scientific method. But sometimes we overreact and are too quick to make a decision,” he says. Club and course managers can pressure superintendents, especially when times are tough, to have immediate answers. “Be deliberate, rely on the science.”

Developing young people into experienced and highly effective crew members, ones who will one day lead their own operations, is one of the most important jobs of any superintendent. And only when you lose some of your best people, when they move on to the top job at another club or course, you will know that you’ve been successful.

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine. 

What’s Next Rests in Your Hands

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Every superintendent’s hands tell a story. Tough as worn boot leather, marked with the scars of the trade, a superintendent’s hands are testament to long days and honest work that never seems to end. Their hands groom and maintain the course and grounds that are an owner’s most valuable asset while holding the employment and income stability for their crews.

By all accounts, a superintendent’s hands shape the future. That’s as true with the things that are visible — tee boxes, fairways and greens — as those that are not, namely the meticulous plans that support every aspect of an agronomic program. How do the best superintendents plan for the future? They start with three basics:

1. An overall plan for their work.

The overall plan for the care and upkeep of your course establishes the standards of excellence by which you should be measured. The agronomic plan describes your cultural practices for the basics and should include detailed descriptions of fertility, irrigation, labor, arboreal and the sub-plans that support each of those major pillars.

Plan so that you can make your agronomic plan an educational and informational guide that uses photographs and narrated video to keep your owner, board and greens committee well-informed. In addition to setting standards, your agronomic plan is a great opportunity for you to teach key stakeholders what they should expect of you and your team.

2. A comprehensive communications plan.

Once your agronomic plan — together with its supporting details and sub-plans — is established and approved, it’s time to implement your communications plan. Target all stakeholders — your team, the rest of the management staff and your golfers — to help everyone understand your plan of action. This is not a time to seek permission. This is the time to demonstrate your knowledge, experience and expertise.

Set a schedule for your messaging and meet it. Use multiple media to deliver the message — video, brief written descriptions and small-group field days, when you take members onto the course to demonstrate how your programs are being executed.

Some superintendents become victim to overpromising details and conditions that cannot be delivered. Be alert and carefully describe what you will accomplish. By the same token, do not understate the value of your efforts. This is no game for sandbaggers. Demonstrate your professionalism and capabilities with clear-cut descriptions of who you are, what your team goals are and how the goals will be successfully achieved. Show what features you will emphasize on the course and explain the benefits of each element of your strategy.

3. A self-improvement plan.

GCSAA provides countless opportunities for superintendents to stay current on science and technology and to learn about new trends. The most respected and rewarded superintendents also seek out opportunities — and a regimen — for self-improvement. Here are a handful of keys for improving your own capabilities:

  • Read more. Leaders in every field are readers who continually gather more information that bolsters insight and wisdom.
  • Get fit. The pressures that come with the job and the common inclination to treat oneself well when one feels overlooked or unappreciated combine to add weight, cholesterol and risk to your well-being. Get in shape and stay there.
  • Identify and address blind spots. What do you overlook or consider to be inconsequential? Which people or circumstances trigger frustrations during your day? The better you identify threats to your overall view of your world, the better you will navigate unexpected events.
  • Live with BHAGS. Set big, hairy, audacious goals for yourself and your crew. The bigger your dreams, the more fun it is when you make them real.
  • Avoid negative people. Their attitudes can be contagious and poison morale. Build your network around positive people who inspire you and bring out innovative thinking and your best work.

Superintendents hold in their hands the franchise value of their course. Describe your plan to make it even better. Communicate your plans clearly and honestly. And never stop making yourself an even more valuable professional.

This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine. 

Practice Areas and the Pandemic

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If you’re thinking about adding or enhancing a practice area at your course, here are some things to keep in mind. This article was authored by Henry DeLozier for Golf Course Industry magazine.

Searching for a silver lining to a pandemic is mostly a fool’s errand. But many golf courses fortunate enough to stay open during the last five months have found something for which to be thankful: Thousands of golfers and would-be golfers are discovering (and rediscovering) a love for the game.

In many places, their affection is being stoked by short-game practice areas that are introducing new players to golf and giving more experienced players a place to hone their games, all the while boosting incremental revenues.

Bradley Klein, a veteran golf travel, history and architecture journalist and Golf Course Industry columnist, observes that the role of short-game practice areas is evolving. “Time constraints were the initial impetus, but that’s changed of late.” He says the trend is toward “more fun, family-friendly” areas that also provide practice opportunities for serious golfers. “They also constitute efficient use of land.”

What’s more, in this era of social distancing, short game areas are a safe space for youngsters to learn the game while socializing and exercising, according to Jan Bel Jan, president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. She believes the trend will continue to gain momentum. “Short game improvement areas provide benefits to seasoned golfers, promote a welcoming introduction to golf for adult beginners and help courses remain competitive with other area facilities,” she says.

Pinehurst Resort injected new credibility for areas dedicated to the short game and demonstrated its revenue potential when it opened The Cradle — nine holes, all par threes, measuring 789 yards and covering 10 acres — in September 2017. In the last three years, The Cradle has hosted more than 100,000 rounds while becoming one of Pinehurst’s most popular courses.

If you’re thinking about adding or enhancing a practice area at your course, here are some things to keep in mind.

Know your customer.

New practice, training and game-improvement facilities require planning, which starts with understanding the type of player you want to attract. What skill levels will you prioritize? What will be the hours of operation? How will you price access? Member surveys and information exchange sessions with golfers will help you better understand your target audience’s needs and expectations.

Don’t get sloppy.

“Serious design, with interesting greens contours and variety of tee shots” are keys to effective planning, Klein says. “It has to be run like a real golf course and not like a sloppy afterthought.”

Make it fun.

Jim Wyffels, director of operations at Spirit Hollow Golf Club in Burlington, Iowa, is an innovative thinker when it comes to making golf fun. Spirit Hollow’s Shankopotamus Golf Academy, which features TopTracer technologies, was designed with two goals in mind, Wyffels says. “The first was to create an additional amenity for our stay-and-play guests in the evening and during inclement weather. The second was to create a new revenue stream in the evening and during winter months that would target our local market. Our plan was to create a fun, game-like family atmosphere where all age groups and skill levels, including non-golfers, could be entertained.”

Keep your superintendent in the loop.

How will the golf course superintendent maintain the short-game area? Engage the superintendent to ensure design characteristics that can be efficiently and cost-effectively maintained. Concerns such as adequate turning radii, slopes that can be consistently cut and safely navigated by staff, and shapes that match existing terrain on the adjacent golf course are planning priorities. Bel Jan advises planners to be mindful of optimizing drainage, building putting surfaces to established standards and minimizing shade impacts to enable turf recovery.

COVID-19 really has no upside; it has wreaked havoc in unprecedented ways. But if a crisis of its proportions has encouraged more people to take to the course, and prompted golf managers and leaders to think more innovatively about amenities like short courses and practice areas, then it has left something of value in its wake.

Webinar: A Changing Future for Golf Course Superintendents

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This webinar was originally aired by the Florida Chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

The Florida Chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) and Henry DeLozier, GGA Partners, have a frank discussion on golf and what the future might look like for golf and golf course superintendents in Florida.

Speaking with Nick Kearns, Director of Green and Grounds at The Oaks Club and President of the Florida GCSAA, Henry shares his big picture perspective on changes resulting from the global health crisis and the details to which golf course superintendents need to be paying attention.

Spotlight:

 

  • Budgets will come under pressure, anticipated economic slowdown and its impact on golf course maintenance budgets.
  • The significance of the golf course superintendent and his/her ability to provide patrons a safe platform to enjoy golf will increase.
  • Emerging trends and best practices in the industry, pre-vaccine and post-vaccine.
  • Accelerated pace of change and impacts on supply chain.
  • Heightened expectations for expertise, prioritization, and communication.
  • And much more.

 

(29 minute watch)

Inspired by the Masters

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There are superintendents who say they dread the first full week of April each year because they know their members are glued to their televisions watching the Masters and wondering why their course isn’t also perfect.

If they needed someone to blame for the condition known as Masters envy, they could look no further than Jim James, the senior director for club and hospitality operations at the Augusta National Golf Club. If they did, they would see someone whose commitment to excellence goes far beyond flora and course conditions.

“We simply try every single day to be the absolute best we can at everything thing we do,” says James, who has been on the job at Augusta National since 1995. “We look at every single day as an opportunity to improve. When we find we are not the best, we are relentless and incredibly focused to make sure that we improve.”

Of course, there also are those superintendents who watch the tournament and find inspiration and challenge amidst the azaleas, dogwoods and meticulously groomed grounds.

It is the attention to detail that inspires Jon Jennings, the superintendent at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, host of last year’s U.S. Open. “My takeaway each visit is that no matter how inconsequential a detail, they are extremely important for the overall success of the Masters,” he says. “Upon returning home, I try to instill that level of quality with our staff and have them visualize that everything we do in course preparation is important in the grand scheme of things from a player-experience perspective.”

The Masters provides professionals with instructive and insightful examples that guide innovation, brand management and continuous improvement.

Keith Wood, director of greens and grounds at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte N.C., is no stranger to big-time golf, having hosted the 2017 PGA Championship. But he recognizes something special when he sees it.

“I learned early on that if there was a week or two to have my greens as good as they could be, I needed to peak around the Masters,” Wood says. “There is nothing better than getting compliments on how your course is playing while everyone is buzzing from the excitement of a great Masters tournament.”

Wood, who is preparing Quail Hollow for the 2021 President’s Cup, says the Masters’ grounds and agronomy team set the bar for tournament golf each season. “I am in awe of the horticulture and the health and beauty of the landscaping they do,” he says. “All shrubs and trees on the property are perfectly placed and maintained. They do a wonderful job of embracing the heritage of being a plant nursery and then take it to the next level with world-class horticulture skills.”

Carlos Arraya, director of grounds and agronomy at historic Bellerive Country Club near St. Louis, finds motivation in the history of the club that has played host to some of golf’s most memorable tournaments.

“The Masters inspires me to communicate and focus on Bellerive’s great traditions and championship history,” says Arraya, who prepared Bellerive for the 2018 PGA Championship. “Even though the Masters is one-of-a-kind, every course has its character and own story.”

The attention to detail and the steady progress on new solutions – from technology to labor deployment – serve as guidance for Arraya’s planning purposes. “The takeaway that resonates in my mind every year while watching the tournament is that a vision accompanied by a strategic plan can produce golfing excellence for the players and patrons,” he says.

While some may dread Masters week for the envy it produces, the great ones welcome golf’s first major as a learning experience. They know that even though they don’t have Augusta National’s budget or staff (more than 2,000 during tournament week), they can make their own commitment to excellence, looking at each day as an opportunity to improve.

This article was written and published by Golf Course Industry Magazine by GGA Partner Henry DeLozier.

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