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Speaker 1: distributor today. Today's podcast is with Brendan Burn. Brendan is
Speaker 1: the longtime superintendent and co GM at Lanark Country Club
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. Lanner has recently undergone a big time renovation
Speaker 1: from Brian Schneider and then with the help of blay
Speaker 1: Conan doing shaping with Brian, they have completely transformed the
Speaker 1: golf course. So I got to see this place last
Speaker 1: year when it was halfway done. They did each nine
Speaker 1: at each time and Brendan was obviously extremely involved in
Speaker 1: this process from both the club side as the GM
Speaker 1: and then also as a superintendent. And he has been
Speaker 1: around Philadelphia for decades. Legendary superintendent in Philadelphia. So without
Speaker 1: further ado, here is Brendan and thanks for listening. I
Speaker 1: miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I
Speaker 1: find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a.
Speaker 1: Brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg.
Speaker 2: Friday.
Speaker 1: Bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the
Speaker 1: golf course. It was it hard to break the single cart.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was really brutal. It was so funny because
Speaker 2: at every club I would talk to other super intense
Speaker 2: and he said all the members wanted to play in
Speaker 2: one cart, but when they went to have a drink
Speaker 2: that there was no COVID around the bar, and then
Speaker 2: they could sit together. So that was kind of the joke.
Speaker 2: And then eventually once people started getting vaccinated, they were
Speaker 2: fine with it.
Speaker 1: That's funny. It's it's not good for the golf course
Speaker 1: having the dual carts or the individual car.
Speaker 2: We do seventy five percent of rounds with carts on
Speaker 2: one hundred and nineteen acres. So like I say, like
Speaker 2: I had a member, goes really did that much damage?
Speaker 2: I go, what happens if you laid down and ran
Speaker 2: a cart ever you oh that feel? It would hurt right,
Speaker 2: And he started laughing. I go, that's what you're doing
Speaker 2: to the grass every day.
Speaker 1: You could tell them to just go park car on
Speaker 1: their front line.
Speaker 2: Right, a parker car or take let us put let
Speaker 2: us out and run over it on the blacktop. See
Speaker 2: what looks like it's mashed. That's exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 2: But it's such a source of revenue. And now everybody's
Speaker 2: in a rush to play and get done in three
Speaker 2: hours and thirty minutes. The carts are faster sometimes now
Speaker 2: they're good here this club. I've been employed with a
Speaker 2: lot of clubs. This club's really good. They are like
Speaker 2: three thirty here. They don't play around. They play golf.
Speaker 1: It's a small place.
Speaker 2: It is, but it's hard. They play reddy.
Speaker 1: Golf here nineteen acres.
Speaker 2: Well one hundred and twenty nine altogether. But the you know,
Speaker 2: the clubhouse in the parking lots and the pool take
Speaker 2: up some spots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are You've got the pros of being you know,
Speaker 1: or the continents of being small for cars? What are
Speaker 1: what are the pros from from a job in turf standpoint, there.
Speaker 2: Is no pros because there you you would think, well,
Speaker 2: it's smaller, so you wouldn't need as much. But we
Speaker 2: have all like so we have we're caught in half
Speaker 2: by a road, so those perimeters have to be maintained.
Speaker 2: We have perimeters around all both both nine so all
Speaker 2: of them have to be hand mode or weed waxed or.
Speaker 1: So their labor socked, landscaped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just maintaining the perimeters in itself for a battle.
Speaker 2: So we have a lot of nooks and crannies. But
Speaker 2: then like when you are doing like course set up,
Speaker 2: there's only so many places you can put the cup,
Speaker 2: only so many places you can put tea markers, only
Speaker 2: so many places you can put the put the carts.
Speaker 1: Where do you start your career in turf?
Speaker 2: Rolling? Green? With my two brothers and oh my lord,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Six, are you from here?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Delaware County, Delca. Yeah, I'm a
Speaker 2: Delca kid, Springfield.
Speaker 1: So your two brothers were they younger or older?
Speaker 2: Older one was really smart and got out of the business.
Speaker 2: The other one's dumb, and it's a superintendent just like me.
Speaker 1: Where's he at.
Speaker 2: He's up at Cherry Valley, New Jersey. He's older than me.
Speaker 2: He's the nicer version of me. Everybody tells me.
Speaker 1: He has both In out of the armpit of of
Speaker 1: America in the summer.
Speaker 2: It seems like three four degrees cooler. He has it easy.
Speaker 2: He's good superintendent. He's a great guy. He's just a Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a big difference. I take that we would.
Speaker 1: Would you say I have the thing about winter being fake,
Speaker 1: Like I think you guys have fake winter.
Speaker 2: Oh in Philadelphia, Yeah, like you could go we have skits,
Speaker 2: we have schizophrenic winter.
Speaker 1: But like you can go play golf, like in January.
Speaker 2: Oh in February too, Like this is the first time
Speaker 2: we had snowed a long time. Now they'll play like
Speaker 2: these guys here, they'll play all year rounds.
Speaker 1: And then there's like five days a year that are
Speaker 1: like really cold and they all freak out. Or like
Speaker 1: New York City's the worst. They get like three snowstorms
Speaker 1: a year and it's like the world's ending. It's like
Speaker 1: when did you come to Chicago?
Speaker 2: Like I love snow. It gets some everybody to give
Speaker 2: the course a break. It's like a blanket. But here,
Speaker 2: I don't know, if you know about Philadelphia, they have
Speaker 2: like a huge winter play thing. So even at our club,
Speaker 2: you can play in groups as big as sixteen somems.
Speaker 2: So they just all play at once and then they
Speaker 2: do all this like gambling stuff. They have a great time.
Speaker 2: I'm like, fine, whatever, just put two cups in olk
Speaker 2: green and say play fake winter, fake winter, except for
Speaker 2: the grass doesn't like your carts in fake winter.
Speaker 1: But then then now people are saying that I have
Speaker 1: fake summer. Would you agree with that? Because you have
Speaker 1: real summer I have.
Speaker 2: I have Southeast Asia summer. I have like humidity. I mean,
Speaker 2: I like to say, since I started, was you you
Speaker 2: could take all the cities along the East coast and
Speaker 2: move them down to a city and heat. So boss
Speaker 2: used to be really cold. Now it's like New York.
Speaker 2: New York's like Philly, Philly's like Washington, DC. Baltimore, and
Speaker 2: DC is like Raleigh. It's that's the change I've seen
Speaker 2: in thirty years, that each city has gotten progressively warmer
Speaker 2: than what it was when I started thirty five years ago.
Speaker 1: That's kind of wild.
Speaker 2: It makes sense if you think about it. So when
Speaker 2: you saw the other thing you saw was we used
Speaker 2: to have a little bit of rain, a little bit
Speaker 2: of rain, hot drought, a little bit of rain, big storm,
Speaker 2: little rain than these seasons. Ever, now we get drought,
Speaker 2: huge storm drought, huge storm drought. The little storm is
Speaker 2: almost gone.
Speaker 1: How does that impact what you do?
Speaker 2: It's it's devastating because what happens is all that water
Speaker 2: displaces auction in the soil profile, so the grass starts
Speaker 2: to like basically simmer and it can't breathe. So you're
Speaker 2: always constantly venting the soil so that you can get
Speaker 2: auxygen back into it because of the water, So we
Speaker 2: use wedding agents because that's what makes water wetter, so
Speaker 2: we can move the water faster.
Speaker 1: Hey, I want to go back to Rolling Green going
Speaker 1: there with your brother. I do you have like a
Speaker 1: story that you remember the boast from that, like just
Speaker 1: going over.
Speaker 2: This we were one time we were we were doing
Speaker 2: dibbits on number twelve. It's kind of an iconic hold
Speaker 2: because the call the ground's maintenance is on the hillside
Speaker 2: and there's this big old stone mansion.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2: It's haunted too. All the greenekeepers that live there would
Speaker 2: say it used to be like an old militia guy
Speaker 2: there from the seventeen hundred's apparently it's long story, but
Speaker 2: any other time, Yeah, this one is definitely for real,
Speaker 2: asked Brian Chapin. I'll tell you. So we were doing
Speaker 2: divots in the rain and we proceeded. My brother thought
Speaker 2: it was funny to proceed to throw uh divot mix
Speaker 2: at me, and we end up starting like the three
Speaker 2: of us having a huge divot and it was mushroom
Speaker 2: sotel which stunk like hell, and you could make it
Speaker 2: into balls, and we just threw it at each other
Speaker 2: for like ten to fifteen minutes. Of members was just laughing.
Speaker 2: So it's covered in divot mix. I wasn't very happy.
Speaker 2: I was the youngest too, so I lost something.
Speaker 1: That would only happen with brothers, Like three Red Maintenance.
Speaker 2: Start doing just throwing mix each other.
Speaker 1: On number twelve, would you guys walk there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? We walked. Yeah, we walked to work. My father
Speaker 2: was like as soon as we were like fifteen sixty,
Speaker 2: he was like, get to work, go walk because there's
Speaker 2: a club across the street. Just go walk. He just
Speaker 2: find something to do. So I try to get a
Speaker 2: job in the kitchen or something. They're like, no, we
Speaker 2: need greenkeepers. So I went down and walked down the
Speaker 2: hill and here I am. Yeah, that's that's because I
Speaker 2: got rejected from being a bus boy. That's that's. It's
Speaker 2: not a great It's not a romantic story, now, is it?
Speaker 1: Those who can't bus tables?
Speaker 2: You go green camp? Yeah? It was weed whacking craigs,
Speaker 2: but it's funny. I ended up meeting Jim Ronney who's
Speaker 2: at Soakon Valley now. He was with me. We whack
Speaker 2: and creeks. And then I got to know a lot
Speaker 2: of great people, and I've been very fortunately. I worked
Speaker 2: with a lot of guys that now have become really
Speaker 2: good superintendents.
Speaker 1: That's how you joined the wolf back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, change jates. I picked Ncy State for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. My mom and dad were big into education,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were just getting two year
Speaker 2: certificates in turf and they were both adamantly against it.
Speaker 2: They were like, you need to go get a degree
Speaker 2: in agronomy, Like you need to know not how to
Speaker 2: do it, but why and you need to understand the science.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, well, I got to take like biology, chemistry,
Speaker 2: physics and all this stuff. And they're like, yeah, well
Speaker 2: that's that's what you need to do. And so that's
Speaker 2: what I went and got a degree in agronomy from there.
Speaker 2: And also State was cool because it was you had
Speaker 2: both cool season and m worm seasoned grasses rate on
Speaker 2: the same piece of land. You don't get that at all.
Speaker 2: The Northern Universities say, look at bermuda, like that's like
Speaker 2: something that's like in a book.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a big advantage for huge.
Speaker 2: So I learned how to use gross centipede and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, like bermuda and all that. But I had
Speaker 2: bent grass and tall fescu right next to me, so
Speaker 2: you could see all those grasses. So like now, because
Speaker 2: the climate change, we're using bermuda on the on some
Speaker 2: of the range. To you, I'm like, oh, well, I
Speaker 2: did a bermuda grass grow and I know what the
Speaker 2: story is of bermuda.
Speaker 1: So then it just goes dormant and then you go
Speaker 1: to matt when it gets cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does go dormant. But now they're getting so
Speaker 2: much better it lasts longer. The veriees just keep getting
Speaker 2: better and better, so it lasts lot longer. You can
Speaker 2: overseed it with poetryvialis or like rye grass, so you
Speaker 2: can get more of his extended season out of it.
Speaker 1: And then you got zoyja on the bunkers. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got all kinds of grasses out here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Zeysa, see, are you.
Speaker 1: The grass king of Philly?
Speaker 2: No, nobody wears that ground. There's a lot of there's
Speaker 2: a lot of really good superintendents here. I mean you
Speaker 2: can go up the street.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, do you have more grasses than anybody else?
Speaker 2: I probably do. I probably the only guy in the
Speaker 2: here that has bermuda zeyja bent. But I really don't
Speaker 2: have any pola i polla in the rough because we
Speaker 2: fumigated an four and since then we really haven't had
Speaker 2: so much moth. But the Zeusa had no choice. Brian
Speaker 2: Schneider comes in and builds these bunkers. They're awesome, but
Speaker 2: they're so the slope is so steep, and we did
Speaker 2: the first bunker. I'm looking at with my one assistant,
Speaker 2: I go, what are we going on this? He's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I said, it's all to die find
Speaker 2: esk and fall apart. Is what do you want to do?
Speaker 2: So we're gonna use Sousia. We changed everything. I'm like,
Speaker 2: we gotta go find Soysia. So we found Xenith and
Speaker 2: then that's when we started doing the Zenith.
Speaker 1: Then you have to cut them different, right, you.
Speaker 2: Weed welcome, you can go out there there. The funny
Speaker 2: thing is is that they're a heck of a lot
Speaker 2: less maintenance. They hardly need any water, they don't want
Speaker 2: any nitrogen. After the second year, they don't get any weeds.
Speaker 2: They choke it out, balls don't stick to them. I
Speaker 2: love them.
Speaker 1: Sounds ideal.
Speaker 2: It is. Brian wasn't really a big fan of it
Speaker 2: because of the color contrasts in the fall or in
Speaker 2: the winter. But it's cool because when you mow them,
Speaker 2: like at the end of September, you can get them
Speaker 2: like really be smooth, and then it gets cold and
Speaker 2: then they don't they don't move, so the whole winter
Speaker 2: they're kind of like that. And then in the in
Speaker 2: January you can sprain with roundup and it kills all
Speaker 2: the weeds. If there's any weeds in them, you can
Speaker 2: kill it because it's normant.
Speaker 1: After NC stage, you stay down in Carolina for a while.
Speaker 2: Now I went right back up and did. I got
Speaker 2: it a growing job as a spray technician at Heartfelt
Speaker 2: National with that was a Fassier design, And ironically my
Speaker 2: brother became superintendent like fifteen years later after I was there.
Speaker 2: So I went there, and then I went to the
Speaker 2: country club at Brookline.
Speaker 1: How was how was that? What years were you at Brookline?
Speaker 2: I was in Brookline for the beginning of the real
Speaker 2: restoration before the ninety nine Rider Cups. That was like
Speaker 2: mid nineties. That was after I interned at Marion, then
Speaker 2: did growing in North Carolina, and then did then went, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I went up to Brooklyn. Brookline was great because it
Speaker 2: was just like it was cold. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: it's not really that hot here, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like it was fake summer?
Speaker 2: It was fake summer. They didn't even I don't even
Speaker 2: know if they had any hoses. I'm like, you guys
Speaker 2: have hoses. You got a water to grass here? You know?
Speaker 2: They thought eighty two degrees is like a hot day.
Speaker 2: My god, it's gonna one hundred and seven today.
Speaker 1: What uh? What was it like? Getting ready for a
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup. You know, was that a cool experience? It is?
Speaker 1: You know, I hear some super say they like just
Speaker 1: get obsessed with the tournament, golf aspect of it and
Speaker 1: the pressure of that. Did you Was that something that
Speaker 1: that captured your interest at all?
Speaker 2: Or well? I was. I was employed by a really
Speaker 2: good superintendent, and Bill Spence he had already done He
Speaker 2: was a superintendent like Hominy Hills. He was at Pebble Beach,
Speaker 2: he had done opens Country Club. Can't see this is
Speaker 2: all old hat for him. So he was really smooth,
Speaker 2: even tempered. So he divided all the different tasks amongst
Speaker 2: four or five people, so we were all kind of
Speaker 2: in our lane doing certain things. But he really was
Speaker 2: more about every day golf and making sure membership was fine.
Speaker 2: I kind of carry his management Philossy and his greenkeeping Phlossy,
Speaker 2: which is every day's kind of member guest. By the
Speaker 2: time you get to a tournament, you really shouldn't have
Speaker 2: to do much. You should have be already on. You
Speaker 2: should only be you should be rate at the doorstep. Anyway,
Speaker 2: how does that?
Speaker 1: How does that work day to day?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Like is it just like hey, we just we work hard.
Speaker 2: Every well, you just yeah, you just keep the course
Speaker 2: cycled in. I always say you got to cycle the greens.
Speaker 2: You got to keep them in a cycle where they're
Speaker 2: always a day or two away from that you can go, okay,
Speaker 2: let's get ready back to tournament speed, you know, like
Speaker 2: thirteen or you know nowaday you have to be almost fourteen,
Speaker 2: you know feet, So you have to do like for us,
Speaker 2: like our standard are probably a standard stems probably like
Speaker 2: eleven eleven and a half.
Speaker 1: How much did that change from when you got into
Speaker 1: the industry.
Speaker 2: Well, you can tell, like you as you know so
Speaker 2: much about golf architecture, they built those greens for half
Speaker 2: inch greens heights, they didn't build them for a tenth
Speaker 2: of an inch. And then so now we go from
Speaker 2: poa to bent grass and these new bermudas which are
Speaker 2: super tight, and now it's almost if you have really
Speaker 2: old greens, they go almost too fast. So it's easier
Speaker 2: to get to that speed because the greens are especially
Speaker 2: the older greens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild. I feel like when I was a
Speaker 1: kid playing the muni that I even like when I
Speaker 1: go back and play that meanie. The speed of the
Speaker 1: greens is like just night and day. I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a little kid like playing late in that
Speaker 1: night and like you just have to murder putts to
Speaker 1: get them up the hills, right, and now it's like
Speaker 1: they put like great.
Speaker 2: All the time. You got to remember too, is that?
Speaker 2: And this is not a slight to of the you know,
Speaker 2: old school suit greenkeepers. They didn't have the technology we had,
Speaker 2: I mean the machinery we have now. I mean when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, when we would go to a
Speaker 2: green and decide how to water, You put a knife
Speaker 2: in it, You push your thumb against it, try to
Speaker 2: see how wet it was. This is we didn't have
Speaker 2: moisture meters we had. We're just guessing. I always say,
Speaker 2: you know, a greenkeepers are professional guessers. All we do
Speaker 2: is guess does that fertilizer really work? I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'll guess is that really work? You just guess and
Speaker 2: then you note, you take notes and say this looks
Speaker 2: like they're work and this didn't. But then we have
Speaker 2: moisture meters, so I can control my water level much better.
Speaker 2: The wetter the grasses, the fatterric gets, the less water
Speaker 2: to do. It starts the will it gets smaller. Less
Speaker 2: drag co fishing balls faster. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 1: With with that r Ryder Cup in ninety nine, do
Speaker 1: you have any good memories from that week on the
Speaker 1: on the crew?
Speaker 2: Ryder Cup was absolutely fabulous because we had so much
Speaker 2: fun taking care of the course that the European team
Speaker 2: was very like talkative with us. They were really a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. They were they would bust their chops
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I hear that almost every Ryder Cup venue that I
Speaker 1: go to. Every time I talk to like somebody that's
Speaker 1: on the staff, whether it's the pro shop or the groundscrew,
Speaker 1: they're always like, oh, yeah, we we loved the European Yeah,
Speaker 1: so nice and and we ended up just rooting for
Speaker 1: the Europeans.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it might mean why they win more because
Speaker 1: they just are are nicer people.
Speaker 2: So it was before September eleventh, so like it was
Speaker 2: nothing for me to walk I walked those with tiger
Speaker 2: woods within like you know, ten feet of them, and
Speaker 2: you know, uh Peene Stewart, you know, and and that
Speaker 2: when you were allowed to do all that stuff. But boy,
Speaker 2: the probably the thing that stuck out the most was
Speaker 2: I was told I always said at the end of
Speaker 2: the trip or the end of the tournament. You know,
Speaker 2: you could pick a hole whatever you wanted to go see.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I'll either watch seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 2: I mean seventeen so historical, you know, something's gona happened.
Speaker 2: I'm like, nah, I go to eighteen. Yeah. I heard
Speaker 2: the roar yeah, of the putt being made. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: that was a big regret. But my job was to
Speaker 2: get the pin off eighteen after the Ryder Cup. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got two hands on and Fluff said, nah, you're
Speaker 2: not taking that. He's yelling in my ear, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can have it. And I got splashed with champagne
Speaker 2: and there was people all over the place and it
Speaker 2: was great. It was There's definitely time in my lifet.
Speaker 1: The you get to experience the plate of the golf
Speaker 1: journalist at an event where you're just constantly trying to
Speaker 1: guess which groups are gonna be the right crewery at
Speaker 1: the end of a Yeah, tournament, it's the worst.
Speaker 2: It is. It's the worst. That roar. I can still
Speaker 2: hear it like it was yesterday. It's just it was
Speaker 2: so like awesome. But I was just like I was
Speaker 2: supposed to be there and I have this all access
Speaker 2: pass and I could have been literally standing nah now
Speaker 2: I got eighteen. Yeah yeah, wrong, But it's cool. It
Speaker 2: was a great time. It was. It's funny. What a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't talk about what tournament office is
Speaker 2: Monday is when I was had to go back to
Speaker 2: Philadelphia to my superintennis shop and I walked across eighteen
Speaker 2: and the bunker lip was broken down from all the traffic,
Speaker 2: and you see the trash and all the stuff, and
Speaker 2: you're like, now you got to put it back together.
Speaker 2: And I was like, see, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Gotta go so and then you take that take the
Speaker 1: grand stands down and yeah, it's just like it's not sexy. Well,
Speaker 1: and then that stuff I remember, I was, I can't.
Speaker 1: I was maybe at Conway a couple of years after,
Speaker 1: and you or not a couple of years, like you know,
Speaker 1: like nine months after and because they do like a
Speaker 1: fall event and you see it like then in June
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, you could still tell that there's
Speaker 1: a grand stand here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the soils are so compressed that it just
Speaker 2: takes so much time to loosen them up. See, we
Speaker 2: were it was a I had done a lot of
Speaker 2: other tournaments as a volunteer. It was the first tournament
Speaker 2: that at night time we went out and spread seed
Speaker 2: everywhere where there were crowds and anywhere there was grants.
Speaker 2: We just kept throwing seed.
Speaker 1: Out at the country class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all every night they tread see and I think
Speaker 2: it worked. And I never would have thought that because
Speaker 2: everybody's feet are pushing the seed in, so you see contact,
Speaker 2: that's the best way to progress.
Speaker 1: What So you're in Philly, Then where'd you say? You know,
Speaker 1: where'd you start in Philly?
Speaker 2: After you left Brookline, I ended up being superintendent Jericho
Speaker 2: National up in New Hope, Washington Crossings. It was a
Speaker 2: Hurstand Fry design. It was. It's an interesting course. It's
Speaker 2: very different. Hurstand Fry do a lot of like weaviiness
Speaker 2: and it's just a big, massive piece of property. But
Speaker 2: I only did like two years and then I always
Speaker 2: liked Lanark as a kid, like it was always the
Speaker 2: course that the old superintendent Marian Golf Club, mister Valentine
Speaker 2: said it was a sleeping giant. It just needed to
Speaker 2: be woken up. And I was like twenty eight years old.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm going to be that guy. You know,
Speaker 2: I was so like, oh I got this, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: got it. It took a long time, but I have
Speaker 2: The membership has been great. Leadership has been awesome, and
Speaker 2: if they've put a lot of money into it and
Speaker 2: for them to let me shut it down and fumigate
Speaker 2: it was a pretty big leap of faith. But then
Speaker 2: to do this renovation again. But it is it's a
Speaker 2: it's a neat of course. You get here two thousand.
Speaker 1: So you've been here for twenty one years.
Speaker 2: This is my twenty first season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a long time and.
Speaker 2: Yeah I'm a cal Ripkin of Lantar Country Club. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's consecutive starts. No, it's been great. It's it's uh.
Speaker 2: I'm very fortunate. You know, I grew up up down
Speaker 2: the street. You know. It's uh, it's it's a great
Speaker 2: it's a great little piece of property. It's uh, it's
Speaker 2: been fun. It's been really fun. It's come. It was
Speaker 2: a neat course. You got to remember it had a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot of history. In nineteen fifty PGA
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Was the first was it the last? No, first player,
Speaker 1: the first stroke, first striplay, Yeah, Franker said, right, Dowdlph.
Speaker 2: Fister he's to come here. He's pretty old, but he's
Speaker 2: super great guy. Super great guy. I mean, uh, Byron
Speaker 2: Nelson won a seventh of eleventh here in forty five,
Speaker 2: the golf professional in nineteen thirty one, that when the
Speaker 2: British Open. So it's gotten that. I can't remember his name,
Speaker 2: so they got some it's got neat history.
Speaker 1: It does have a lot of history. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: was it originally built?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. So it's been a lot of
Speaker 2: different names over the beginning, but now they've found some
Speaker 2: research that actually the ground was started in eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: Then it was I think the way the history you
Speaker 2: have to read off the website, but it was it
Speaker 2: was Delaware County country Club, then it was bel Air
Speaker 2: Country Club, it was Philadelphia Athletic Club, and then it
Speaker 2: got incorporated into Lanark Country Club, I think in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh one.
Speaker 1: And then this has had many different designs here right.
Speaker 2: Well, it was twenty seven holes until the Second World
Speaker 2: War and then they sold off nines they could weather
Speaker 2: the storm and that's when they did some more design work.
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Speaker 1: Brendan Byrne, who is so you take over? You go
Speaker 1: through a stephen k renovation correct all eighteen holes, all.
Speaker 2: Eights and holmes, fumigated, every tea fairway.
Speaker 1: And grand shut down. The course was completely shut.
Speaker 2: Shut down August seventh, opened up like that May twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: I think the next.
Speaker 1: Year, and then most recently, you guys Brian Schneider came
Speaker 1: in did nine one years ago, two years of twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen nine last fall right. Talk about the difference between
Speaker 1: the full shut down from your end versus the nine
Speaker 1: and nine.
Speaker 2: It's really almost impossible to compare because we're fumigating on
Speaker 2: the first time. The first time in fumigating is the
Speaker 2: totally different world. I mean, here you are, you apply
Speaker 2: a product that you need to go into your souls
Speaker 2: for seven days, pull it out and then see wait
Speaker 2: till it's completely clear. So I plant lettuce in the
Speaker 2: fairways and wait for the lettuce to so germinate. That
Speaker 2: would tell me that I could do the bent grass.
Speaker 1: What did you do with the lettuce? Wants it would germinate?
Speaker 2: Cut it out?
Speaker 1: I didn't move it.
Speaker 2: We didn't give it to the kitchen. No, we didn't.
Speaker 2: We got rid of it.
Speaker 1: Seems like a waste.
Speaker 2: It was a waste, I guess. So when you seed it,
Speaker 2: you have all these acres of dead grass and you're
Speaker 2: looking at seeds. So I would come in in the
Speaker 2: morning at like four in the morning, turn my headlights
Speaker 2: on my cart and just look for seedlings to pop.
Speaker 2: And then as soon as I saw a couple of seedlings,
Speaker 2: it was fine. So once they started Germany, we were
Speaker 2: mewing seventeen days later. The second time we did a renovation,
Speaker 2: we were just sodding most of this stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: doing extensions and doing bunkers, so the majority of the
Speaker 2: stuff was already grown in and doing nine holes was
Speaker 2: I think easier. The difference is you had architect like
Speaker 2: Stephen k who did drawings and that he would paint
Speaker 2: it in the field, and you'd have a shaper where
Speaker 2: Brian's of that generation now where they don't really want
Speaker 2: to do that much drawings, but they go out and
Speaker 2: do all the shaping. So it's a totally different operation.
Speaker 1: Do you think the club knew really what they were? Well,
Speaker 1: how quirky and like, you know, I love this place
Speaker 1: because it's just it's so different than everything else around.
Speaker 2: That's the and it's still true to itself. I mean
Speaker 2: it's still it's still landmark in its way, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's totally different. I said to Brian, I go the
Speaker 2: old I don't want to be married. We can't be married,
Speaker 2: we can't be ironomic, we can't be wrong great. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that they're like, we're not a good enough club.
Speaker 2: It's just let's just be ourselves. And I said, you
Speaker 2: got room to do it, and we looked at old
Speaker 2: pictures and that gave us some opportunity to do some
Speaker 2: stuff that had gotten really lost.
Speaker 1: What was the member reaction like when they came back
Speaker 1: and saw, like, you know, was it across the board.
Speaker 1: I imagine some thought it was really really cool.
Speaker 2: I would say the overwhelming majority. I would say as
Speaker 2: high as ninety percent love it. I think other people
Speaker 2: and it's this is not land Eark centric. I think
Speaker 2: it's any club when you remove trees. And we roomed
Speaker 2: a good amount, but not a ton a good amount,
Speaker 2: especially for members who've been here a long time. You're
Speaker 2: racing their old course, so they have stories about how
Speaker 2: they hit that great shot behind that hole or that
Speaker 2: tea or that that tree, and you've taken out all away,
Speaker 2: so you've ruined their stories. So I understand that the
Speaker 2: course they grew up on, I've tinkered with it hard.
Speaker 2: So there's always a little bit of like, you know,
Speaker 2: everything seems better.
Speaker 1: In the past, any run into with the fair police, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: nobody saying, oh, I've gotten this bunker, couldn't get out.
Speaker 2: All right? I ticked that back that way. There has
Speaker 2: been because the faces are so steep, So there were
Speaker 2: a couple of bunkers that I end up cupping them
Speaker 2: a little bit on the edges so they would roll
Speaker 2: back in a little further and that kind of solved it.
Speaker 2: But it is a hazard.
Speaker 1: The last time I checked, yeah, yeah, And so then
Speaker 1: you know you're you're doing the next nine, the next
Speaker 1: next year. How did did your approach to the next
Speaker 1: nine change it? All? Like? After you did nine, you
Speaker 1: get like kind of I feel like you you're in
Speaker 1: this creative process, you're doing the work, you know you're
Speaker 1: doing all this, and then you have time to like
Speaker 1: reset reflect. Did you did anything change about the way
Speaker 1: you approached the next nine?
Speaker 2: Well, with Blake and Brian, who are fabulous architects and shapers,
Speaker 2: you had to get to know their personality and they
Speaker 2: are both a little bit quirky. They're very talented, but quirky,
Speaker 2: And at first when they started, I was like they
Speaker 2: would not talk as much as I would like, and
Speaker 2: I was like they would just do stuff and I'd
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, what do you think you're going to
Speaker 2: do next, And they'd be like, well, we'll find you'll
Speaker 2: see when we're done. Like I'm a control freak, so
Speaker 2: I would be like, well, I kind of like would
Speaker 2: like to know because I have to order materials for
Speaker 2: all of it, so I kind of need to know
Speaker 2: dimensions and size. Eh, we'll get, we'll get. But it
Speaker 2: would always come out great. So that created a little
Speaker 2: bit of anxiety for me in the beginning. By the
Speaker 2: time we did the second one, I was like, I
Speaker 2: just know what they're going to be like, and it's fine.
Speaker 2: You know, it is what it is, you know, and
Speaker 2: they had great results. You know, It's it's easy to
Speaker 2: trust people when they do a great job. So the
Speaker 2: second time when they were going to do something kind
Speaker 2: of like, I was like, no, no, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of it's gonna look great.
Speaker 1: I feel like I do that to people that are
Speaker 1: real like type A, yeah, plan oriented people. I just
Speaker 1: drive him nuts.
Speaker 2: I'm that guy. I'm the plan oriented guy. You have
Speaker 2: to in Greenkeeper because there's so many moving parts you
Speaker 2: gotta remember when you're doing nine holes. There's another nine
Speaker 2: that they're still playing, and I mean we did incredible
Speaker 2: amount of play. Like I always say that the nine
Speaker 2: that was being played got hit with COVID too. I mean,
Speaker 2: because everybody was out playing.
Speaker 1: That had to be hard last fall shutting down nine
Speaker 1: because it was I imagine you were doing record round.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was like yeah, sorry, yeah, I gotta go,
Speaker 2: And it was like but they were great because I
Speaker 2: think they were so excited and and like we had
Speaker 2: said before the course became schizophrenic. You had this new
Speaker 2: nine that was really cool and had these really cool
Speaker 2: Zoija bunkers and the greens are bigger and they were
Speaker 2: seeing pots they'd never seen before, and then you had
Speaker 2: the old nine. So it was like this has gotta
Speaker 2: get changed. So there wasn't really any blowback.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite like part of the course
Speaker 1: transformation like that that you still drive out too and
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, this is pretty neat, I would say,
Speaker 1: since like you were out here as a kid and
Speaker 1: like the course of it.
Speaker 2: Like I'd have to say twelve, Yeah, twelve, because twelve
Speaker 2: was twelve was so severe. We had like two cups
Speaker 2: on it and it was like it would just wear
Speaker 2: the grass out, so Brian really it was really, I thought,
Speaker 2: probably one of the most challenging holes to do it.
Speaker 2: And there's days when I look at it and it
Speaker 2: has these two old or three old red Japanese pines
Speaker 2: or maples there and they're just so beautiful, and it
Speaker 2: just casts a great shadow and it has great and
Speaker 2: it's the right side of it's got this great bumping
Speaker 2: and stuff and it just gets great shadows. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I dig that. That's that's really cool. I can make
Speaker 2: an argument for almost every hole, but twelve is the one.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, that looks really good.
Speaker 1: It's uh yeah, it's a neat neat one.
Speaker 2: Fifteen's really good too.
Speaker 1: Like the hump, Yeah, all the humps. The humps are
Speaker 1: so neat. Yeah, that's the the thing like that, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, Philly has so much Flynn, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know that's a really distinct style. But he
Speaker 1: brought like a little bit of above ground Travis Flair, Yes, Reilly,
Speaker 1: which is really.
Speaker 2: Which this place needed because we don't have we have
Speaker 2: our land rolls, the the land rules, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: like at ouronamic where you see this dramatic like number
Speaker 2: one Aeronamic. I mean, wow, look at that. I mean
Speaker 2: that's just incredible. And even Marian, you know, you look
Speaker 2: at seventeen, You're just like, wow, this is a real
Speaker 2: sharp We don't have that so much, so we needed
Speaker 2: some above you know, ground topography. The other thing too
Speaker 2: is having been a greenkeeper in New England, you see
Speaker 2: this stuff all the time New England. So for me
Speaker 2: it was like, well, of course we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just had an event thirty six holes at
Speaker 1: Rolling Green in that you know where you start, but
Speaker 1: that's like a feet of strength to walk that golf course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to carry there as a kid. It's
Speaker 2: a number nine is a slog.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's the topography that dominates Philly and
Speaker 1: why there's so many great courses. You have this dramatic yep,
Speaker 1: these dramatic properties. You'res a little bit more subtle, but
Speaker 1: for you know, it's an easier walk, like you could
Speaker 1: you could legitimately walk thirty six holes here within a
Speaker 1: day and not feel gassed completely.
Speaker 2: I would totally agree with you, and I think almost
Speaker 2: every member here would say the same thing. Lanark's known
Speaker 2: for a few things. We really try to keep the
Speaker 2: course in great condition. It's extremely walkable, it's just and
Speaker 2: it's a great everyday course. And as long as I've
Speaker 2: been here, memberships like super fun.
Speaker 1: It seems like you guys have a lot of bars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think anything more than anyone else. But
Speaker 2: I just think they like to have a good time.
Speaker 2: But they're serious about They prioritized, you know, taking care
Speaker 2: of the golf course. I mean they redid the clubhouse
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, they make the investment. We're staying here.
Speaker 1: What was the decision process of hiring Brian? I feel
Speaker 1: like from before to after, this is one of the
Speaker 1: most dramatic shifts in golf architecture of what you had
Speaker 1: before and what you have now.
Speaker 2: Well, first things first, the course was more similar to
Speaker 2: this back in the probably than earlier. In nineteen ninets,
Speaker 2: there was two Scottish green keepers here, a father and son,
Speaker 2: and if you look at their old photos you can
Speaker 2: see a lot of this type of style here. So
Speaker 2: then it went into the eighties and then you know
Speaker 2: the dark ear of golfing in my book, and then.
Speaker 1: Which is what most of the members that joined joined correct.
Speaker 2: So then Kay did Kay did a nice job he did,
Speaker 2: but he did you know what he was his interpretation
Speaker 2: of finlay. But then when we went when what was
Speaker 2: happening was the bunkers were breaking down. Bunkers are fifteen years.
Speaker 2: You get fifteen years out of them. The old style
Speaker 2: bunkers when they would build them, you got fifteen years.
Speaker 2: So we were right there and I said to the club,
Speaker 2: I go, you know, They're like, we'll just redo the bunkers.
Speaker 2: I'm like, if're gonna do the bunkers, you wants to
Speaker 2: do a green copocks, you're gonna do a green cop box.
Speaker 2: You must just do a whole thing. And they bought
Speaker 2: into that, and then I'm very fortunate. They were like,
Speaker 2: what architects you want? And when I interviewed Brian, I
Speaker 2: was just flabbergasted by the fact that he took the
Speaker 2: time to walk the property with myself and the golf
Speaker 2: professional who's now the COGM, with myself and really had
Speaker 2: like a viewpoint of it that Wow, we can really
Speaker 2: do something here. And I was like, this guy's really excited.
Speaker 2: And then I liked what Doak had been doing. And
Speaker 2: then I went up to see Hollywood and where Mike
Speaker 2: Broome is who does a fabulous job there. And I
Speaker 2: was just blown away. But I also said to Brian,
Speaker 2: I pulled him up to side and go, look, I
Speaker 2: don't want a wall of sand like you see a
Speaker 2: lot of these renovations. They want to do all this bunker,
Speaker 2: they want to have all this sand the flesher. I
Speaker 2: don't want that. I want Leonard to be distinctive and
Speaker 2: I don't want to have a wall sand. And he
Speaker 2: was like, no, I don't either. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: be more minimalistic, and I think we accomplished that.
Speaker 1: When you finish the project, are you little are you
Speaker 1: a little sad that you know, like it's back to
Speaker 1: like the day to day.
Speaker 2: Well, I've on four growings, four growings and two restorations,
Speaker 2: so I've had a good fill of it. I have
Speaker 2: to say. When they were doing sixteen, which was the
Speaker 2: last grain, I was a little sad. I was like,
Speaker 2: it will be the last time I ren av a
Speaker 2: hole here at Lantar. No, I'm ready, We're never gonna finish.
Speaker 2: The creeks need to get restored. There's still I always
Speaker 2: say to any club and a lot of good superinstensus says,
Speaker 2: and you have to play it for a year and
Speaker 2: then you're gonna have to do tweaks. So we're we're
Speaker 2: not done yet, but we have a Pennsylvania Amateur next year,
Speaker 2: so we if we're gonna do something, we have to
Speaker 2: do it like this fall and then you know, then
Speaker 2: grow it in. So so to answer your question, it's okay,
Speaker 2: we still always have stuff to do. You know, I
Speaker 2: would never get bored with just grooming it.
Speaker 1: You're the GM here too.
Speaker 2: Coach General Magi. Yet for twelve eleven.
Speaker 1: Years, how does that balance work? Like? Do you have
Speaker 1: days where you're inside and you're like, I wish I
Speaker 1: was outside, and do you have to dte where you're
Speaker 1: outside and you want to go aheadside?
Speaker 2: Now, I got a great co Chris Wilkinson, who's was
Speaker 2: an assistant at the country club at Brooklyne. Ironically, but
Speaker 2: he's younger, you know. He he takes care of food
Speaker 2: and beverage, all the stuff that I want no part of.
Speaker 2: I'm more of the physical plan. I'm more worried. I'm
Speaker 2: more dealing with pipes and and blacktop and electric and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. So it's it's a good diversion. I
Speaker 2: have very good assistant superintendents I've been blessed with good assistants. So,
Speaker 2: but but for the last two years, i'd be I
Speaker 2: would I wouldn't be truthful to say that I've been
Speaker 2: on the golf course the whole time. But basically I
Speaker 2: got we have really good people. We have great tennis
Speaker 2: probably have great pool managers. So things things are in
Speaker 2: good shape right now.
Speaker 1: You just gotta sit back and let them do.
Speaker 2: Their You gotta delegate. You have to realize you have
Speaker 2: to delegate. But when we do construction around the clubhouse
Speaker 2: or something, I'm usually heavily involved with it. But you
Speaker 2: gotta trust people. You gotta teach them, and you gotta
Speaker 2: you gotta know when to be laissez fair, let him,
Speaker 2: you know, be hands.
Speaker 1: All with with you know, kind of management and assistant supers.
Speaker 1: And is your style change? Like what are some things
Speaker 1: that have changed over your say, just twenty one years here,
Speaker 1: Like how I manage? Yeah, just how you approach people.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's a hard job. So you're gonna go, Hey,
Speaker 2: I got an idea for you. I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 2: gonna pay you to come in really early where it
Speaker 2: can heat the rain. I'm gonna work you like a dog.
Speaker 2: And then by the way, I'm probably gonna have to
Speaker 2: lay off in the winter, but could you come back
Speaker 2: in April. So it is tough to motivate people, But
Speaker 2: I think you just did what anybody else would do.
Speaker 2: You treat them with respect, You try to teach them,
Speaker 2: You show them that they're worth something, that they have value.
Speaker 2: They do. They see little things that you don't maybe see.
Speaker 2: So I think you have to do as much as
Speaker 2: you can to respect and empower people.
Speaker 1: It's funny I think about like the job on a
Speaker 1: grounds crew and what once you get past the years
Speaker 1: of like late night m m, like then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it becomes so so appealing, like now that
Speaker 1: I'm thirty five and heaving, just like God, that would
Speaker 1: be a great job, like you get you go out
Speaker 1: early in the morning, but then like you could legitimately
Speaker 1: be home to like pick up your kids from the rightool. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, like it all of a sudden, like it's
Speaker 1: a it's a job that becomes like extremely more appealing
Speaker 1: when you hit your like late twenties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I would agree with that. It's it's and
Speaker 2: our philosophy is life balance that I want the assistants
Speaker 2: to take you know, two out of three weekends we rotate.
Speaker 2: I think people need to have time off because they've
Speaker 2: become they come back fresher, they're going to do a
Speaker 2: better job for you. And also they're not they're less,
Speaker 2: there's less opportunity for them. They get hurt because most
Speaker 2: people get hurt when they're tired. So it is appealing.
Speaker 2: Not as a super you're it's like being in a tourney.
Speaker 2: This billable hours. You're always thinking about it. I mean
Speaker 2: you're you're constantly. I there's not a night I'm not
Speaker 2: not thinking about Wow, man, I need to start really
Speaker 2: thinking about that Bermuda encroachment on number eighteen Fairway. So
Speaker 2: it just comes to you at all times. But it's
Speaker 2: my vocation, it's not my job. I love what I do,
Speaker 2: so it's not a big deal. But it is all encompassing.
Speaker 2: It is at the time of leaving early in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: it's it's when it's cool around. You're not now like today.
Speaker 2: It's it's a slog.
Speaker 1: That's the I always tell people that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, why is it stressful? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a superintendent and I'm like, well, like,
Speaker 1: do you ever stress out about like your yard, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, yeah, I hate when those week I'm like,
Speaker 1: imagine your yard being like one hundred and eighty acres.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now pick and let people drive over your
Speaker 2: yard and take divots out of your yard. And then
Speaker 2: you have an outing where people who are you know,
Speaker 2: have seen their golf clubs the first time in two
Speaker 2: years out on the golf course. My one assistant, Matt Willigan,
Speaker 2: who's up at a filler's up, I hite a great
Speaker 2: expression because greenkeeper would be the best job if he
Speaker 2: didn't have to do it on weekends. You know. It's
Speaker 2: the weekends are tough and we use the expression around here.
Speaker 2: Grass doesn't know what day it is, so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: You have to be here at times to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that would be the hard thing with especially
Speaker 1: as the families.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my daughter knows the golf course. Well, you got
Speaker 2: to maximize what time you have with them before they
Speaker 2: grow up.
Speaker 1: How neat has it been to watch just like kind
Speaker 1: of your network of people, you know, from the industry
Speaker 1: to grow and then like grow to all these different
Speaker 1: places around the world.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say the most satisfying thing is seeing
Speaker 2: the assistants get super jobs. I've been very lucky. I
Speaker 2: think I have like ten. You know, we don't raise
Speaker 2: them to keep them, so that's probably the most proud
Speaker 2: we get. It's great for the club, it's great for
Speaker 2: myself selfishly, So that's probably the most rewarding thing. And
Speaker 2: I was very you know, again fortunate to have been
Speaker 2: interned under a palaterial at Marion. So you have all
Speaker 2: the I called men of Marion or Marian and all
Speaker 2: these guys you worked with that have all become very successful,
Speaker 2: so you can talk to them. And then at the
Speaker 2: country club, I we had like ten guys that worked
Speaker 2: with it became superintendents. So it's like, so, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: the I never really thought of it that way. The
Speaker 2: network has grown like tremendously. But I've also seen guys
Speaker 2: get out of the field.
Speaker 1: They get they get into like sales jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just think that it's a grind. It's it's
Speaker 2: a grind. You know, you you you gotta be better.
Speaker 2: Love it. You gotta love it. You have to love it.
Speaker 1: Your industry is so different than other industries because like
Speaker 1: you get good people in almost any other business, and
Speaker 1: you like all you want to do is keep them correct.
Speaker 1: But you know, great superintendents their assistance become great superintendents elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's such a it's it's more of a
Speaker 1: it's actually like more of a like kind of like
Speaker 1: a family relationship where you want your kids to go
Speaker 1: on to great thing. You don't want your kids to
Speaker 1: stay in your house or their whole life.
Speaker 2: No, you got to kick them out of the nest.
Speaker 2: And to be honest with you, I barely ever visit
Speaker 2: their courses because I don't want to, like it's their deal,
Speaker 2: like it's your job. Like actually, it's funny. One of
Speaker 2: my former assistants is a super called me this morning
Speaker 2: about a spray. I'm happy to do that stuff. Like
Speaker 2: I'll give advice if I can give it to them.
Speaker 2: But at that point, they don't need me coming over
Speaker 2: to look at their place. Like they know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the whole idea, is to teach them
Speaker 2: what to do. It goes back to like being an
Speaker 2: agronomous I want you to know why you're doing it,
Speaker 2: not how to do it. You know, knowing how to
Speaker 2: do it. Anybody can figure out how to do it.
Speaker 2: You need to know.
Speaker 1: Why do you think young supers struggle more with the
Speaker 1: grass stuff or the management?
Speaker 2: I think that the young superintendent's just like what I
Speaker 2: was like when I was young. You feel like you
Speaker 2: know what you're doing and you don't. You don't know completely.
Speaker 2: I always say you know to the assistance is sow
Speaker 2: you say, you think you know what I do for
Speaker 2: a living, but you don't. It's different when you're it's
Speaker 2: very lonely to be the super intent because day it's
Speaker 2: your call, and when it fails, it's your call, and
Speaker 2: if succeeds, it's your call too. But you need to
Speaker 2: give them enough room to give you it what they think.
Speaker 2: But you need to teach them. The younger guys, they
Speaker 2: need to get their fingers burnt. That's the only way
Speaker 2: you're really gonna learn. You have to you have to kill.
Speaker 2: There's two types of green keepers, one who's lost grass
Speaker 2: and one who will so which you're going to be
Speaker 2: both at some point. So, younger guys, I killed grass,
Speaker 2: I messed up. I still kill grass.
Speaker 1: Is that the worst thing that can happen?
Speaker 2: Kill grass?
Speaker 1: Outside of like safety somebody, like outside of like catastrophic
Speaker 1: I would say.
Speaker 2: The thing that makes me probably the most angry is
Speaker 2: when we are dumb and we kill grass ourselves, Like
Speaker 2: we just straight out kill grass. Like so we have
Speaker 2: a member guests last week and I'm in a board
Speaker 2: director's meeting and I get a phone call, which I
Speaker 2: never get a phone call, and they're like, we have
Speaker 2: an issue problem. I said, we don't probably have issues.
Speaker 2: We get hydrouclic on eighteen farewell. So we had to
Speaker 2: take sod from another fairway, ht it with tull fescue
Speaker 2: and put it in. And this is like twelve hours before. Remember,
Speaker 2: guess it's just the way it is. And the thing
Speaker 2: is I was driving up to meeting, I go, God,
Speaker 2: I hope we don't have a hydraulic lea today.
Speaker 1: But it happens that something you said resonated with me.
Speaker 1: Is the loneliness and having to make all the decisions.
Speaker 1: I hate having to make all this, Like the thing
Speaker 1: I like, my wife will be like, what do you
Speaker 1: want to get for dinner? And I literally don't want
Speaker 1: to make another decision today. Please just pick.
Speaker 2: Something and look at what you know. In this business,
Speaker 2: you have to make a bazillion decisions all the time,
Speaker 2: Like today. It's like, well, and the thing is, you
Speaker 2: don't have enough information yet, Like I don't know what's
Speaker 2: gonna happen this afternoon. Is it gonna get hazy? Is
Speaker 2: it not gonna get any the forecast? Thanks, nobody knows
Speaker 2: what the weather's gonna be.
Speaker 1: What weather apter you use?
Speaker 2: Oh well, every member asked me that or not a
Speaker 2: lot of members. I always say, I don't have a
Speaker 2: secret website for green capers are used weather underground, Like.
Speaker 1: He got secret seed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's secret seed to weather undergrounds. I think I
Speaker 2: look at about four or five of them, but it seems.
Speaker 1: Like whether round paunch of them.
Speaker 2: Absolutely hundred percent. Now that's the biggest it's the biggest fallacy.
Speaker 2: What does he know that she know that I have
Speaker 2: to pay? Like they're just pulling it from n o A.
Speaker 1: Anyway, all right, what's the what's the best cheese steak
Speaker 1: in town?
Speaker 2: That's a lot you know what in in around here?
Speaker 1: I would say, Will and I are going to go
Speaker 1: go one well right.
Speaker 2: Up the street, uh Thunderbird in Prumol. Oh, yeah, but
Speaker 2: you gotta get pepperoni in it. I do Pepperoni cheese steak,
Speaker 2: Pepperoni cheese you never had a pepperoni cheese steak from Chicago.
Speaker 1: We have Italian, we have the we have the better,
Speaker 1: we have a better beef sandwich. We have the Italian beef.
Speaker 2: All right, I would say American cheese with pepperoni.
Speaker 1: That's the way I got No onions, No onion.
Speaker 2: Grow grew up with pepperoni in mine your cheese.
Speaker 1: Wwiss guy, No American American?
Speaker 2: No, no cheese.
Speaker 1: What seems like that's a big divide.
Speaker 2: It is that and onions.
Speaker 1: With Philly sports, what team does appoints you guys the most?
Speaker 2: They're all disappointing God Hockey, the Flyer or the Flyers,
Speaker 2: they're terrible. They can't even get in the playoffs. Their
Speaker 2: big gets in the playoffs. Phillies, what are we ten
Speaker 2: years without a winning record? Seventy six? There's an open dunk,
Speaker 2: we don't take it. And then, uh, the Eagles. I'm
Speaker 2: actually kind of pullish on the Eagles. I think they're
Speaker 2: going to turn it around.
Speaker 1: Best time to come play golf in Philly October without
Speaker 1: a doubt, or April April.
Speaker 2: April, because especially if you play like something like that
Speaker 2: has the bent grass hasn't woken yet. The greens are
Speaker 2: always the fastest in April because they're dormant still, so
Speaker 2: you just mole and everybody's like, oh, they're really fast.
Speaker 2: You really know what you're doing. Dorant.
Speaker 1: I love like the fall. Yeah, October days are short, yep,
Speaker 1: and it means I don't have to get up at
Speaker 1: like four thirty in the morning to come shoot photos.
Speaker 1: And then if I want to shoot at night, it's
Speaker 1: not nine o'clock.
Speaker 2: I have a countdown in my calendar right now. We're
Speaker 2: seventy four days from September tenth. That's when things start
Speaker 2: to really go. See.
Speaker 1: That's the funny thing about the industry. It's like, when
Speaker 1: you're a golfer, this is Midsummer, when the days are
Speaker 1: it's light till nine is the greatest time ever. But
Speaker 1: if you're in the golf industry, no.
Speaker 2: You know, we were celebrating the other day, were like
Speaker 2: the longest day of the year's coing.
Speaker 1: See you all right, This was a great conversation and
Speaker 1: people can find you on.
Speaker 2: Twitter bj Burn zero one.
Speaker 1: I think you on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on Instagram, same thing.
Speaker 1: You probably you know all your assistants. That's probably changed.
Speaker 1: What was it like pre and post cell phone like smartphones.
Speaker 2: I don't know because it's so funny you say that
Speaker 2: because we don't. I don't even the rate, Like I
Speaker 2: carry radio. It's just a turn irrigation. None of us
Speaker 2: have radios anymore. Like we just do everything. I just
Speaker 2: text everything that way. I can't forget what I what
Speaker 2: I text them and they can't say that they didn't
Speaker 2: hear it. So it's the best. The textings is wonderful.
Speaker 2: And you can look at radars, real time radars, so
Speaker 2: that that's great. People have been I have to say,
Speaker 2: that's been the cool thing that Twitter is getting super
Speaker 2: intense from different countries and getting direct messages like when
Speaker 2: we did the Zeytsia, like I got flooded with like
Speaker 2: direct messages like what is that? Like, where did you
Speaker 2: get it? How much is it ascriff? What's it like
Speaker 2: to grow? Like from all over the place. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: I never thought.
Speaker 1: That I'm here to look at that now, right, It's like.
Speaker 2: The craziest thing and like just a greenkeeper, you know,
Speaker 2: at the of days, you know it's we're in Delaware County.
Speaker 2: That's cool. The temperature down a little bit, but it
Speaker 2: was like crazy, but like I got this guy, I
Speaker 2: got people that follow you in like from England. You're like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's really cool. So I fall back and you learn stuff.
Speaker 2: It is Twitter is educational.
Speaker 1: It's super cool with the superintendent industry. Like one that
Speaker 1: comes jumps to mind is Michael Vesily out at Culver.
Speaker 1: You know, he's got a tiny little staff. It's a
Speaker 1: nine hole courpse of lang from a row that got stored,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like restored all the way, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's at this really neat place that people are
Speaker 1: genuinely curious about, right, And all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: he's got architects visiting. He's started to talk to Bob
Speaker 1: Crosby and David Normoyl, great historians, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like this guy has become He's just like turned the
Speaker 1: place up like ten notches. And it's all like he
Speaker 1: he talks to me, it's like it's all because like
Speaker 1: the Internet, like you know, I just learned so much
Speaker 1: stuff like and I didn't. I didn't know all this
Speaker 1: stuff and and all of a sudden, now I'm he's
Speaker 1: got you know, he gets he talks to you know,
Speaker 1: two great historians all the time. About how to find information,
Speaker 1: how to find old fiction.
Speaker 2: They would have never known about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a military academy. So he has like he
Speaker 1: goes to the archives and finds all these those old
Speaker 1: articles and all this stuff and old photos. It's so
Speaker 1: so cool and like what he's doing is now he's
Speaker 1: just like he's just finding pictures and yeah, and and
Speaker 1: just in making the changes on his own.
Speaker 2: See, that's really cool. I got on social media just
Speaker 2: as we started the restoration, and it was so funny
Speaker 2: that I had people that said during COVID like they
Speaker 2: loved watching the updates because it was like they were like,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know your club, but it was like
Speaker 2: just to see the updates because I wasn't going anywhere,
Speaker 2: and it was like, well, I've seen the course kind
Speaker 2: of changed, and I want to see how it was
Speaker 2: like a story, and I was like, wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden they get started getting
Speaker 2: like architects and like people just that are like into Golfer, Like, hey,
Speaker 2: can I stop over and look around?
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, that's what your your updates legitimately like made
Speaker 1: the that was the last time I was in Philly.
Speaker 1: I was like I gotta go see Lanner, Like, I
Speaker 1: really want to go.
Speaker 2: See that Point Act as soon as it's a cool property.
Speaker 2: I always tell people, I'm like, you should really come
Speaker 2: and see it. It's a neat little place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, Well, hey, this was fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much and we'll we'll talk soon. Perfect.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you again for listening to the FRIDAYGG podcast,
Speaker 1: our latest Superintendent series. This episode was edited by Meg Atkins.
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