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Golf maintenance amid a health crisis

The way of life among Canadians took a dramatic turn in mid-March as the global COVID-19 pandemic’s impact started to be felt a little too close to home. In mere days, all sporting events were shut down, schools were closed, church services were cancelled, and places where large groups of people typically gather – such as movie theatres and restaurants – were forced to shut their doors.

The goal was to minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus by deeming various businesses, activities and other functions as non-essential. The lists of non-essential services were declared by the provinces, and golf made the list in most parts of Canada. As of late April, golf was not on British Columbia’s hit list, and individual courses made their own decision as to whether or not they should close or be open for play.

Even though no golf was being played in most of the country, course maintenance carried on as usual – albeit with minimal staff and leaner budgets – to protect each club’s multi-million-dollar assets.

In early April, Turf & Rec presented a webinar – sponsored by Syngenta – to discuss golf course maintenance amid these unprecedented circumstances. Offering their thoughts were Braydon Gilbert, superintendent at St. Charles Golf Club in Winnipeg, and Jamie Robb, superintendent at Marine Drive Golf club in Vancouver. We’ve since reached out to Rory MacLennan, owner and former superintendent at Summerheights Golf Links in Cornwall to offer a public golf and Ontario perspective on the matter.

The superintendent at the 36-hole, family-owned Summerheights course is MacLennan’s son-in-law Nathan Andrews.

The following is a “highlight reel” of the webinar – along with MacLennan’s input – presented in a question-and-answer format.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your operating budget?

Gilbert: Our seasonal labour component for April has been reduced or removed. That will continue while we’re closed. Our current plan is to open if we’re allowed to – even if that means a modified experience (the clubhouse and pro shop are closed). The longer this goes on, it will have more of an impact and we’ve been trying to forecast as many scenarios as we can, whether it’s opening June 1 or July 1 or Aug. 1 or not at all.

Robb: We decided to forecast what the worst-case scenario could be for our fiscal year-end and come up with a few variations of that. Our fiscal year-end is Sept. 30, so we’re essentially halfway through that budget, not that the largest portion of that budget has gone through yet. If we, unfortunately, have to stay closed for the remainder of that year, we’d probably see about a 30 per cent reduction from the turf side of things.

MacLennan: At this point, everything is normal. This would be an early opening right now if I was able to open today (April 14). As far as it affecting our budgets at this point, I haven’t felt anything. We’ve had openings as late as May 4 and as early as March 22. We haven’t felt any crunch yet. We’re going to feel it when we can’t open. We’ve cut our greens twice now and cut our fairways and tees once. Those are practices we would have been doing anyhow, so we’re in that limbo stage right now.

Does your club have a plan on how you’ll be operating once the restrictions are lifted?

Gilbert: Our intention is to open if we’re allowed, even if that means the clubhouse and pro shop have to stay closed and members just come to play. There have been discussions to limit to twosomes only, no carts, no club storage, no bag storage or anything like that.

Robb: It all depends on how the restrictions get lifted. I can see us following some of the regulations put out by government if they do that. We may need a little lead time to tidy up some of the details on the golf course.

MacLennan: We have a plan on how we’re going to get mobile as far as spacing out the customers when they’re here at the clubhouse. Once they’re off that first tee, they’re on their own. We’ll have one rider per cart and we’ll set up an area where they drop off the used carts. We’ll have to clean them and sanitize them. There’ll be no porta-potties on the golf course.

As this crisis rolls out, how do you feel this will impact your club directly and golf in general?

Gilbert: I think it’s going to hurt pretty badly. There are always silver linings to bad situations, but, unfortunately, I think across the country there will be some clubs and businesses that don’t come out of this on the back end. At our club in particular, we’re forecasting some pretty scary numbers as far as what we might lose. Hopefully members will continue to support the club. One other aspect we’re also concerned about is seasonal people moving on to other jobs. As they aren’t able to be employed here, we could see that gutted out quite a bit and it could take us a few years to build that key team back up.

Robb: Some owners here in British Columbia are really going to struggle with the loss in revenue, especially if it does come to a complete closure. Some that are open are benefiting right now. I’ve heard rumours that literally golfers are showing up to golf courses with cash in hand and saying, ‘Can you get me out? Can you get me a tee time?’ There’s a debate about whether that should be going on. If they are forced to close, I think it’s going to be a dire day for some of them.

MacLennan: If it goes beyond that (the mandate that Ontario golf courses remain closed until at least April 29), that’s when we’re going to start feeling the punch. Our superintendent has a plan in place where we’ll cut less frequently, but we’re still going to have to pay those men.

What will be the minimum amount of maintenance that will have to be done to your greens and fairways if the course doesn’t open on time or doesn’t open at all?

Gilbert: We’re planning to protect our assets as if we’re going to open again. Greens are a couple days a week from a mowing standpoint, just to keep turf under control and groomed. We think fairways are one to two days, along with tees and approaches and the rough every couple of weeks as you get to it. We’ll try to keep things low from a fertility standpoint as much as we can and play with some growth regulators as we usually do and find a happy medium between cost and reducing mowing and try to figure that out where we can knock that out of the park.

Robb: I think that some of the recommendations that have come out from the USGA and GCSAA have great information on some rough guidelines on what they think might be required. Mowing rough every two weeks is definitely not feasible for us out here in the rain forest and with a wet property. Our rough grows like crazy and will probably only grow more. We’ll probably have to be mowing it at least once if not twice a week coming into our heavy growth period at the end of April. We’re currently mowing our greens once a week and that’s sufficient, but I think it will be site specific in terms of how much those different areas need to grow – backing off on them and using our growth regulators. One of the things I’m excited about is being able to dive a little further into our growing degree day models, so that’s one that kind of gets a little dicey given that with the weekly schedules at a golf course – the men’s night, the ladies’ day, whatever you have going on – you’re kind of pigeon holed into having to often spray every seven days to 14 days, whereas now we have the freedom to learn those growing degree day models and space our growth regulator applications accordingly.

MacLennan: We’ll raise our height of cut everywhere – on tees, greens and fairways. That will depend on how much the greens are growing. But we’re not going to cut them every day like we would for normal play. We’ll likely start by going every second day and, if we see on the second day that they’re not growing, we’ll have to monitor how the greens are growing and the same with fairways and tees. We’ll likely cut back on fertilizer. We’re not going to encourage them to grow. In most cases with aprons, approaches and tees, we pick up our clippings, but we may just leave the clippings there. Without the golfer on the golf course, we’re going to be able to work more efficiently. We feel we’re not going to have to come in at 6 o’clock or 5:30 and start mowing procedures. If we start at 8 or 9 o’clock and we’re cutting and leaving the clippings, the clippings aren’t going to be clumping. We’re not going to be cutting in dew. If the fairways get long and you’re cutting in the dew, now you’re leaving clumping and it looks like hell. I think by eliminating some of that plus raising the height of cut a little bit, it’s going to change that.

What are your top five priorities on the golf course under a reduced labour force?

Gilbert: Greens, no surprise, is No. 1. Fairways is No. 2, tees are No. 3. I think it’s a tie between bunkers and rough. I’m intending to keep the rough in control so that it’s playable if and when we open. We’re pretty dry here in Winnipeg so if we don’t turn our rough irrigation on and it gets a little dormant in a few spots, it’s not the end of the world. It will bounce back. If we can reduce our cutting that way, we will. With bunkers, I’d like to keep them, even if I run the machinery through them once a week or two weeks just to keep the weeds from getting out of control. With a week or two’s notice, we can have the golf course playable at least.

Robb: Focusing on greens, fairways and short-cut turf is all going to be priority No. 1. Even things like edging sprinkler heads. They will otherwise get grown over and they’ll need to be edged. There are still a lot of tasks that will be deemed essential if and when it does come to that point in British Columbia.

MacLennan: Keeping the greens healthy and alive, keeping the grass from becoming overgrown, keeping tees as healthy as we can. Of course we’ll have to have our irrigation system up and going so we’ll have to keep it in good shape. Water management for the greens and tees will be something we’ll have to keep an eye on. We’re going to water to keep things alive. Fairways won’t need to be kept as lush as we usually try to keep them. We’ll just keep them alive. If there’s no play and there’s no income coming, we’re going to keep everything as lean as we can. Because we’re a 36-hole operation, I feel as though I should be able to have one man on all 36 greens in one day. I’m not worrying about cutting them tomorrow. I’m going to cut them every second or third day. The growth will determine some of that and the fact that we’re not going to add as much nitrogen and not fertilize as heavily as we normally would, they don’t have to recover from traffic and we won’t be moving the pin every second day. One man should be able to cut 18 in one day. Then next day, we feel that the same guy who just cut the greens can go out and cut the tees and aprons. He’s not going to have to get off and move tee blocks, he won’t have to move the little turf box with divot mix. He can just keep going and no one’s in his way. The same goes for fairways. The guy who cuts fairways should be able to do 18 one day and 18 the next day.

How has the COVID-19 crisis changed your workplace safety?

Gilbert: It’s been pretty challenging to change your mindset, to think about this from an infection control standpoint. We weren’t used to Lysol-wiping our door handles and light switches 10 times a day along with some other things we’ve started to do. We’ve had to build some check lists and systems to keep things cleaner. Everybody has his own vehicle that’s colour-coded with their own equipment and tools so that we don’t get cross contamination. (Moving forward) I hope we don’t have to spend this amount of time with cleaning at this level of intensity for very long. Is there a happy medium for doing a little bit more than we were? Probably.

Robb: It’s been a huge change. My wife’s a nurse and every day when this started she’d come home and ask if I’d wipe down the door handles all the time. An analogy she used was to try to get the people in the workplace to have the mentality to not to spread it to somebody else. I think the mentality that anytime you touch anything, make sure you’re cleaning it and wiping it down. When we decided to close, we had no hourly employees in for the first week and a half and it was cold enough that we didn’t have to mow any grass at that time. It took us about a week to 10 days to figure out to go out and buy spray bottles and talk about whether we’re going to use rags or disposable wipes and how are we going to dispose of those wipes and all those little things that you don’t think about until you start doing it yourself. I was glad we had that 10-day break from the staff and that we could slowly bring them back.

MacLennan: At this point we have our hand sanitizer here and spray bottles with disinfectant handy. It’s a work in motion at this point. Once we have our staff in here (at this point it’s just the family), we’ll have to teach them to wipe down the door handles, the counter and what not. We’ll just have to be more consistent in keeping things clean and with our staff we’ll have to
realize the guy monitoring the door can’t just come in and sit down with the guy in the pro shop and have a visit. They’re going to have to stay apart from one another.