The Craft

by Bart Potter

The scholarly journals of the golf turfgrass industry feature articles like “Effects of cultural practices on earthworm casting on golf course fairways” and “Disease control and fungicide rotations.”

Pure geek science is no stranger to the golf-maintenance profession, but still the microscope on the window sill seemed an atypical accessory for a course superintendent’s office.

In fact, it’s a working instrument for Justin Ruiz, superintendent at Indian Summer Golf and Country Club inOlympia,Wash.

The microscope is borrowed – from nearby Timberline High School – because the course didn’t have one when Ruiz started in the job.

It’s all in the service of science, which enhances problem-solving, which can only help him communicate with the members at the private Indian Summer course.

If the microscope strikes a visitor as old school and low-tech, let it be said Ruiz, 33, is fully engaged with the modern age and its fast-twitch electronic tools.

He has not one but two awards from his golf-course industry peers to prove it.

In the summer of 2010, Ruiz, then at The Rim Golf Club in Payson, Ariz., detailed his use of social media on the job in an article called “”Facing Facebook, talking Twitter”  (www.gcsaa.org/GCM/2010/june/) in Golf Course Management magazine, the monthly journal of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

The article, which focused on the communication benefits of social media with members and customers at The Rim, earned Ruiz the 2010 Leo Feser Award, given by the GCSAA for the best superintendent-written article in Golf Course Management.

Ruiz was presented his award last month at the GCSAA Education Conference, held in conjunction with the Golf Industry Show in Orlando.

While inFlorida, he also picked up the grand prize for Turf Wars, the GCSAA’s video contest. His video, “All in a Day’s Work,” is about innovations in conserving water at The Rim.

For Ruiz, who studied horticulture and turfgrass management in college, not journalism or multi-media, writing and video are not his natural habitats.

But the writing has gotten better and easier the more he’s done it, he said, and the video, well, his wife helped.

“She pretty much masterminded the whole thing,” he said of his wife, Kasey Holloran-Ruiz. The couple’s two children, daughter Ireland, 4, and son Tiernan, 1, starred in the video.

As a kid growing up in Eugene, Ore., Ruiz came to admire the way golf courses looked when he watched the sport on TV. As a teenager, he went to work at Laurelwood Golf Course, a mature 9-hole course near his home, taking shifts with the maintenance crew in the early morning and picking the range after school.

He played on the golf team at South Eugene High, and studied at Lane Community College in Eugene, and briefly at the University of Oregon, where he narrowly missed making the golf team.

He moved on to Oregon State University and its well-respected horticulture and turfgrass program. There, he studied under Tom Cook, an esteemed professor and scholar, longtime friend to the Northwest golf superintendent community and, for the record, author or co-author of the articles referenced in the lead paragraph of this story.

At OSU Ruiz got the science grounding that helps to augment the “feel” of things in the golf course environment.

“I just love the problem-solving part of the job,” he said. “Science is a big part of it. I guess I’m pretty good with the reasoning of why things work.

“I can go out there and say, ‘that doesn’t look right,’ and I can figure out the science behind it.”

After college, Ruiz worked about a year at The Reserve in Portland, then worked in Phoenix for another four years before moving to The Rim in the mountains of central Arizona.

About halfway through his four years in Payson, Ruiz began writing a blog for the membership.

“The blogging kind of shows people, instead of assuming this is what we do, it’s right there spelled out,” Ruiz said. “This is how we do things – I don’t have anything to hide.”

Recently, Ruiz was able to use the borrowed microscope to examine a turf plug for a recurrence of cool-weather pythum on the greens. You would know that if you checked out his blog at Indian Summer (www.indiansummergolf.blogspot.com), where you can also click to watch his award-winning video.

For Ruiz, the blog makes clear that he sees his job as, yes, about science and grass and the crane fly larvae on some of the problem greens on the course. But, maybe even more, it’s about communication.

by Bart Potter

“COMMUNICATIONS” IS one of those big open-ended words that means far more than the massive industry that is its multi-headed modern-day expression.

For Paul Backman, communication meant sharing information and fostering understanding among media members and golf industry professionals.

The news release, that staple of the public relations wing of the mass media world, showed up in the email inbox this week. It tells about a man, Backman, with deep Olympia roots, who died April 13 at age 41.

For the 12 years before his death, Backman was the executive director of the Western Washington Golf Course Superintendents Association and the Northwest Turfgrass Association.

“Because of this,” the news release said, “Paul quite literally touched every single golf facility in the Northwest.”

The author of the release, Tom Cade, is the director of communications and marketing for the Pacific Northwest Golf Association (PNGA) and editor of Pacific Northwest Golfer magazine.

Cade is also the current president of the Northwest Golf Media Association, of which Backman was a longtime member.

When the NWGMA gathers next Monday for its annual season-ending banquet, a highlight will be the presentation of the NWGMA Distinguished Service Award. The recipient of this year’s award is Paul Backman.

Backman had a strong working relationship with press types, Cade said this week.

“He was smart about contacting the media and getting the word out,” Cade said, “not just for his own things, but for golf in general.”

As savvy as he was with newsies, he was even more valued by his peers. For Bob Pearsall, superintendent at the developing Salish Cliffs course near Shelton, Wash., he was colleague and friend and “nerve center” for the newest and latest in maintenance, turfgrass and the craft they shared.

“I would pick his brain quite often,” said Pearsall, who dates his relationship with Backman to 1991. “He was just a good guy to get in contact with to learn what’s going on.”

Backman, a lifelong resident of Olympia, graduated in 1987 from Olympia High School, where he was a four-year letter-winner in golf and, as a senior, won the OHS Bud Ward Trophy.

Backman was back-to-back men’s club champion at Tumwater Valley Golf Course in 1988 and ‘89.

He went on to Western Washington University, where he played on the golf team. He transferred to Oregon State University and graduated with a degree in horticulture in 1992.

He worked at Overlake Golf and Country Club in Medina, and then moved on to become assistant superintendent at Everett Golf and Country. His local resume includes jobs at Indian Summer and Hawks Prairie.

Backman earned a master’s degree in plant pathology and biological disease control from Penn State University in 1997, and then returned to the Northwest as a research assistant at the Washington State University Puyallup Research and Extension Center.

In 1998 Backman married Julie Forner in Olympia.

Cade credits Backman for bringing several golf course superintendents in as members of the golf media association – because he believed only good could come of better communication between media and the industry.

It was Backman who coordinated the efforts of the superintendents’ association, the PNGA/WSGA, the Club Managers Association and the Pacific Northwest Section PGA to develop a golf lobbyist in Olympia to represent the industry to the Legislature.

It was Backman who pestered reporters to write about a bill being pushed by then-Governor Gary Locke which ensured the survival of high school and junior golf programs throughout Washington.

And it was Backman who led the work to compile information for the Economic Impact Study for golf inWashington, recently completed by the World Golf Foundation and Stanford Research Institute (The Olympian, March 9, 2010). The study was commissioned to educate the Legislature on golf’s significant contribution to the state’s economy.

All that bio stuff comes courtesy of the news release, of course. Indispensable as they are in the communications industry, releases can’t tell the story of the man.

Pearsall remembers Backman as a happy guy, always in a good mood. He worked hard to further the cause of superintendents and the game they supported, and was a touchstone for his fellow golf-maintenance pros.

“It really hurts,” Pearsall said. “So many times I think I could call Paul, and he’s not there. It hurts.”

The NWGMA’s annual award has more often than not been given to professional communicators. Craig Smith, a longtime Seattle Times sportswriter, was the ’09 winner.

But achievement comes in many forms, and though a guy shouldn’t have to die to get recognized for it, voices from many directions agree this year’s winner is vastly deserving.

by Bart Potter

It’s safe to say it’s the only golf course in the U.S. – the world? – that sits beside a nuclear reactor and a grizzly bear research compound.

The Nuclear Radiation Center, home to a 1.3 mega-watt general atomics TRIGA nuclear reactor, a 1,000 Curie cobalt-60 irradiation facility, and a borated neutron capture treatment (BNCT) facility; and the Bear Research, Education, and Conservation Program building, with live grizzlies in residence (but not always in view), are worthy conversation pieces as you move tee-to-green past them.

It’s less likely you’ll be talking about, or even thinking about, something much closer at hand (and foot). But around here, the Kentucky bluegrass fairways and creeping bentgrass greens are the object of intense study.

Palouse Ridge, which opened in August 2008, is a golf course, but it’s a laboratory, too.Washington State University’s renowned turfgrass management program provides the science behind the sport, the grass beneath your feet, for its on-campus teaching, first, but also throughout the Northwest golf industry.

Charles Golob is research supervisor and manager of the turfgrass facility. He’s got a B.S. and M.S. in agronomy from WSU, and he’s worked in the turf program for 22 years.

There are good turfgrass reasons for the good ball roll that course superintendent Todd Lupkes says is a central part of designer John Harbottle III’s grand plan for the course. According to Golob, the fairways, a blend of four bluegrass strains, show a vertical leaf growth pattern, mowed to a height of 3/8-inch to ½-inch, that holds a golf ball up and promotes roll.

Golob was the lead author for a study last fall titled “The Use of Black Sand to Accelerate Creeping Bentgrass Seed Germination and Emergence on a Late Fall Planted Putting Green.” The site for the study was the green at No. 17, a left-to-right dogleg par-5.

The goal was to apply greens-grade sand (from Atlas Sand and Rock, Lewiston, Idaho), to “determine the effectiveness of black sand, applied as topdressing, to accelerate creeping bentgrass seed germination and seedling emergence.”

Did you know: The greens at Palouse Ridge are of the T-1 cultivar, one of the newer cultivars among hundreds of cultivars of creeping bentgrass. The T-1 is more dense than older bentgrass cultivars and darker green in color. Cultivar: cool word.

I won’t be thinking about seedling emergence rates and T-1 cultivars when I’m standing over my putts at Palouse Ridge – there’s too much in my brain already at that point – but it’s nice to know somebody’s thinking about it for me.

The artist’s vision

Todd Lupkes had the unusual opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Palouse Ridge designer John Harbottle III and see the golf course through the artist’s eyes, well before there even was a golf course.

More often, a superintendent like Lupkes is an interpreter, long after the designer is done, rather than a collaborator.

“We got to build it,” says Lupkes, who calls Harbottle one of the great young course designers in the nation. “We got to really understand the vision.”

For Harbottle, who also designed the Olympic Course at Gold Mountain in Bremerton,Wash., his vision clearly includes rolling fairways in harmony with the distinctly Palousean hills. It brings into play dazzling 360-degree visuals from countless vantage points on the course.

The signature hole might be No. 10, where it is said you can see seven other holes from the commanding elevated teebox. No. 1 plays directly toward Bryan Clock Tower, WSU’s most recognizable landmark. Idaho’s Moscow Mountain comes into view from across the state line to the east on No. 2, one of the high points on the course.

It’s hard not to appreciate those sight lines, the views to forever. And Lupkes points out one thing a player on a recent weekend didn’t notice: no hole shares a rough with any other hole.

“It’s 18 individual golf holes set out in the middle of the Palouse,” he said, “and every one of them fits.”

by Bart Potter

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — David Weineke is playing golf on the fescue grasses and dunes of Chambers Bay, the course for which he is superintendent. He’s playing, but there’s a lot more going on.

It’s part pride, part a professional’s critical sense of things. There’s a paternal fussiness, too, a restless eye for tiny details that has him bending and pulling bedstraw (he considers it a weed) near the No. 1 tee box and plucking a cigarette butt from close by the green on a later hole.

Weineke, the steward and agronomist-in-chief of this esteemed golf course, rarely has time to play it. His game shows the rust.

But it can’t be said he doesn’t think like a golfer. He sees the course these days through the eyes of the elite players who will be here in 2015 when the golf world trains its spectacles on Chambers Bay and the U.S. Open.

He talks of sharply narrowing the fairway on No. 7and less so on Nos. 1, 2 and 11 to ratchet up the difficulty for the world’s best players. He notes the stunning broad expanse of fairway on No. 13 will be kept wide open, though the pros will play it as a par-4.

It’s all for good golf reasons, for U.S. Open reasons.

Those decisions aren’t his to make – the United States Golf Association has a few thoughts on the subject – but it is his job to bring them to life.

The USGA works hard to uphold the reputation of the U.S. Open as the toughest major tournament, and Weineke wants to make sure his golf course is up to the test. The U.S. Amateur at ChambersBay in 2010 will be a “dress rehearsal,” in the words of Mike Davis of the USGA.

Davis is the guy Wienecke will work most closely with, the guy who makes the call on where to narrow, where to widen, how tall the grass will be, how much the ball will roll.

Davis and the USGA will be watching the Amateur closely – minutely – to see how the course plays in a major championship. They’ll be on the lookout for “failure,” which by USGA definition is when everybody hits the same shot and lands in the same place.

Wienecke considers the course, opened in June 2007, to be in its grow-in phase. But by the time of the Open, the fairways will be so firm the ball will roll 10 to 40 yards after landing – exactly what Davis loves to see.

“This golf course will play totally different when the best players in the world play here,” Wienecke says. “He wants them thinking about where the ball ends up, not where it lands.”

Update: Chambers Bay played host to the 2010 U.S. Amateur, to generally good reviews for the golf course by players and officials; Mike Davis was promoted in 2011 to be the USGA’s executive director.

Random notes from a round of golf with the superintendent:

• Some of the mushrooms dotting the course (rest assured they’ll be gone by the Amateur) are puffballs. They’re edible, if anybody could stand the taste.
• Those smaller birds harassing the bald eagle that flew over the 15th green were ospreys, saltwater raptors who fish to eat. Eagles and ospreys are two of the 35 bird species at ChambersBay.
• The Scotch broom lending a yellow cast to the hillsides that loom over much of the course is beloved of the course designers … but Wienecke likes it not at all. It’s non-native, it’s invasive, it’s toxic, and it doesn’t fit with the pure dune ecosystem he’s working to establish.

Wienecke, the former regional agronomist for the USGA’s Southwest region, who consults with the top dogs of U.S. golf and oversees the best new course in the nation, a man at the peak of his profession, is one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet.

Near one early tee box, a water station appeared as a welcome opportunity to refill a water bottle. Wienecke, who would know, said, “That water should be really cold.”

It was, in fact.

A MATTER OF SAND – Punching and sanding the greens is maybe no more than a minor annoyance, but for those several days while the sand settles, average golfers on average courses think in terms of a two-putt-max.

At Chambers Bay, superintendent Wienecke began his top-dressing program Wednesday. He says by this weekend – as in right away – players should notice the greens are firmer and smoother than before he started.

The process begins with aerification, followed by spreading the sand, brushing it, rolling it, and watering it in. The very next day, he’ll mow the greens, then it’s “mow-and-grow” from then on.

Wienecke is particularly excited because he’s finally got the quality of sand he wants. Last year, the sand he used was full of pebbles up to three millimeters in size. This year’s supply, harvested from the Fraser River in British Columbia, has no single grain larger than a millimeter.

It’s not just the greens that get a sandy makeover. All 81 acres of grass at Chambers Bay get the top-dressing treatment.

He’ll also be running the roller over approaches and green surrounds, so if a ball gets close to a green it will want to roll.

“We did it last year,” Wienecke says. “The results were dramatic.”