WEBVTT - Trees and Golf 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:04.320 Golfers have strong feelings about trees. Take the venue of 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 last week's US Open, Oakmont Country Club. Between the nineteen 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.560 nineties and twenty ten's Oakmont removed almost all of the 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.240 trees on its golf course, and today in twenty twenty five, 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:19.600 this is still a controversial subject. Some people are still 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.119 mad about it. So in this episode, we're talking about 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.560 trees on golf courses, why they get planted, why they 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.720 might be removed, and what effect they have on the game. 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.840 My guest is Bradley Klein, a veteran golf architecture writer 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:37.400 and consultant. Brad has been thinking about the tree issue 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.199 for decades now, and few people are more knowledgeable about it. 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:52.920 I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf. So, Bradley, 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.600 in addition to writing prolifically about golf courses, you have 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.560 a lot of experience consulting with clubs about golfer chitecture. 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:05.000 I assume some of these consultations involved tree studies. Am 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:05.679 I right about that? 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:06.800 Yeah? Sure? 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.000 What do those usually involve? How does that process look? 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.800 So? Without? You know, I could get into various details, 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.240 but this started about twenty What is it now? It's 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.920 twenty twenty five. So it started twenty five years ago 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.319 when I started writing about trees and realizing that almost 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.880 every course I was looking at, including one I was 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:32.880 a member at, was completely overtreate. And at this time 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.720 there were already rumors are not the right word, but 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:42.120 murmurings of what was going on at Oakmont, which was 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:49.080 just beginning to under the guise of their superintendent, Marque 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:55.040 Markuns surreptitiously with They had the sod squad out there 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.600 at four in the morning with a couple of boxes 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:02.120 of Krispy kremes the laborers and they were taking down 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.480 trees and taking the root ball out and sotting it 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.640 over and tapping it down, and first group out wouldn't 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:11.400 even notice anything. Took a while for that to happen, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.720 but for them to get caught, But that was the start, 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:18.400 and generally, you know, I was very involved in the 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:23.320 restoration movement, if you will, early on as a writer, 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:28.480 championing that and trying to undo in my mind and editorially, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:33.280 what I had seen was a lot of reckless modernization 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:38.600 of golf courses, whether lengthening, stretching, overgrowing, making them straight 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:44.120 and losing a lot of the character, and so I 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.919 started writing about that and then I got called. One 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.960 of the early ones was Sciota actually nineteen ninety nine 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:54.120 or two thousand. I still have these reports, and you know, 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.600 you sort of walk them through what was happening, and 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.600 you try to develop criteria of evaluation. And it helped 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.120 listening to Gil Hands back then. I have known Gil 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.359 since nineteen ninety four when he was probably making five 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:13.079 hundred bucks a day on a dozer over at Engineers 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.480 Golf Club on Long Island, and we spent a lot 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.000 of time walking and talking, and I went to a 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.120 presentation and he developed these criteria that I'll never forget 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.960 about the priorities when you're looking at trees, and it 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:29.480 was a matter of the agronomic impact, impact on strategic 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.400 flexibility of the golf course, the esthetics of the view shed, 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.160 the health of the tree, and also issues of safety 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:43.320 of personnel on the golf course. And so you start 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.720 thinking about these trees and what they're doing, and the 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:51.440 species and the appropriateness, and you start realizing that most 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.279 golf courses, and this is in the northeast, Midwest, Southeast, 0:03:55.800 --> 0:04:00.000 were wildly overtreated. You know, in my background. I think 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.480 it's helpful to know. I'm an educator by training. I 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.240 have a PhD in political science. I was a university professor. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.040 I'm very dogmatic in the classroom. It's probably why I quit. 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.520 I got frustrated. But I believe in things and I 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.520 believe in advocating them, and frankly, I didn't think that 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.719 was happening in the golf industry. I thought the other 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:21.760 people writing about golf architecture, in particular Ron Whitten, to 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:26.440 be fair, he's very knowledgeable, incredibly knowledgeable, but he wasn't advocating. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:31.679 He was more the kind of a neutral attorney sifting 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.520 through information, and I was more going to be an agitator. 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:37.320 And I had a platform at Golf Week. I was 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:43.600 writing articles like crazy, and I've had a following. You know, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.880 as you know about five or six percent of golfers 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.720 really care about architecture in an unbelievably passionate way. And 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.440 I had people who started asking me about, Hey, what 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:57.160 do you think about our golf course. I said, well, 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.400 let me go take a look. So I started. 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:04.200 Yeah, And obviously, you know, as part of the larger 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:09.240 restoration movement, tree management programs were a big part of 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:14.480 that often the most controversial piece of any given restoration projects. 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:16.640 So well, we'll get into some of the details of 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:21.920 why trees might be removed or managed. I think that 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.080 that sort of Gilhand's playbook that you briefly refer to 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:29.680 would be a good structure for us in talking about 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.719 trees on golf courses. But I'm curious, first of all 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.400 about the history of trees on golf courses. Maybe we 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.120 could just give a broad overview of how things have 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:43.880 evolved over the past one hundred years or so as 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.960 it relates to trees on golf courses. What were some 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:53.480 of the attitudes of Golden age golf architects toward trees 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.839 on inland golf courses specifically, and by Golden Age I 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.520 mean the architects who are working primarily in the first 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.000 four decades of the twentieth century. What were their feelings, 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:10.520 both expressed and implicit through their work about trees and golf. 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.680 Yeah, it's a good question. The first thing is that 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.800 trees weren't even an issue until golf moved inland. So 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:23.279 the basic structure of the game is founded upon coastal 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.600 golf links. Golf and even though it's a small, tiny 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:31.719 percentage of the golf courses. It's a strong component of 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.640 the early foundation of understanding what was going on, and 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:41.560 golf architecture really was trying to take those design principles 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:45.839 of flexibility, of using the wind, of using ground contour, 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.680 of using hollows that had been created, and taking it 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.320 to a land that was not ideally suited, but that's 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.440 where people were, namely inland, and so around just before 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:03.000 the turn of the century, lateeteen century, you would say 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:07.040 the game started moving into onto land that really needed 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.280 to be worked. It had to be drained, it had 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:14.680 to be cleared as well. Now, initially many of the 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.320 sites that were picked were treeless. I'll give you an 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.000 example because I just saw at Huntercombe, which is Lillly Park, 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:26.240 Junior's great inland course an hour west of Heathrow Airport, 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:30.280 was a completely treeless site, fairly flat, low lying, and 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.320 the contours that were created were essentially ditches and hollows 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.920 and barrow pits for coal and for mining that had 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.560 been established on site. And he worked the whole golf 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.560 course around it. And the trees came in later, but 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.960 it's not till a tree clearing was required for wooded 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.960 sites on farmland where you had rows of trees that 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.640 had been used as boundaries. You know, when you're assembling 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.200 a golf course property of one hundred and fifty eight 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.880 as you're often involving different parcels of land that are 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.239 divided by trees, and that's when the removal process started 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.680 to take place in a heavy handed way. Ross was 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.720 one of those. Mackenzie was similar McDonald. As I recall 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.160 not most of them didn't write very much. You know, 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:21.080 the writings we have are from the Occasional Polemical book 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:28.920 by Hunter or McKenzie and McDonald. Ross himself wrote very 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:32.080 very little, but they made it Tillinghast was more prolific 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:36.160 about this. They made it clear that trees were acceptable 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:41.199 and appropriate, but not to be central. They had a character, 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.319 you know, they that first of all, delineating the boundary 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.840 of the property the occasional dog leg around. But I 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:51.640 think it was Ross who said that it was a 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.120 mistake to make a tree a central component of the 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.600 strategy of a golf hall. So while they accepted, and 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.719 partly that's an economic when you when you when you're 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.079 on a site with trees, you decide how much you're 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.920 going to cut down. They wanted generous fairways, and it 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.199 has to be said that even their inland golf courses 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:13.040 back then were fifty sixty yard white fareaways. The narrowing 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:17.479 of fairways was a function of the introduction of fairway irrigation, 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.520 which could only throw water thirty yards, and everything else 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:23.600 outside of that starff. So they started to fill that 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:28.280 space of dead grass. You know, they put an irrigation 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:30.320 system and thinking it's going to irrigate the golf course 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:32.760 and only irrigated thirty yards. Everything else was dying. So 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.600 they then filled it up with trees. And that was 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.080 after World War two for the most part. So you 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:40.960 look at the history of the planting, which is part 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:44.240 of this. The aggressive planting program didn't take place till 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.120 after World War two. So what it tells you is 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.600 when you look at the early images, and we do 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:54.120 this all the time, I'm thinking of a wonderful Donald 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.720 Ross's a nine hole golf course in Massachusetts called Whitonsville, 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:04.959 and there's an aerial from nineteen twenty seven twenty eight, 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.720 and it shows about eight pine trees out there, all 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:13.679 clustered between the first green and the sixth faaraway, and 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.319 that's it. Everything is also wide open, and the heart 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:18.400 was they had, by the way, were many of them 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.680 graceful oaks and American elm. And the American elm was 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:26.439 a fantastic golf tree because it had deep roots, It 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:30.480 had a tall main trunk with a beautiful kind of 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:33.360 champagne glass canopy, and you could play under and around 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:38.640 the whole under and around the tree. And so as 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:43.960 a majestic, gracious tree, it actually allowed you to incorporate 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:47.560 that and still have an element of grace and beauty 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.920 and strategy all combined with that kind of a tree. Unfortunately, 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.120 when the American elm started to get the Dutch elm 0:10:55.120 --> 0:11:00.439 disease around and after World War Two, and of them 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:04.040 came down on golf courses, they were replaced. People got nervous. 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.640 They started planting spruce and sugar maples and swamp maples 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.720 and all sorts of trees that were not indigenous to 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.240 clutter up or fill up the golf course. Brookside Country 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.199 Club was a great example of this in Canton, Ohio. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.000 It was one of my early projects that I was 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.120 involved with. And you go out there on the aerials 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.760 from nineteen twenty it's just sand, open blast areas, no 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.320 trees anywhere. And by nineteen fifty seven, fifty eight, these 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.839 kind of you know, it looked like German prisoners of 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.280 war had planted trees every nineteen and a half feet 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.080 in a dead straight row down both sides of every fairway. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.560 So by the time television came along to show what 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.040 golf courses looked like, people thought that that look of 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:52.640 the enclosed, narrow, thirty yard wide, straight tree covered canopy 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:54.480 was the norm, and it wasn't. 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.920 So you've you've laid out some history for us here. 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.440 You know, we start in the first deck of the 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:04.960 twentieth century, where the general attitude of most golf architects 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:08.000 is that trees can be appropriate on a golf course, 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.240 but not too many. We're certainly not going to have 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:15.200 rows of trees enclosing golf holes because that sort of 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.480 chokes out the character of the land and of the 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:24.200 strategy of the whole and creates other problems as well. 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:27.640 But then in the post World War II period we 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:33.720 have these planting programs, sometimes motivated motivated by so called beautification. 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.960 Other times you refer to the to the elm disease, 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.400 the elm blight that happened in the middle of the 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.800 twentieth century, and sometimes clubs would react to that by 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.760 planting a bunch of trees to replace the lost elms. 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.319 Except those trees were not nearly as well suited to 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:56.079 golf as the elms, nor as beautiful, And so we 0:12:56.440 --> 0:13:00.600 have a variety of factors leading to pretty aggressive planting 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.480 programs at many classic golf courses in the fifties, sixties, 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:09.480 and seventies. Now we get to the eighties and nineties, 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.000 and this is when you're starting to enter the industry 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:18.160 yourself and writing about golf courses. I've always been curious, 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:23.040 what do you think are the roots of the tree 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.520 management programs that started in the nineties and really picked 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:31.200 up pace in the twenty first century. And specifically, I've 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.440 always sort of wondered when I read about the history 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:39.000 of Oakmont's tree removal program, it always the story always 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:45.440 begins with, well, the club's board and green chairmen were 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:51.440 strongly in support of restoration and removing trees, and the 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:55.559 members really weren't. And I've always wondered, Okay, well, why 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:58.040 was the club's board in support of it in the 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:02.080 first How did momentum build in the first place to 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:06.000 start removing trees at Oakmont and at many other clubs. 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:08.120 I don't know what do you have to say about that. 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:09.600 What do you think the what do you think the 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.400 kind of underlying factors are that that led to tree 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.400 management becoming a popular process. 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.160 Well, I don't think it's I wouldn't say it's popular. 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:21.600 What I would say it's widely accepted among people who 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:26.720 know what they're talking about. So the couple There are 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.920 lots of different strands and converging moments here, So I'll 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:36.280 give one. One stream is that restoration generically became a buzzword. 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.360 I give the founding moment, and I'm proud to have 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.000 caddied there at the eighty six US Open at Hinnacock. 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:48.080 That was a big watershed in the moment in which 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.920 we discovered at one hundred year old golf course could 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:51.800 still be relevant. 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:53.760 And that was the first US Open to be held 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:58.120 at Shinnacock since eighteen ninety six. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.600 Now, I mean you look back at it, it was 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:02.360 it was heavily trigued a lot more than now, but 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.400 still it was really cool to go out there and 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:11.120 the wind swept links courses. You know, it was windy, 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.320 it was very difficult, lots of fescue a little tall 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.440 off everywhere, and it was rough conditions and it was 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.600 not what you would call a well manicured, beautiful golf course. 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.920 They were still back then, they were still triplex mowing 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:32.880 the greens and gang mowing the fairways and fairly rough conditions. 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.920 But the point is that the USJ made a commitment there, 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.440 maybe by accident, whatever, it doesn't matter what their motive was. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.800 The impact was people started talking. And then two years 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:48.800 later eighty eight the country club at Brookline was really 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:56.120 important because that's where Rhys Jones made restoration a focal 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.200 point of his presence, and he spent a lot of 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:02.440 time there and established his repation as a restoration is 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:07.800 now in retrospect, the kind of work he did is 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.400 now seen as a little bit timid and passe, but 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.000 for what was going on in the industry at the time, 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:19.120 the use of those fescue mounds, for example, reclaiming some 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.520 of the surface some tree management in areas that were 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:28.000 heavily shaded that open also became for marketing purposes alone. 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:33.680 Good reclaimed the reputation and more importantly, that word entered 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:38.760 into the vocabulary, and that's really what started the conversation 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:43.080 about these things. Now. The other thing that happened is 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:49.560 that with environmental management and crackdown by the EPA and 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:58.600 the use of chemical pesticides and basic heavy chemistry mercuries 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:04.600 for example, and there was a concern about the overuse 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:11.080 of chemicals on golf courses. The environmental movement was manifesting itself. 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.080 There was a lot of resistance in the industry to 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.600 be fair, but still people realized that from a cost 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:20.560 management standpoint and from a toxicity level, because a lot 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:25.360 of environments now were being tested. New York State came 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:28.240 out with a report called Toxic Fairways in the I 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:32.639 think mid nineties that basically was a scathing attack upon 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.080 the overuse of fertilization and chemistry on Long Island golf 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:40.040 courses where the water table, you know, golf courses were 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.360 sitting on an aquifer that people were using for drinking water. 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.480 So there became more of a conversation about, well, maybe 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.760 we need to back off this, and then the superintendent's 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:53.880 developed a more culturally oriented program of relying upon sunshine 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:59.200 and wind and sand and top dressing for not organic 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.760 but more or cultural practices as they were called. They 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.320 were cheaper, they were efficient, they lasted longer, and so 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.080 you had now a realization that there are things in 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.520 the environment that we can manage without chemical applications that 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.119 could help promote healthy turf. And a lot of that 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:21.960 was simply doing shade studies. You didn't have the apps 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.800 back then, but you could figure out where sunlight was 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.200 and you could realize that because of the azimuth in 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.120 the shoulder season the sunshine was lower, you had much 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:39.920 more shade issues. Shade tolerance was a big issue turf grass, 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:44.080 particularly on grain. So the superintendent's from a micromanagement standpoint, 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.919 realized they needed to do something and they started paring 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.480 back trees fairly modestly, but still because if you want 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.440 bent grass, you need eight hours, You need eight hours 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.200 of sunlight. If you're just going along with the perennial poe, 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.520 you can get by on four, five, six hours. But 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.240 if you want quality turf, if you want greens roll, 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.520 you know, people don't realize the conditioning has changed so much. 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:10.200 Back in nineteen seventy seven, Oakmont was the fastest golf 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.639 course in the Country stip meter speed registered by the 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.600 USJA was nine point eight. It was two feet ahead 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.520 of Augusta National. Augusta National was averaging seven point seven. 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:25.520 That's in nineteen seventy seven, before they converted. They're greens 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:28.159 at Augusta. But in any case, conditioning was different. So 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:30.639 when expectations went up and it's like we would like 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:38.000 something faster, the new vents were a little better the old. 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:43.240 The old perennial poem was not performing as well. Pen 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.280 cross bent grass was not going to deliver anything faster 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:49.240 than eight and a half or nine. Once you want 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:51.560 to go to ten or eleven, you needed the new 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.800 high performance bent grasses. They needed much more sunlight, they 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.240 needed more top dressing. All of these converging factors and 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.359 demands and expectations. Television as well. People started to see 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.120 really cool golf courses on television and thought, why can't 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.720 we have it at our house? You know, they kind 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.160 of call it the Augusta syndrome, but it's more popular 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:15.040 than that. It's realizing that, gee, we could be doing 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:21.560 better than what we have and so and the other 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:24.879 thing that happened is that superintendents became professionally trained you know, 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:29.920 they used to be greenkeepers, make in genes in they 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:33.680 were like farmers. I can remember when I started writing 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:38.200 in the industry, superintendents were making thirty thirty five thousand 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:43.040 a year maintenance budgets for two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand. Now, 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:47.080 you know, the numbers are astronomical, But the point is 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.640 that the superintendents are now professionally trained turf grass scientists, 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.600 many of them, many more than ever. I would say 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:56.439 most have four year degrees or at least they've been 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:58.720 through a two year turf program, so they have a 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:03.240 better understanding of war, chemistry, sunlight, the factors that are 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:08.280 really required. And so the whole industry has changed. The 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:14.520 professionalism has changed, set of expectations have changed, and then 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:18.800 the sense of travel. I do think that the golf 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:23.639 course ratings process has exposed people with better photography and 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:28.200 video and media. People are more aware of what's going 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:30.680 on with other courses that are really cool that they 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:35.320 either visit or that they would dream about visiting. I 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.320 think that Band in Dunes had a lot to do 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.639 with it as well, because that essentially popularized the idea 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:46.119 of links golf in a way that had previously only 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:50.439 been available to those who had gone to Scotland. Of course, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.560 as you know, or most of us know, getting to 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.520 Bandon is just as difficult as getting to Scotland, but 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:58.919 at least it's in the United States and it doesn't 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:02.320 involve quite the schlepp. But the availability of that kind 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.320 of a golf really struck a nerve with a certain 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:10.040 percentage of elite people who then I think became more 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:13.359 prominent in decision making in their home course. And so 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.040 what happens at every club to get to your I 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.840 knew i'd get to your point, is that the people 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:25.200 making decisions about these things were more and more exposed 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.840 to a variety of golf courses that had not been 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:31.480 the case at every club that I've been to. The 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:35.919 people who are happiest with the old Parkland tree laced, 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.280 you know, heavy polar conditions are the ones who don't travel. 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:43.960 They've spent forty years playing this golf course. They think 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:47.000 it's always been that way. They love it. They had 0:22:47.080 --> 0:22:50.400 their same group, they play five days a week. They 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.800 remember the tree that they bounced the shot off of, 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.719 or you know whatever. They remember all these things. They 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.560 don't want anything to budget they're not making decisions anymore. 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:04.720 The people making decisions are they're course raiders. They've been debandoned. 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:07.120 They've gone to Cabot, they've gone to stream Song, they've 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:10.400 been to Scotland, they're going to Australia now. So there's 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.399 much more what I call architectural literacy. They're reading the 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:21.960 books that we write. They understand that superintendents are professionals. 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:25.560 They're not bossing them around. They're starting to listen to them. 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:29.080 And the superintendents have become better about communicating and a 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:34.800 little bolder in their articulation of their expertise and what 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:38.239 they need. That's the other thing. They're more professional. So 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:42.560 the people who are making decisions have changed. I think 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:47.560 increasingly we've found that a more informed decision making apparatus 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:51.320 has developed at these clubs, so that they're working with 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:54.240 superintendents rather than telling them, you know, hey, you should 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:57.320 mold the left side of the fairways wider because I'm 0:23:57.320 --> 0:23:59.360 hooking the ball and I'm tired of being in the roof. 0:23:59.440 --> 0:24:02.159 That's what you You don't see that as much. So 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:04.920 it's a big, big change at many, many levels. 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:09.000 Yeah, and just to put a bow on the historical 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:13.720 narrative here. The rise of the superintendent, which you've referred to, 0:24:14.040 --> 0:24:17.720 or the increased prominence and education of the superintendent, is 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:20.399 a big part of this story because now you see 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:25.359 superintendent's the head superintendent, being often the most important and 0:24:25.640 --> 0:24:29.560 in some cases the highest paid employee of a given club. 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:32.399 That wasn't really the case in the past. They have 0:24:32.520 --> 0:24:36.679 a lot more power now and a lot more authority, 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:41.280 and what they're saying often is, well, listen, if you 0:24:41.320 --> 0:24:45.040 want me to use less chemicals, less inputs, less water, 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:49.680 then we have got to get our turf in the sunlight. 0:24:49.960 --> 0:24:51.879 And if you want that turf to be of the 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:56.080 highest quality, then it needs sunlight and air circulation. And 0:24:56.160 --> 0:25:00.920 if we have trees surrounding every hole and putting all 0:25:00.960 --> 0:25:03.440 of our turf in shade for most of the day, 0:25:04.080 --> 0:25:09.119 then we're not going to have outstanding turf conditions, especially 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:13.960 if we want to reduce our dependency on chemicals and 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:19.760 various other inputs. And so that's kind of the logic 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:22.840 that has started to win the day a little bit here. 0:25:24.000 --> 0:25:27.560 Yeah, one of the great moments I saw actually witnessed 0:25:27.600 --> 0:25:31.320 this conversation. A fella comes into the superintendent's office and says, 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:35.159 you can't cut down the trees down? Can you manage 0:25:35.200 --> 0:25:39.880 this without the tree management? And the superintendent says, you're 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:42.320 a dentist, right, yeah, I said, do you want to 0:25:42.359 --> 0:25:45.520 pull teeth without novercame You could do it, but you 0:25:45.640 --> 0:25:48.280 might kill the patient. And it was a great kind 0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:52.200 of response of a professional, and the guy backed off. Realized, 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:58.199