Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is brought to you by Toro. We are
Speaker 1: really excited to announce our new partnership with Toro Golf.
Speaker 1: We share a mutual admiration of golf course superintendents. Superintendents
Speaker 1: are among the most important and influential people on golf
Speaker 1: and really our thought leaders. I mean, these guys are
Speaker 1: scientists and they keep the golf courses in great playing conditions.
Speaker 1: And we're excited with Toro's support to create this monthly
Speaker 1: superintendent podcast series. So it's going to be our goal
Speaker 1: to deliver you a informative, thought provoking podcast that highlights
Speaker 1: a lot of the greatest superintendent's and most interesting voices
Speaker 1: in the industry. Today's episode is the first one, and
Speaker 1: it's with Blue Mount Golf and Country Club's superintendent Alex
Speaker 1: Beeson Crone. Thanks especially to Toro. They obviously are big
Speaker 1: supporters of superintendents across the country and world and are
Speaker 1: supporting us by helping us do this podcast, which we've
Speaker 1: wanted to do for some time. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: here is Alex Beeson Crone.
Speaker 2: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset when
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 3: And when I find my.
Speaker 1: Ball in a bright egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida
Speaker 1: egg Frida egg Frida egg egg Frida egg bride egg lie,
Speaker 1: I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 4: How often do you play golf?
Speaker 3: Not enough? If anyone, I would say, in average, try
Speaker 3: to play like twenty times a year. I would play
Speaker 3: more if I didn't work and I have a wife
Speaker 3: and three kids. Yeah, that's hard, Yeah, it is. I mean,
Speaker 3: we spend a lot of time out working and by
Speaker 3: the time I'm done, you know, the fruits of my
Speaker 3: labor are probably best start just keeping a marriage together
Speaker 3: and going home and hanging out with the kids.
Speaker 1: One nice thing with being a superintendent is like you
Speaker 1: not always, but you can be done earlier, so you
Speaker 1: get more afternoon time with kids than like a guy
Speaker 1: that say, commutes into the city and gets home at
Speaker 1: six thirty or seven.
Speaker 2: This year was well, I'm saying, sometime you can't be Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you got my friends, and there's there's other supers,
Speaker 2: you know, and I get the the talk quite a
Speaker 2: bit from buddies there in the industry.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, go home, you know, the golf course
Speaker 3: would be there in the morning and that's you know
Speaker 3: your two. Yeah, I'm gonna work on that. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you can you know, you can be out of you
Speaker 3: can be in at four, be out at I mean
Speaker 3: on a weekends. Some days Moan goes, we'll be done
Speaker 3: at eight thirty.
Speaker 1: So this is her first year at Blue Mound. What uh,
Speaker 1: you were assistant at Aaron Hill's before. What what was
Speaker 1: the toughest thing about becoming the boss versus like being
Speaker 1: you know, an assistant where you probably did a ton
Speaker 1: of the same stuff. But what was the hardest thing
Speaker 1: about moving up into the you know, the head position.
Speaker 4: And of course.
Speaker 3: Hm hmm. Honestly, the I mean the transition was Zach
Speaker 3: you know, good friend Buddy h and my old boss
Speaker 3: at Aaron gave us a lot of autonomy. And John
Speaker 3: and myself we we got to do a lot, we
Speaker 3: got to take We do a lot of the morning
Speaker 3: meetings and help with set up and you know, economic
Speaker 3: plan so none of a lot of that was different.
Speaker 3: It's you know, checking my mailbox for invoices and like
Speaker 3: for instance, and we just did this huge bunker project,
Speaker 3: pretty big and budgets due at the end of the month,
Speaker 3: early order for chemicals is due. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I got a long week in the office, and that's
Speaker 3: what's tough. You know, it's tough because I want to
Speaker 3: be out there. I'm a working superintendent. All motis rag
Speaker 3: bunkers do it all. Really, I don't really care for
Speaker 3: spending time in the office too much, and I think
Speaker 3: that's been the hardest transition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see that too, Like with my business as
Speaker 1: a gross like I have to do so much more
Speaker 1: business stuff, and like I like making the content. It's like, right,
Speaker 1: that's the fun stuff, exactly the same thing you like
Speaker 1: doing the golf course stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's why you got into I assume, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no exactly. And like when I if I just
Speaker 3: had to do like the office side of it, you know,
Speaker 3: I know there's some superintendents or directors let's say that
Speaker 3: literally were like sportcos to work. I could never do that.
Speaker 3: I think I would. I would do something else that
Speaker 3: just doesn't I mean, and I'm not saying maybe maybe
Speaker 3: when you know I'm sixty, that might be appealing.
Speaker 4: But hey, you gotta be careful.
Speaker 1: You can't, you know, shut off the potential, you know,
Speaker 1: career progression. You know, the USGA calls and says, you're
Speaker 1: you're running everything from an acronomic side, you'd probably have
Speaker 1: to wear a suit and die.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that guy does that for these Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think he he rocks a polo polo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1: Uh you're you're from Madison? How you How did you
Speaker 1: first get into the game of golf.
Speaker 3: I got an older brother and dad that love the game.
Speaker 3: I mean every trip was golf trips. Literally every family
Speaker 3: trip we took as kids was And at the time,
Speaker 3: architecture wasn't like a big thing, so it was like,
Speaker 3: oh the golf that had just places to play. It
Speaker 3: was like this place is four stars. We'd only you know,
Speaker 3: my dad be like, you know, we're playing fifteen stars
Speaker 3: this trip. You know, It's like and now I look
Speaker 3: at some of these courses, I'm like, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: not my cup of tea now. But that's how I
Speaker 3: got into it. I grew up. I actually didn't grow
Speaker 3: up next to the We belonged to a course Nakoma,
Speaker 3: which is a bendelo and fun, fun track. And my
Speaker 3: brother was maybe not scratch, but he was a good golfer.
Speaker 3: My dad was a single digit golfer, and it was
Speaker 3: you know, we would go play like eighteen and then
Speaker 3: rush home for dinner and it was sweet.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I always like my favorite growing up was playing
Speaker 4: the nine after dinner. Oh the best night, best night
Speaker 4: by far.
Speaker 1: So you're playing a ton of golf as a kid
Speaker 1: to like turf enter your life.
Speaker 3: Kind of my accident. I never had a desire to
Speaker 3: be a golf course superintendent growing up, not even like
Speaker 3: an inkling. And I was taking some time off from
Speaker 3: school at UW. I was originally going to school for
Speaker 3: landscape architecture and just the original The super at Aaron
Speaker 3: Hills at the time just kind of ran into him.
Speaker 3: He saw my hat. I don't I think I was
Speaker 3: wearing like a black hole ron hat, and he was like,
Speaker 3: you know, we're building this golf course down the road.
Speaker 3: It's going to you know it's going to be it's
Speaker 3: really it's something special, and looking for guys on the crew.
Speaker 3: So this was probably July of two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: I remember because my birthday was August fourth. I started
Speaker 3: on my birthday two thousand and five at Aaron Hills
Speaker 3: and they were doing construction. I mean, I think only
Speaker 3: half the holes were seated, picked a lot of rocks,
Speaker 3: broke a lot of equipment, and had a blast. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just like the time of my life. We're working, like,
Speaker 3: you know, seventy hours a week, rolling out stop blanket,
Speaker 3: literally just having a blast and really haven't looked back
Speaker 3: since I went back to school at UW. And you know,
Speaker 3: Zach really mentored me throughout, even you know, I was
Speaker 3: just a crew guy. He was involved me and stuff
Speaker 3: that was I was like, this is fascinating.
Speaker 1: You went to school wanting to be an architect and
Speaker 1: then you took that job and you're working on a
Speaker 1: construction site.
Speaker 4: Originally when you took it, where you're.
Speaker 1: Thinking, hey, this is going to be my kind of
Speaker 1: means into getting into architecture or where you're just kind
Speaker 1: of taking it to figure this will be cool to do, kind.
Speaker 3: Of just this will be cool to do. You know me,
Speaker 3: I was a lot different at I guess twenty and
Speaker 3: them at thirty six. It was just like, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: can afford my own apartment. And I was happy. I
Speaker 3: mean it truly, and it kind of his all had
Speaker 3: I can't talk has always boiled down to happiness. If
Speaker 3: I'm happy at work and I'm at work a lot,
Speaker 3: right or at a minimum at work forty hours a week,
Speaker 3: and that means something. So yeah, I had no intention
Speaker 3: really of even going back to school for that until
Speaker 3: like probably three or four four years later.
Speaker 4: What was you know, the Aaron Hills built.
Speaker 1: There's obviously Gary Tomato wrote that huge thing about, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the story of Aaron Hills, and I think
Speaker 1: everybody probably glanced at or heard a lot about it
Speaker 1: when the US Open was happening. But what what was
Speaker 1: it like the early days of Aaron Hills.
Speaker 3: It was pretty well. I mean I lived on site
Speaker 3: and Bob was heavily involved babbling the original owner. You know,
Speaker 3: there would be nights where he'd like come knocking on
Speaker 3: the door and be like, you know, I tipped the
Speaker 3: trailer in the marsh on three. You know, it's eight
Speaker 3: o'clock on a Sunday night and it's sposally my day. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he'd be out. He'd love to go out and like
Speaker 3: moud holes and uh, you know, I was a much
Speaker 3: better golfer then. It was kind of right after I
Speaker 3: was close to scratch and he would be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, you had like can you get out of
Speaker 3: this bunker? And I'd be like barely, like all right,
Speaker 3: let's go deeper. I was like, okay, Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: just kind of oblivious to course. I mean I really was.
Speaker 3: I was truly oblivious. I was it was cool to
Speaker 3: be as a crew guy, be you know, involved in
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But it was pretty wild. I
Speaker 3: mean eating lunch. I remember going to lunch with like
Speaker 3: Ron Whitten and you know, he was on site a lot,
Speaker 3: going to the air and in and grabbing some two
Speaker 3: dollars hamburgers. I have really fond memories of it. I
Speaker 3: truly do, because it was fun. I mean it was
Speaker 3: it was something I never thought i'd do, never thought
Speaker 3: I'd be involved with the build portion of it. And
Speaker 3: there was only like six of us two, so that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I had to do all kinds of different stuff. I
Speaker 3: guarantee you no one has ever wrapped a muffler around
Speaker 3: a dumb truck like I have, like around the axle
Speaker 3: of a dump truck tell us yeah, oh yeah. Well
Speaker 3: so they were like they gave me this huge pile
Speaker 3: and like a you know, a tractor with a bucket
Speaker 3: front end, or around the front of this thing. Never
Speaker 3: been really I'd sat on a tractor maybe like my
Speaker 3: second cousin's farm, but like never operated a tractor. So
Speaker 3: Zach gives me like a two minute tutorial and he says,
Speaker 3: you know, like they had cleared out that huge bunker
Speaker 3: behind thirteen. There was a huge pile of dirt there,
Speaker 3: and he's like, this needs to go to do the
Speaker 3: hall road by the pump house. I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: so what would now probably take me? Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: five hours, took me like four days. And he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm dropping these you know what. He was like, they're
Speaker 3: like chocolate, You're dropping like hershey kiss is like they
Speaker 3: need in their like space, like these piles need to
Speaker 3: be on top of one another. So Who's like back
Speaker 3: into the pile. And so I'm just floring this dumb
Speaker 3: truck that we got back into the pile. And soon enough,
Speaker 3: like I hear this like clunk cluh, Like what was
Speaker 3: that hop out? And the muffler has like been bent
Speaker 3: like all the way like literally it was like figure eight,
Speaker 3: you know, curled around the axle and it snapped off.
Speaker 3: I mean the axle stop the truck from moving.
Speaker 4: Was it because you kept backing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like and it just kept bending the muffler further down.
Speaker 4: Probably wasn't your best moment.
Speaker 3: No, but you know, and this is kind of and
Speaker 3: this is how I operate as manager too. I mean
Speaker 3: things break, yeah, right, Like guys will be like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, something will happen, grass will die. Things break,
Speaker 3: And it's not that I'm lax or it is that
Speaker 3: I'm lax, but it's not that I'm like lack of
Speaker 3: laxa daisical, like you know, I don't really care. But
Speaker 3: it's like, I mean that was They were like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: you really screwed that up. Like we don't have a
Speaker 3: dump truck now. I think we just sought off them
Speaker 3: off LERD for like three years. It was like the
Speaker 3: loudest dump truck in Washington Con.
Speaker 1: I mean, there wasn't a lot of stuff around there,
Speaker 1: so yeah, right, quiet aspect of it was so in
Speaker 1: terms of the course that I mean, it opened and
Speaker 1: it went through like a couple revisions and and you
Speaker 1: had your public you know public and everybody was up
Speaker 1: there and what was it What was it like watching
Speaker 1: it mature and like the whole process of like obviously
Speaker 1: it and Chambers Bay were these two courses that were
Speaker 1: essentially built for us opense, Like, how how often were
Speaker 1: you making tweaks? And and the USGA was coming in
Speaker 1: and saying do this and that? And what was it
Speaker 1: like being on the staff that through that period?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there clearly there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of tweaks there. It would be like, you know, we'd
Speaker 3: make a tweak and then there'd be another tweak to
Speaker 3: that tweak, just because we all, like we all John
Speaker 3: Zach myself, we like doing it, like it was fun
Speaker 3: because we always got we were closed for construction, right,
Speaker 3: so constructions in the spring and fall, and it was
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, throw some tunes on and so I
Speaker 3: don't think we ever It wasn't like we're irritated by it,
Speaker 3: but no, it was pretty wild. You didn't know what
Speaker 3: to expect next, kind of. I think they're all for
Speaker 3: the better. I think the golf course is so much
Speaker 3: better than what it originally was. Personally. You know, some
Speaker 3: people missed the berets or the Dell hole. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I Yeah, I played it when I was young, and
Speaker 1: I remember a couple of times being like what is
Speaker 1: going on? Just uh it was why. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's the topography out.
Speaker 4: There is just insane.
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of golf and it I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's unbelievable that it's only like an hour from Milwaukee.
Speaker 3: Right and it's you know, you drive in like you
Speaker 3: would never expect over the hill that that's what the
Speaker 3: topography was. And that was that was my you know,
Speaker 3: August fourth, not even I guess I started August fourth,
Speaker 3: but you know whatever, that week before I started in
Speaker 3: two thousand and five, it was like, my god, you know,
Speaker 3: this golf course can't be that special. Yeah, this is
Speaker 3: the Kettle Moraine. But and we like pulled up. It
Speaker 3: used to be this gray house that the superintendent lived
Speaker 3: at the time, and that's where like the offices were
Speaker 3: and they moved all those but uh, pull in and
Speaker 3: you're overlooking, like you know, it's basically where the clubhouses now.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is incredible, you know what this exists?
Speaker 3: And I had never seen. I mean, yeah, now there's
Speaker 3: Sand Valley and there's all there finding like really cool places,
Speaker 3: but you know, i'd never been to some of I
Speaker 3: never you know, we didn't go hiking as kids. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd never seen some of the topography in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were busy going golf. We were so this moment.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're part of this crew and you were somewhat
Speaker 1: into architecture before. Yeah, this is where you know, you
Speaker 1: kind of got the full on bug, right total. So
Speaker 1: how did you start to think about it? Did you
Speaker 1: start to think about golf? And obviously you're learning maintenance
Speaker 1: along the way, but how golf courses are maintained? Like,
Speaker 1: did you start thinking differently because of the you know,
Speaker 1: architectural experience of building a golf course.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if I start thinking differently about.
Speaker 4: I mean, did you did your perspective of golf change?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I've kind of gone through like this, you know,
Speaker 3: peaks and valleys of how I view golf. You know,
Speaker 3: I think for a while there I was only looking
Speaker 3: at conditioning like well we do this, or I go
Speaker 3: somewhere and be like we don't do this, we need
Speaker 3: to do this, you know, and I couldn't just enjoy it,
Speaker 3: like truthfully, like for probably five or six years, couldn't
Speaker 3: enjoy golf the way I used to. I definitely at
Speaker 3: that time, we probably in twenty I think John Morris
Speaker 3: had started in twenty eleven at aaryone else as the
Speaker 3: competition's director and his relationship with obviously golf. He introduced
Speaker 3: me to a lot of stuff that I'd never heard before,
Speaker 3: a lot of sites, you know, just books. And I
Speaker 3: still like the more I kind of know about architecture,
Speaker 3: it's almost like the less I know, right, Like it's
Speaker 3: like I don't know exactly know what I like until
Speaker 3: I see it. I used to, you know, I got
Speaker 3: real into like, well, if it's not a core crunch
Speaker 3: or a dough course, it has to be it's not,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not the best out there.
Speaker 1: It's funny how that works, Like I read like my
Speaker 1: old stuff now and I'm like so confident then and
Speaker 1: now like I like, I'm like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 4: It's funny how like your perspective kind of changes.
Speaker 1: And I mean there's so many different facets of architecture too,
Speaker 1: So it is a good point.
Speaker 4: The more you know, the less you know. Almost I
Speaker 4: don't know if that made any sense.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm no.
Speaker 4: It does, but I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I had a buddy who was a superintendent and we
Speaker 1: were we were out a course and we were talking
Speaker 1: with somebody else and the guy walks away, and my
Speaker 1: buddy goes, you know, now that's the guy. That's the
Speaker 1: guy that knows just enough to screw everything up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because the more I feel like, the more
Speaker 1: you get to know stuff, the softer you get on
Speaker 1: opinions about stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My opinion now is might I might hate it
Speaker 3: like a year from now, you know, like like we
Speaker 3: just had Bruce Hepner here to do some really cool work,
Speaker 3: and my opinion is going into it were very different
Speaker 3: than what I thought, you know, maybe not very different. Man,
Speaker 3: we had the fourth hold the Alps in the short
Speaker 3: the seventh we were going to do the mode and
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, but I thought it should
Speaker 3: look this way, and he was kind of like, let
Speaker 3: me do it this and I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: but he was right. You know, it's incredible. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: and that guy knows one hundred times more than I do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's kind of cool though, Like, you know, I enjoy
Speaker 3: being I always, you know, in recent years more than ever,
Speaker 3: I enjoyed like just being wrong.
Speaker 1: I when I get tricked, especially if I've seen somewhere
Speaker 1: the first time. If I'm playing and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is where I definitely want to be and I
Speaker 1: hit it there and then I realized, like, ah, this
Speaker 1: is not what I thought it was going to be
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 4: It's like that those are the best moments. I think.
Speaker 1: It's like when you just I don't know, when you're
Speaker 1: wrong about what you think about something.
Speaker 3: Or even like you know you're wrong about something, something
Speaker 3: looks you know, like that's not going to look cool.
Speaker 3: That looks way better. You see it, You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was right. I'm glad we did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is it's like a preconceived notion thing where
Speaker 1: you have like this like thought of hey, this is
Speaker 1: this is the way it should be because I saw
Speaker 1: this here. But you know, that's the beauty of the architects.
Speaker 1: It's like they're I mean, they're artists and I couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine having like the way they think about things. They
Speaker 1: can see it before they even move any earth.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I don't know how good of an
Speaker 3: architect I would have been had, you know, had it
Speaker 3: panned out. Yeah, I just don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what what you said? You read a bunch of books.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books that you've read, they.
Speaker 3: Said, he introduced me to a bunch of No, No,
Speaker 3: I've read a few and and uh, I mean early
Speaker 3: on I read anatomy I'm a Golf Course by Tom
Speaker 3: Doak and George Thomas. Yeah, that's a good one. I
Speaker 3: actually read that recently. I read that right before I
Speaker 3: got the job. Here. I ordered a bunch of before
Speaker 3: I got the job. Here was like and as a
Speaker 3: very early present, because I used to like kind of
Speaker 3: doodle golf holes, I got Doctor Hurdson's and that was
Speaker 3: actually kind of cool because it was like it shows
Speaker 3: you like construction specs. I enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: And there's so many good this there. Now for a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. For one hundred years, Toro
Speaker 1: has helped superintendents confidently display their skill and dedication to
Speaker 1: maintaining golf course turf at the highest agronomic standard. In
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Toro built the first motorized faaraway moor, replacing
Speaker 1: horse drawn equipment. No more hoof prints and all eighteen
Speaker 1: pharaways cut in only eighteen hours. Pretty incredible feat. So
Speaker 1: greenskeeping has come a long way since then, with Toro
Speaker 1: continuing to bring innovations that address what matters most to superintendents.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow at Toro Golf on Twitter and
Speaker 1: reach out to your local Toro distributor to demo the
Speaker 1: newest innovations from Toro. How back to Alex beeson crone,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your gig here Blue Mount Golf
Speaker 1: and Country Club SETH Rayner Course in Milwaukee. Did you
Speaker 1: know a lot about Rayner before you came here?
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, yeah, Rainer was has been for
Speaker 3: like the Latin truthful Blue Blue Mont's been like it
Speaker 3: was kind of like the Holy Grail position for me.
Speaker 3: I was like, man, that job ever opens up, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do whatever I can at least get a shot.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure if it ever would open up, But yeah,
Speaker 3: I knew a fair amount about Rainer.
Speaker 4: How does the superintendent job search work?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: You know, I like to think about obviously, like I.
Speaker 1: Was working in completely different world before this, But you
Speaker 1: think about, like how regular job and it's such a
Speaker 1: small industry. There's I mean, you know, when a job
Speaker 1: opens up, there's instead of thousands of qualified candidates, there
Speaker 1: might be a couple dozen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I don't actually know the final numbers and
Speaker 3: who applied to this job, but I mean, yeah, there's
Speaker 3: there's not gonna be more than one hundred people probably
Speaker 3: seeking out that job. So they'll either post it like
Speaker 3: one of the you know, GCSA or turf net, or
Speaker 3: it might not even be posted. I mean some jobs
Speaker 3: don't even get posted, just like word them off. You know,
Speaker 3: they might already have three or four candidates that they
Speaker 3: desire to fill that position and just have them interview.
Speaker 3: But this one was posted online. I actually found out
Speaker 3: about it before it was posted. Yeah, a little inside,
Speaker 3: little inside track. I mean I knew that, you know,
Speaker 3: Steve Oulan, who was here, took the job at account
Speaker 3: of Walk, which is a ross course, you know, thirty
Speaker 3: five minutes west of here. And when I found that out,
Speaker 3: I called up a member that I knew that was
Speaker 3: a friend and said, who do I send my resume
Speaker 3: to and cover?
Speaker 4: Why? Why was Blue Mount of the Holy Grail job?
Speaker 3: I just love this place, I do. Is there's something special,
Speaker 3: you know? And I mean, yeah, it's the greens, and
Speaker 3: it's the you know, it's the only rainer in Wisconsin clubhouses.
Speaker 3: Pretty spectacular, just the whole vibe is really cool. But
Speaker 3: you know, there's been like, you know, other than Aarren Hills.
Speaker 3: It was always like here in Lasnia, it was just
Speaker 3: something special about him and played him as a kid.
Speaker 3: You know, there's it sounds kind of flowery, but you
Speaker 3: know there's like a spiritual experience with being at a
Speaker 3: place like this. We're like, I feel good about being here,
Speaker 3: this is fun, this is what golf should be. And
Speaker 3: that was Bluemont for me. Yeah, you know, I was
Speaker 3: just so I mean, I was like like slamming the
Speaker 3: table in my first interview, you know, I was like
Speaker 3: just geeking out, you know. And and I and I
Speaker 3: think they appreciated that I was. I was myself. I
Speaker 3: got done and I was like, I was like, how'd
Speaker 3: it go? And I was like that was me, you know,
Speaker 3: like I was having a hard time finding words. I
Speaker 3: was really excited. And I think it were pretty good.
Speaker 3: They seem to like the fact that I was passionate
Speaker 3: about what I do or what we you know. And
Speaker 3: it's been that like I've just been me and that's
Speaker 3: since I've been here, Like it's been I feel blessed.
Speaker 3: Like the membership has been is amazing. I don't have
Speaker 3: to say that like any I don't know, I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to call it any other courses, but like, I
Speaker 3: don't have to be something I'm not right, Like I
Speaker 3: manage the way I managed, we I act the way
Speaker 3: I act, you know. I don't like change. I'm the
Speaker 3: same person at work that I am at home or
Speaker 3: with my buddies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that like authenticity is it's
Speaker 1: like the number one thing. I was listening to podcasts
Speaker 1: with this venture capitalist and he said, authenticity will, like,
Speaker 1: you know, outrun all of your competition because if you're
Speaker 1: just authentic in yourself, then that's the best thing you
Speaker 1: can put forth because you're going to be different and
Speaker 1: unique and you're going to be your best self, you know,
Speaker 1: if you just act like yourself total.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how I you know, I hate the word.
Speaker 3: I really do kind of hate the word. I I
Speaker 3: try not like at least with like the crew, it's
Speaker 3: a wee thing. And I'm like, again, blast not just
Speaker 3: with the membership and a great golf course, but like
Speaker 3: the team we have is which just fun. It's fun
Speaker 3: coming to work, you know. The senior assistant, my Dan,
Speaker 3: I say it, Dan, I say to the members, I say
Speaker 3: in green Scraze, I'm like, he's probably smarter than me,
Speaker 3: so he can answer this question, you know, and that's fine.
Speaker 3: You know, like I can be vulnerable to a degree,
Speaker 3: like kind of controlled. I was listening to a podcast
Speaker 3: and I don't recall which one, but you know it's
Speaker 3: kind of like controlled leading with like controlled vulnerability. I
Speaker 3: can't say that word. It's vulnerability. Yeah, Like I'll be
Speaker 3: like the crew will be like, hey, what are we
Speaker 3: doing now? Or like something will go wrong. I'll be like,
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 4: It's it's genuine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess genuine. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's a so did you in the staff? Did you inherit?
Speaker 1: Like Dan the super assistant was he he was from
Speaker 1: He came from the previous staff, Steve's staff, everybody for.
Speaker 3: The most part. Yeah, it's so it's Dan Voters, our
Speaker 3: senior assistant. Then Steve ms who is was got promoted
Speaker 3: to be the assistant. He was an assistant in training
Speaker 3: and he's I mean just in the kind of a
Speaker 3: segue here, But like the other thing is they're just
Speaker 3: good people. They're good dudes. That's I mean, that's like
Speaker 3: we didn't I inherited like a really cool, good group
Speaker 3: of people. So yeah, everyone's pretty much the same. Our
Speaker 3: assistant mechanic, Kyle I worked for that Aaron Hills. He
Speaker 3: got out of the industry and he's kind of like
Speaker 3: a crew for him. And I mean he got cut
Speaker 3: cups for he did it all at Aaron cutups for
Speaker 3: the open and then we actually just brought on Brian
Speaker 3: down at Troy Akers. Was like, hey, we got this
Speaker 3: guy Matt that you know, super hardworking, right, you need
Speaker 3: an assistant. I was like, I'd always take it to
Speaker 3: the assist right, And so I went, I have a
Speaker 3: super supportive Greens committee, Green's chair and club president, and
Speaker 3: you know, I was like, we want to do some
Speaker 3: really cool things, you know, especially with these bunker projects,
Speaker 3: Like we need help. We'll take it, like we need
Speaker 3: skilled bodies. Yeah and yeah we so we heard like
Speaker 3: October first, So there's three assistants and system mechanics and
Speaker 3: our mechanics like can fix anything.
Speaker 1: Is it tough coming in where you have a staff
Speaker 1: that's done stuff one way, you know, and introducing new
Speaker 1: procedures or methods or.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, yeah, I mean Steve's a great super
Speaker 3: I mean there's there was stuff that I I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a good way to do it. But yeah, we've
Speaker 3: definitely changed quite a few things and it's tough. I
Speaker 3: mean there are some growing pains with that. Well I've
Speaker 3: been doing it this way for seven years, this is
Speaker 3: the way we do it, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: that's only happened a few times. I think like the
Speaker 3: buy in. I mean, one thing that we try to
Speaker 3: do is just like like why we're doing something that
Speaker 3: was something at Aaron that you know I kind of
Speaker 3: learned from Zach. Is like it helps even it helps
Speaker 3: like the high school guys, you know, if you tell
Speaker 3: them the rake a bunker this certain way or do
Speaker 3: whatever more. You know, it's like you just tell them, like, no,
Speaker 3: do it this way. It's like no, why are you
Speaker 3: doing It's like, well, because you're gonna get contamination, you
Speaker 3: get soil in the bunker, you're gonna bring sand out
Speaker 3: and see that over there where the bunkers like shrinking.
Speaker 3: That's why we don't do that.
Speaker 4: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like a human nature thing where if you change
Speaker 1: the way somebody does something, like they automatically think it's worse,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like different than the way they
Speaker 1: perceive it. I think about it all the time. I
Speaker 1: used to be in sales and like, if anybody ever
Speaker 1: change the commission structure, like the natural, every sales raft
Speaker 1: would be calling each other.
Speaker 4: Like can you believe this bullshit?
Speaker 1: And then like you like hear the hear the hear
Speaker 1: it out and you're like, oh, like I actually I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make way more money. This is great, you know,
Speaker 1: but like that reaction is and that's gotta be It's
Speaker 1: gonna be tough, you know. I mean coming in and
Speaker 1: having like if you change anything, people automatically are like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this new guy's changing up everything on me.
Speaker 3: You heard a little bit of that. Yeah, you know
Speaker 3: some of the guys, especially the guys have been here
Speaker 3: for a long time, but I think they were, you know,
Speaker 3: buy in. I'm huge on culture, right. I just want
Speaker 3: people to feel part of And I knew how when
Speaker 3: I was a crew guy and assistant and even now,
Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty flat hierarchy. There's times where I'll
Speaker 3: go to guys and be like, hey, how do I
Speaker 3: do this? I have no idea. I like, we didn't
Speaker 3: you know, we didn't have this many trees and Aaron Hills.
Speaker 3: We had like three is there a better way to
Speaker 3: blow these leaves? You know this is not working the
Speaker 3: way I'm doing it, and you know, just learning from guys.
Speaker 3: I think guys are like, is he really asking me?
Speaker 3: Or is he messing with me? And it's like no,
Speaker 3: I'd like a like a little tutorial on this.
Speaker 1: It probably helps a ton being a suit, like what
Speaker 1: you said off the bat, like you're working super entirely.
Speaker 1: You're out there doing everything that's got to help a
Speaker 1: ton because then you know people feel, oh like he's
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 4: Doing that, doing working, working his ass off too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's just like what we came from,
Speaker 3: you know, like we were, and that's what they I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what they said they want, and I can assure
Speaker 3: you I think they're getting that. Like I I feel
Speaker 3: like whore on the days that I got like meetings
Speaker 3: or we got you know, once a month we have
Speaker 3: our Greens Committee meeting. So and I'm a procrastinator, so
Speaker 3: sometimes I'm writing my agenda like thirty two minutes before
Speaker 3: the me The first one I did like these pretty elaborate,
Speaker 3: The first second, maybe the third one I did like
Speaker 3: these really elaborate. It took me like forty hours to make.
Speaker 3: I got all night long, I'd be up making these
Speaker 3: power points. Yeah, tired. It's like, you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: October now, Like it's been working, you know, seventy plus
Speaker 3: hours a week.
Speaker 4: You got.
Speaker 3: This is gonna be like a three hundred character word,
Speaker 3: three hundred word agenda and we'll get through it.
Speaker 4: Oh you got winter, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's see we got a busy winner out of
Speaker 3: us too, though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. So let's talk about year one. What
Speaker 4: have you been doing? I mean I was, I came here,
Speaker 4: what is it three years ago?
Speaker 1: And it's so funny because like I uh, I wrote
Speaker 1: about the course and h I talked about trees and
Speaker 1: I talked about one tree on eighteen I singled it out,
Speaker 1: it's gotta go. And I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: messages I've got in the last four months. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to come back. The tree's gone. The tree
Speaker 1: that you talked about gone. But what what have what
Speaker 1: have you been up to the last last now ten months?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Dan kind of led the took down
Speaker 3: quite a few trees that was all winter, and that
Speaker 3: was new to me. I mean, like I said, there
Speaker 3: weren't a lot of trees in Darion Hills. We've just
Speaker 3: been focusing on playability, like bottom line, like there's areas
Speaker 3: that we have neglected that maybe perhaps weren't neglected before.
Speaker 3: I mean, like clubhouse stop. Just really trying to hammer playability,
Speaker 3: trying to break that. There's a disconnect right now between
Speaker 3: approaches and greens, Like we feel like we got greens
Speaker 3: where we can get them firm. You've been focusing a
Speaker 3: lot on approaches, just find detail stuff, you know, learning.
Speaker 3: I mean I felt like the first six honestly, I
Speaker 3: felt like until like probably middle September. I mean we
Speaker 3: were getting bad. I think getting better throughout the year,
Speaker 3: but middle September I was like beating our heads against
Speaker 3: the wall trying to get say green speed firmness up.
Speaker 3: At least, you know, we figured it out at some point.
Speaker 1: What have you been doing to kind of firm up
Speaker 1: greens and work on the approaches getting them firmer.
Speaker 3: It's primarily water management, a lot more hand baring, adjusting
Speaker 3: irrigation heads, turning off irrigation heads, sand poking holes.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, like the common golfer, they always
Speaker 1: are you know, aerations Like the worst thing you can
Speaker 1: say to them about a golf course, what does it
Speaker 1: do like to promote firmness because like obviously the immediate
Speaker 1: result is that softens everything and it makes it hard,
Speaker 1: really hard to put So, like what is the what
Speaker 1: in terms of long term benefits of air rating and
Speaker 1: getting the sand in there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean for us, especially on approaches, greens are
Speaker 3: you know, are organic? Matter what you're looking at is
Speaker 3: organic manner like what is our kind of what's like
Speaker 3: too little and you're gonna have traffic issues? You know,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have beare spots, which some bare spots. Firm
Speaker 3: kind of comes with the territory of firm and fast.
Speaker 3: But on approaches, we've been trying to just get you know,
Speaker 3: some of the thatch out and get getting There's different
Speaker 3: sands too, you know, if you put beach sand in,
Speaker 3: you know, if you say, if you put in like
Speaker 3: the analogy Zachy's using, you know, you know, you have
Speaker 3: like different shape sand and different you know. So the
Speaker 3: sand that we're using is called twenty three forty. It
Speaker 3: comes from a well paca, which a lot of the
Speaker 3: Midwest gets their sand from, and it's it's really helped
Speaker 3: the firm up greens and approaches because yeah, we were
Speaker 3: talking before this, like the hardest thing for me to
Speaker 3: watch is that like week two weeks where holes haven't
Speaker 3: healed and approaches and say greens are firm and you're
Speaker 3: just watching balls plug in the approach.
Speaker 4: Yeah, soft approaches firm greens is the hardest thing.
Speaker 3: It's impossible.
Speaker 4: We feel like you have no you.
Speaker 3: Have a few complaints with that, And I get it.
Speaker 3: I'm a golfer, you know, and I kind of I
Speaker 3: try to manage. We try to manage from like a
Speaker 3: golfer's perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's an interesting thing rather, you know,
Speaker 1: managing from a golfer's perspective rather than an agronomy perspective.
Speaker 4: Or is it a balance?
Speaker 3: Kind of it has to be a balance because's hard. Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, if we want to present the best product
Speaker 3: to members or guests or say we have a big outing,
Speaker 3: I mean there's going to be certain things that we
Speaker 3: kind of do our you know, our calendar gets adjusted
Speaker 3: based on certain things like we're not going to aerfy
Speaker 3: I approaches the week before invitation. You know, we have
Speaker 3: the junior ryder cup and stayed open. Like you know,
Speaker 3: it's played around that, but like some days it's going
Speaker 3: to affect that day's play. You know, it's not just
Speaker 3: the disruption of like having ten guys out there with
Speaker 3: backpack blowers and blowing sand around and but you know
Speaker 3: the effects playability, and that's it's weird from a I know,
Speaker 3: like I it like irks me. It probably should, and
Speaker 3: I should probably just be like, no, we got to
Speaker 3: do it, and we do have to do it, but
Speaker 3: it irks me probably more than other maybe supers. I know,
Speaker 3: they're just like, no, that's what you have to do
Speaker 3: that stuff, and I'm like like yeah, but like so
Speaker 3: and so is playing today, he's going to be like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
Speaker 1: It's you use the term playability, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about firming up greens, firming up approaches like and
Speaker 1: from a lot of standpoints people would say like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's making the course tougher. But what what do you
Speaker 1: mean by you know, making it more playable?
Speaker 3: Just playing how it's supposed to? I think, you know,
Speaker 3: like the beer is it's a small green out here,
Speaker 3: like I never hit that green, like the twenty years
Speaker 3: I've been playing list I think I've like never parted
Speaker 3: whole three. It's hard. It's a hard hole. But like
Speaker 3: you know, if you don't, if there isn't consistency, you
Speaker 3: have one day they're soft, one day they're firm. Like
Speaker 3: how do you play that all? Do you land it
Speaker 3: ten feet short of the green? Do you have to
Speaker 3: carry it on to the green? Do you land it
Speaker 3: twenty yards short and run it through the whale? Like
Speaker 3: that's what we're talking for. Playability consistency in giving different
Speaker 3: shot options too. I mean, playability doesn't always make the course,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just shot options. Like how cool is
Speaker 3: it to think, like why I can bump this in there?
Speaker 3: I can fly it in there, I can play it
Speaker 3: way up on that slope. That's fine, that's super fun.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's a golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially with like the rainer, the big bold greens
Speaker 1: that you have, these shoulders you can use, and it
Speaker 1: just presents so many more shot options than you know,
Speaker 1: some courses are much more aerial based, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and this this is a golf course that you can
Speaker 1: hit all these different shots if if you want to,
Speaker 1: or you could just play it aerially, like you.
Speaker 3: You have options and that's the thing. We're just trying
Speaker 3: to give options.
Speaker 1: So you you've you just you've alluded to a little
Speaker 1: bit with h Bruce Happener. You've done a couple of
Speaker 1: projects this fall, one of them on the short hole.
Speaker 1: How did that project come about?
Speaker 3: I think there's I might be wrong on the exact number,
Speaker 3: but you know, right now, within our club leadership, it
Speaker 3: really it's kind of you know, the pedals kind of
Speaker 3: been they're pushing it further to the middle right. They
Speaker 3: want to do some really cool stuff to restore not
Speaker 3: just playability, but also the course back to the original
Speaker 3: rainer twenty six. So there's there was seventeen bunkers at
Speaker 3: the beginning of the year. We did three this year.
Speaker 3: One of them was you know, our short had two
Speaker 3: bunkers with a run up and it wasn't you I
Speaker 3: mean you remember it. It was what maybe and it
Speaker 3: wasn't even it was rough height. You really couldn't run
Speaker 3: it up, although some of our members have said, you
Speaker 3: know that maybe have a hard time flighting the ball higher,
Speaker 3: like well, I use that to run up, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't really a run up. And then seven was kind
Speaker 3: of the same thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was like a four yard wide run.
Speaker 5: Up right, So if you're aiming for that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's funny. I mean that is like one of the
Speaker 5: things about you hear that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the thing about the Rainer McDonald shole
Speaker 1: is like it's funny because everybody loves these short part threes,
Speaker 1: but they are like as far as like in terms
Speaker 1: of playout, like you have to hit a high lofted
Speaker 1: shot in that's the only shot option.
Speaker 3: That's all you got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know it's you have the old Ariel
Speaker 1: thirty seven and then did you have old photos to
Speaker 1: go off of?
Speaker 3: We did well, we did on seven the short we
Speaker 3: had one where you did you see showed that to
Speaker 3: you the thirty three picture, yeah, I think nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 3: So momt Mary's, which is a woman's college, is in
Speaker 3: the background. I mean it's pretty spectacular and it's crazy
Speaker 3: how close you know, how good Bruce is that other
Speaker 3: than the trees, and I don't think Mom Mary wants
Speaker 3: me or Dan or any of our team going cutting
Speaker 3: down trees on their their campus. But yeah, it looks.
Speaker 1: So the club is that you know, you said, pushing
Speaker 1: the metal, pushing the pedal, down a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the restoration plant, you kind of
Speaker 1: guys are just tackling project projects every year rather than
Speaker 1: doing you know, I.
Speaker 3: Think that's the plan. I mean when I came in,
Speaker 3: originally we were going to do three three seventeen. There's
Speaker 3: cross bunkers more just visual one in the swale maybe
Speaker 3: one hundred yards out on three, and then kind of
Speaker 3: the same thing on seventeen, and then we're gonna do
Speaker 3: eighteen eighteen. Like I asked Brud another kind of a
Speaker 3: funny story, just young superintendent and not at you know,
Speaker 3: it was like a total panic moment. But this bunker
Speaker 3: was we didne A lot of construction at Aaryon Hills
Speaker 3: involve with a lot of bunker builds and drainage. And
Speaker 3: it's obviously Aaron Hills you have slopes you can drain,
Speaker 3: it's not as challenging to drain.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: We had to do like this kind of levee system.
Speaker 3: And I'm a little in over my head and this
Speaker 3: like right starting, I'm like, what how are we going
Speaker 3: to drain this thing? Well, we're hitting you know. Aaron
Speaker 3: Hills is also built in two thousand and five. Four
Speaker 3: we have as builds for everything we have like a
Speaker 3: it's right behind over your shoulder. There's like this hand
Speaker 3: drawn from the past four superintendents, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no drainage going We're hitting everything and pulling out
Speaker 3: old concrete, clay, tiles, metal, you know, probably something original, right,
Speaker 3: oh totally which at the time, like now when we
Speaker 3: find it, I'm like, oh cool, let's repair that. It
Speaker 3: probably works because Rainer was brilliant at that stuff. It
Speaker 3: was an engineer by the time. I was like, what
Speaker 3: is this stuff? You know, just freaking out? So I
Speaker 3: call it Bruce that he laughed. We started, we'd go
Speaker 3: to cut drain entry of this little X fader and
Speaker 3: I'm in there dating drainage and like water is just
Speaker 3: pouring out everywhere and flooding our Boner and I call
Speaker 3: it Bruce. Like within like thirty seconds of the water,
Speaker 3: I'm like, Bruce, there's water coming out everywhere. He was like, well, man,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know what you wanted to jap
Speaker 3: at the airport man, now, you know. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I just all right bye, you know, and I turned
Speaker 3: it damn, Like I have no clue why I just
Speaker 3: called it, you know, freaking out, but we figured it out.
Speaker 3: It's one of the best training parts of the property.
Speaker 3: We just repaired some of the old drainage.
Speaker 1: Then drainage has to be tough, I mean completely different soil,
Speaker 1: like you know Aaron Hill's is really sandy.
Speaker 3: Oh parts, I can tell you it. Hills is not
Speaker 3: all sandy, but yeah, completely different.
Speaker 1: And there's huge hills that you could just yeah water
Speaker 1: just you know right where it's going like it and
Speaker 1: versus Blue Mount you've got you've got some nice movement
Speaker 1: in it. But then there's some flat spots and how
Speaker 1: have you kind of tackled some of that?
Speaker 3: I mean, we haven't done as much drainage this year.
Speaker 3: I mean that's kind of the plan we got. We
Speaker 3: did these bunker projects and we saw some equipment here
Speaker 3: and we want to tackle some kind of trouble trouble spots.
Speaker 3: But I mean at eighteen we did like and I
Speaker 3: don't know if it'd be a lobby system, but basically
Speaker 3: we had no fall. And by no fall, I mean
Speaker 3: there was it's pancake flat up by the clubhouse there.
Speaker 3: So we'd drain like the bunker was deeper than where
Speaker 3: we needed to drain to there's no way we could
Speaker 3: get We're basically going uphill to a drain line almost.
Speaker 3: I mean it was like two inches down. So we'd
Speaker 3: like run it into a big samp or a big
Speaker 3: drain and then it would fill up that pipe and
Speaker 3: then it would go down to the next one. And
Speaker 3: we kind of did that, and I think that it's
Speaker 3: proved to be really successful there. I think in spots
Speaker 3: will just drain into the the creek line that runs
Speaker 3: through the property. But it's tough too. I mean like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're bordered by roads at air and it was like
Speaker 3: we're bordered by a marsh on three or two. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just draining into the marsh or draining into the wetland
Speaker 3: and thirteen or just off property into the native.
Speaker 1: Let me something I've always wanted to do. I'm very
Speaker 1: fascinated with drainage. But uh, punch bowl the rain or
Speaker 1: punch bowlm on holy eight. You ever just stood out
Speaker 1: there when it's like dumping, dump and rain and the
Speaker 1: watch the water just run out of that. I think
Speaker 1: it's like one of the most amazing things in the
Speaker 1: world is out This guy in twenty six figured out
Speaker 1: how to train a punch full on, like bad bad soil.
Speaker 3: No wa and I have I have, I've done on
Speaker 3: a lot of them. Some of them have like we
Speaker 3: have some what they call collar dams where water just
Speaker 3: sits on the collar, which we've also addressed and will
Speaker 3: addressed more. But yeah, I mean it's crazy. You go
Speaker 3: to Chicago Golf Club, have you ever seen that big
Speaker 3: You've seen that big drain on eighteen. It's like the
Speaker 3: most fascinating thing I've ever seen anywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Scott. He's like, I don't even
Speaker 1: think we could do this today. No, And the thing
Speaker 1: was built and it's beautiful, it's like twenty five. That
Speaker 1: was yeah, twenty five, and he doesn't think they could
Speaker 1: do it like with modern technology.
Speaker 3: I'd never seen it until the last time I was there.
Speaker 3: And he and Scott's been just another awesome mentory, Like
Speaker 3: and he's awesome. He's just like so passionate about Everything's like,
Speaker 3: it's just not the coolest thing you've ever seen it
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 4: It might be that's the story Chicago Golf Strains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1: You talked about him being a mentor, like being a
Speaker 1: younger superintendent. How how helpful are area superintendents and other
Speaker 1: superintendents around the country super helpful.
Speaker 3: I mean I have no you know, I have like
Speaker 3: a few quotes that run through my hand pretty consistently,
Speaker 3: you know, And my favorite quote of all time is
Speaker 3: humility is remaining teachable. And I just love learning stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, I know so little compared to like
Speaker 3: even like, you know, it's not necessarily from like the
Speaker 3: Chicago golf clubs or the Aaron Hills, Like how much
Speaker 3: you learned just from you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: guys like our vendors. A lot of our vendors are superintendents,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe at lesser known courses that are now
Speaker 3: retired or just one didn't want to work the hours anymore.
Speaker 3: Just learning from those guys too. They've been everyone's been
Speaker 3: super hepple. I've called on probably twenty five different supers
Speaker 3: this year, and there's will They're generous, you know, with
Speaker 3: their time and knowledge. That's the part about it. I
Speaker 3: really dig about our community of superintents, at least within
Speaker 3: the state and people I met, you know, working at
Speaker 3: Aaron Hills. Is people are really generous with their time
Speaker 3: and really generous with you know, their intellectual property.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, getting to know supers is like
Speaker 1: the best community of people.
Speaker 3: You know, there's some good people. Yeah, it's good salt
Speaker 3: of the earth people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's so you've taken down a good amount of trees,
Speaker 1: and obviously that can always be a hot topic at clubs.
Speaker 1: But you know, how how's how's the member reception been
Speaker 1: over the last.
Speaker 3: Year with the with the tree removal? Yeah yeah, really positive,
Speaker 3: like resounding maybe other than one person. I really like
Speaker 3: that tree in eighteen beautiful tree. It's like, yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's blocked half of a really cool green.
Speaker 4: That green's awesome. By the way, that might be the
Speaker 4: coolest green out here.
Speaker 3: It's not my it is. It is awesome. But that's
Speaker 3: the thing about these greens though, right like I'll be
Speaker 3: in an hole that I'm like, eh, this, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Fifteen fourteen or yeah, fifteen fifteen greens unbelieving, Yeah, the right.
Speaker 4: Side right like fifteen.
Speaker 3: I was kind of like, you know, someone asked me like, what,
Speaker 3: you know, what are your least favorite holes. I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's hard because the greens are all great.
Speaker 1: It might you know, see I think that's the best
Speaker 1: I I one of my pet peeves is.
Speaker 4: What's your favorite hole?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't get on.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's a really great golf course, but
Speaker 1: I think like the best, like great golf course is
Speaker 1: the best?
Speaker 4: Question is I always ask what's the weakest hole?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like that because then you start like
Speaker 1: talking and you like really golf courses. A lot of
Speaker 1: times you're like, what, I don't know what the week
Speaker 1: is all like, it's like you feel like bad saying
Speaker 1: wholes week, But I think, yeah, until you get that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with that.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I look at four differently now. I
Speaker 3: mean it's only been a week, but I'm like, because
Speaker 3: the green's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the It reminds me a lot of Country
Speaker 1: Club of Charleston's Alps, like it got flattened and it's
Speaker 1: like they're also You're like, oh, well this probably was
Speaker 1: really cool and I know they like are planning to
Speaker 1: restore it in the near future. But it's like it's
Speaker 1: just funny how like things like that happened. Like it's
Speaker 1: like just the blindness just.
Speaker 3: It's just flatten It's great.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: It's what what future hole that you haven't gone to work?
Speaker 1: That you think has the most potential that people made
Speaker 1: members or other golfers that have played a Blue Mound
Speaker 1: don't know. It could be really cool, like most room
Speaker 1: for improvement. I'm just stumbling all over my questions.
Speaker 3: Here, You're good. This is good for me because I
Speaker 3: stumble my responses. I think, yeah, like, who are these
Speaker 3: two mumblers? What is this? I can't understand where these
Speaker 3: guys were said.
Speaker 4: Are you going to get Is this even gonna make it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: That's will make it.
Speaker 3: This is quality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just feel like we're tying.
Speaker 3: We talked for an hour before. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: This is basically just an extension of over.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Honestly, I think like eleven and we're not really
Speaker 3: doing other, you know, other than just kind of the
Speaker 3: plan around that. As we're looking at this area in
Speaker 3: the office here around five eight, eleven nine, all those
Speaker 3: trees around the pond, I think it's gonna be so
Speaker 3: cool once we take them all that.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I noticed most coming back was, like
Speaker 1: I remember I wrote in my article about like how
Speaker 1: like when you get to see an architect on flat
Speaker 1: land like I and then like by removing some of
Speaker 1: the trees, like the vistas have opened up, and you're
Speaker 1: like all sudden, like, well, this land's actually really got
Speaker 1: some interesting stuff going on, and like that area of
Speaker 1: eleven twelve eight, all those holes in there play over
Speaker 1: really nice ground, and it's like then it's just that
Speaker 1: you look as like, well, Rainer just like used all
Speaker 1: his tricks on the flat land, which is like one, two,
Speaker 1: three four, you know, seventeen eighteen where.
Speaker 4: He put it. But like that other half of the
Speaker 4: properties like got like.
Speaker 1: In what removing the trees is doing to me is
Speaker 1: like it's opening up, like it's the property is becoming
Speaker 1: much more like muscular, like you see these like the roles,
Speaker 1: and then you see the greens all over the play
Speaker 1: and I mean like in one spot I remember looking,
Speaker 1: I can't remember where I was, like, holy cow, Like
Speaker 1: there's that bunker in the distance and it matches up
Speaker 1: and it's like, all of a sudden, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: It's like some Robert Hunter stuff, right. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 3: it should be pretty, it should be a good productive winner,
Speaker 3: And I'm really excited for next year. I'm excited for
Speaker 3: next year too, because I just feel like we figured
Speaker 3: out a lot of stuff aeronomically.
Speaker 1: I imagine like in a way like as a super like
Speaker 1: it's probably like people buying a house. You go in,
Speaker 1: you get your inspection, and then once you own it,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh shit, there's a lot of things strong
Speaker 1: with this that I didn't know, or like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things to you, and it's just you're for
Speaker 1: the first year. You got to feel like you're just
Speaker 1: learning the property.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can fully relate with that. Aut It
Speaker 3: is exactly like that, like we had you know, it
Speaker 3: dawned on us, well, we just bought a house and
Speaker 3: we're like, where our floors is squeaky when we walked in.
Speaker 3: We're watching YouTube videos this morning, like how does you
Speaker 3: know fix a? But yeah, no, it's exactly like that
Speaker 3: because when I had no idea some of the potential issues, right, Like,
Speaker 3: so we drain all this water through our property from
Speaker 3: I don't know, three hundred acres of kind of like
Speaker 3: commercial industrial and this was a bad year for snow
Speaker 3: and ice. A lot of salt went down and we
Speaker 3: had like a saltwater. I mean it was like seawater
Speaker 3: ocean water in our irrigation pod. No way, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: we had water tested and it was you know, twenty
Speaker 3: three times what it should be to go on grass,
Speaker 3: you know, So I'm freaking out. I mean, there's certain
Speaker 3: things like that you just don't think of until you're in.
Speaker 1: You could have could have stocked the ponds with some
Speaker 1: saltwater fish total.
Speaker 3: I guarantee you they would have lived this break.
Speaker 4: This is off topic.
Speaker 1: Did you see that the the uh, the alligator that
Speaker 1: got in the Humbolt Park lagoon in Chicago. You didn't
Speaker 1: hear about that. There's an alligator that got in like
Speaker 1: a pond in the city of Chicago, in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: and uh, it's cost the city like thirty five grand
Speaker 1: to remove it. It was like a two and a
Speaker 1: half foot alligator. They had to fly an alligator guy
Speaker 1: up from Florida.
Speaker 3: To get them. Yeah, attle guy.
Speaker 1: One of the craziest stories of the year. But you
Speaker 1: could have you could have been having.
Speaker 4: You could have sharks out there, yeah, the spring might Yeah,
Speaker 4: but no, I mean we got that sorted out.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing. I mean, I think our grass
Speaker 3: is a little salt tolerant because it was either going
Speaker 3: to die from droughder back from watering.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: It's uh so you'll get you got year two in
Speaker 1: and uh more rest well yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was here. I mean like when the members
Speaker 3: are telling you, like, go home, we'll be out like
Speaker 3: handwater and like alcohol. Yeah, it's okay. You know, gol
Speaker 3: of course is great. Go home and that's nice. I
Speaker 3: mean it is a lot self inflected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ah, but if you're doing what you love,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't feel like work right.
Speaker 3: Right for the most part. I mean there's certain days
Speaker 3: where I'm like, you know, I would like to go home,
Speaker 3: but this green isn't doing so well, you know, silvery.
Speaker 4: I mean that's got to be hard.
Speaker 1: What do you like, You you get these big projects
Speaker 1: and you always feel like you're working towards it, but
Speaker 1: like it takes so much time to finish them where
Speaker 1: it's hard to put down. It'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: like if you put together TV stand and like you
Speaker 1: can't stop putting together until it's done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like that would be if I was a
Speaker 4: super that's.
Speaker 3: For us, for at least me specifically for construction, and
Speaker 3: I think all the guys that are on our team
Speaker 3: just paying this out. I mean, we worked, but it's fine.
Speaker 3: I mean constructions fun. You're building stuff, right, like cool
Speaker 3: stuff and Bruce is Bruce Happeners building it, but I
Speaker 3: mean you're finishing it off. You want to see it
Speaker 3: with grass and played on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Curtis James talked about how it's he loves it for
Speaker 1: his crew because it also breaks up the maniacal nature,
Speaker 1: like or not the monotony maniacal that's completely the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but the monotony it can get kind of You don't
Speaker 1: if all you're doing is just you know, doing the
Speaker 1: same mow.
Speaker 3: And you're just cutting grass, right, Yeah, No, definitely, And
Speaker 3: that was that was why I always look forward to
Speaker 3: the Fall and Aaron Hill building something, doing something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well we'll we'll probably check in next year.
Speaker 3: That's gone anytime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but been pleasure having you on, Thanks for coming on,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having We'll look forward to seeing what happens
Speaker 1: in your two sounds good.
Speaker 3: Thanks all right. M