Have you ever wondered how a weather phenomenon like El Nino impacts a stunning golf course in sunny Florida? Join our Director of Communications, Becky Salaun, as she discusses this with our director of golf course operations, Hal Akins, and Dustin Free, our senior superintendent for the Bay Island and Marsh courses. They share firsthand experiences dealing with the challenges of golf course maintenance, from managing water levels to maintaining the beauty of the greens.
Moving onto the nitty-gritty of golf course management, we reveal the hurdles our team overcame at the club, from the decision to strip and re-grass 14 greens to managing a damaged pump station. We also touch upon how weather conditions, particularly a hot and dry summer affect our greens. Last but not least, we take you behind the scenes of our Golf Course Maintenance team with Dustin and Hal. They share their dedication and the hard work that goes into managing the courses, offering a glimpse into the passion that fuels our Club. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone keen on understanding golf course management and maintenance.
Have you ever wondered how a weather phenomenon like El Nino impacts a stunning golf course in sunny Florida? Join our Director of Communications, Becky Salaun, as she discusses this with our director of golf course operations, Hal Akins, and Dustin Free, our senior superintendent for the Bay Island and Marsh courses. They share firsthand experiences dealing with the challenges of golf course maintenance, from managing water levels to maintaining the beauty of the greens.
Moving onto the nitty-gritty of golf course management, we reveal the hurdles our team overcame at the club, from the decision to strip and re-grass 14 greens to managing a damaged pump station. We also touch upon how weather conditions, particularly a hot and dry summer affect our greens. Last but not least, we take you behind the scenes of our Golf Course Maintenance team with Dustin and Hal. They share their dedication and the hard work that goes into managing the courses, offering a glimpse into the passion that fuels our Club. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone keen on understanding golf course management and maintenance.
Hello Bonita Bay Club. Welcome to another edition of our podcast here at Bonita Bay Club. Today we're introducing Hal Aikens, our director of golf course operations, and also with us is Dustin Free, senior superintendent at Bay Island and the Marsh courses. Today we're going to be speaking a little bit about El Nino impacting southern golf courses here in Florida. I know how that's a big topic with you that you've been speaking about lately. I was privileged enough to attend one of your committee meetings and was able to learn a lot about it, so maybe you can introduce the members to that conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a topic near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1:Why is that?
Speaker 2:Well, it's important. The last time we had one was back into 2015 and 16 season, and El Nino brings a lot of rain and cool days and overcast days and grass doesn't like that. So I've just been trying to educate.
Speaker 1:That's what I got out of the committee meeting. I mean I was like wow, I didn't know all that. And you know there's so many members that on the golf courses all the time and you know they see the conditions sometimes and they don't realize everything that you struggle with and all the hard work that you put into trying to make them look beautiful. But sometimes it's not that easy.
Speaker 2:Well, mother Nature is always, seems like they're lately been throwing a lot of curveballs with the storm surge, and then we had the driest summer on record, certainly the driest of my career, and now it looks like we're going to go into a wet winter. So it's always seems to be a challenge. There's never like average, you know. It seems like it swings back and forth.
Speaker 1:I know and we've both been here long, for a very long time, over 20 years. So, yeah, I've seen the weather conditions change but I never really understood everything that you go through with all these different changes and all your struggles. But I was very impressed of, after Ian, how fast you got Bay Island and Marsh going.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe when we send out this, drop this podcast is that the correct terminology? Yes, we're going to drop it. Maybe, when we drop it, we can also include some of the literature that I shared with my committee members as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can do that when we send the email out. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll put some links to you know, if you go online there and Google El Nino, there's a thousand articles, but I tried to find some that were basic and some that actually were directly related to golf courses, and I found two from back in 2016, when we had our last significant El Nino, because it was, it was a pretty, pretty bad one, and so the USGA thought that it would be helpful for superintendents to have this literature so that they could, you know, pass it out to their members, because a lot of guys were having issues and we got through it.
Speaker 2:But at the time we actually we were very conservative with the way we dealt with the grass. We didn't, we tried not to stress it out. We mowed it, you know, a little higher, we fertilized a little more, we tried to do everything we could that we could control to take the stress off of the turf. And, you know, fairways and rough and teas and all that, that's not that big a deal in these times because those are grown at higher heights of cut and they're not as stressed but greens. That's where we generally see that, you know, impact the negative impact.
Speaker 3:Manage our water tightly.
Speaker 2:Yep. So there's a lot of things that we do control. We can't control the weather, obviously, but we control all the controllables.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I found that really interesting in the committee meeting about the water, dustin, maybe you want to go a little bit into that how important the water and how you water it and the timing of the water.
Speaker 3:We control moisture every day. On the greens we have a moisture meter that we go around every morning check. All the greens Try to get that as uniform as possible. We have a range that we like to stay in and when you have El Nino, winter, you really have to tightly manage the water because overwatering can do just as much stamina as underwatering, probably more. So we tried to manage that as tightly as we could, only watered when we had to, so we would couple like a fertilizer with a watering or we wouldn't water unless we were fertilizing kind of thing, and we tried to push that more towards the morning earlier and so that way it didn't sit on the leaf blade and stay wet for long periods of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gave it a longer period of time for it to dry out. I mean, managing water is like the number one priority on a golf course. You can cause more trouble by not managing your water property. Most problems I've seen when I've been out at other places where I've had to consult. They overwater and that's caused a lot of trouble. You know where you see a lot of thin areas on greens. Generally it's because too much water.
Speaker 2:So we try to manage that as well as we can. We try to put down just enough water. We don't want to put down any more than we have to, but we want to put down just enough, you know. So when you're in a period like an El Nino period, where you're getting more fronts that bring more cool weather, more rain, more overcast days than managing your water is even more important than it even is normally. It can create a lot more issues if you don't. You know.
Speaker 2:I guess my point is that in normal times you do have a little bit of leeway, you know room for error, but during that period of time you really have hardly any at all and we don't know if we're actually going to get an El Nino. You know they're predicting it. One of the things that I found interesting in one of the articles that I read was that they have identified this area I think they call it index 43 and it's down at the equator halfway between Indonesia and Ecuador. And so they've identified this area and they measure the temperature of the water, and they have been doing this for many, many years, and they use a 30 year average to compare it to, and this year that the temperature is averaging a degree and a half higher than the average. Now that doesn't sound like much, does it?
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't Not at all.
Speaker 2:Can you believe that? I mean like a degree and a half and it's like, well, that's no big deal, right? Evidently it is because the last time it measured that high it was the last time we had a significant El Nino 2015 and 2016, and back in 1997 as well.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's down to where they know. If it's just a little above, then they think it's going to be like a somewhat insignificant El Nino. But if you get past this degree and a half it can be significant. And they do believe that it's going to continue to rise and maybe even approach two degrees. So that's why I thought, well, you know, to educate everybody would be important, because the data says that it's going to happen. Now, we know. I wish I could be as correct as the weatherman. I know. You know, if I had that kind of batting average, you know I'd probably be fired, but you never know. But the data says that it's more than likely.
Speaker 1:Wow. So how do you control that? I mean, it's just like a daily basis, just looking at the weather, trying to control the water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's no different than what we do all the time. I mean, really it doesn't change a lot for us as far as managing the water, but what it changes is it might change the height of cut. We may, we may raise the greens, because the lower you mow the greens, or the lower, lower you mow grass in general, the more stress you put on it. The more growth regulator we put on the greens, the more stress you put on it. You know, the more often you mow the greens, the more stress.
Speaker 1:So I think that's the important part for the members to know, because that's you know. They have to realize what you're struggling with every day and why you're mowing the way you're mowing.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's another thing. Backing off on the reps of mowing, Maybe you mow one day and roll the next day, or, you know, maybe you just keep the roller off completely and then only mow for a while and see how that does. It's just a bunch of factors there that you have to really. I mean, it's a daily basis. You have to watch that. You know you, the main thing is getting the moisture off of the grass.
Speaker 2:you know we'll go roll greens that are more prone to staying wet Absolutely Later into the day. We'll go roll them first so that we knock the dew off and they dry out sooner. That's just one of the small things we do.
Speaker 1:Is one course more challenging than the other, or are they all pretty much the same?
Speaker 2:Everything's got its own challenges.
Speaker 3:Everything's got its own little microclimates, you know, to different greens. Like 16 March, you know, is kind of sits in its own little microclimate there. 17 Bay, you know, does the same. Nine Bay seems, you know, to be, I mean, it's elevated and that doesn't really seem to be a problem. However, this year is kind of, you know, seems to have been struggling a little bit. So, day by day, you know, week by week, you just, you know, manage to the best of your ability.
Speaker 2:Well, I was asked the other day why we didn't mow the perimeter of the greens. You know, someone had played golf and they noticed where we had mowed, you know, the passes, the straight passes but we hadn't done what we call a cleanup pass, where we mow the perimeter of the green, which is right against the collar. Well, if you I'm sure most people don't notice, but if you do notice, most of the weak areas that you develop on a green is on the perimeter and that's where most of the activity is, most of the traffic, like mowers that are turning around, or you know, it's like a dirt road. When you drive down the same path all the time, it wears out the grass and it becomes a dirt road. Well, if you're do the perimeter of the green, you're mowing in the same path all the time.
Speaker 2:And so one of the things we do to relieve the stress on the perimeter is not mow the the perimeters every day. We may mow them once a week, we may not mow them for two weeks. Just depends on, you know, how the grass is growing. If it's growing a lot, we may mow them every other day. Yeah, mow them at a higher height of cut and we mow them at a higher height of coat, yep, yep. So all these little things that you do. You know we and I think people probably have recognized where we did have some weak areas on some greens, where we've isolated those areas and we manage those areas completely different than we do the rest of the green. When you're mowing a green, people say, well, you mow the green every day. Right, well, we can change the directions there. We don't have to mow in the same path every day.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, so we change directions. We have what we call the clock, you know, and we mow six to 12 one day. We'll mow two to four, or two to eight one day, you know three to nine 10 to four and we continue to change those directions, so we aren't traveling in the same path. So interesting.
Speaker 1:Do you want to talk a little bit about the creek side and Cypress greens?
Speaker 2:Well, creek side, you know, we were planning on rebuilding that golf course this past summer and we ran into some permitting challenges. Basically, we need to do some restoration work along the swales on holes six and seven, and there was a question as to whether or not the Army Corps of Engineers need to be involved in that. Nobody said they did, nobody said they didn't, but we were trying to get an answer. Of course, evidently they don't have to give you an answer very quickly, so we were just in limbo, so we really couldn't get an answer whether or not they needed to be involved in the permitting process and so we missed our timeline and that's pretty much why we had to delay it. So gold is now is to make that happen in summer of 25.
Speaker 2:But in the meantime, as a as a band aid, we went in and we stripped the tops off of 14 of those greens and tilled them up, regrading them back to the original contours, and we just regressed them just to get us by this next couple years. We didn't go in, change any drainage or change out any greens mix or do anything different. We just took off the old grass and regressed them with new grass. So everything down there is still the same. So I think people definitely will remember we didn't end last season very well with those greens, and so we wanted to make sure that, at least for the next couple of seasons, that we had something worth our members playing. So that's why we did that.
Speaker 1:Did you use the same turf on Creekside as you did in Cyprus?
Speaker 2:Yep, the Creekside greens. That's a whole different thing. That's not something I've ever done where I've just stripped them and regressed what's there. I've stripped off the organic layer of greens and backfilled and regressed those, which is what we did on the four marsh greens last year that suffered the most damage from the storm surge. But there's definitely a difference between Creekside and Cyprus and there's a difference between the Cyprus greens and Bay Island and marsh as well.
Speaker 2:The construction it was recommended that we use a product called Profile to blend it with our sand that we build the greens out of, instead of the traditional peat mix, and I did my research and felt like that was a good option for us and I felt like those greens would drain better, and they have and I felt like in the long run, if they drain better, I would be able to make them faster easier. Not everything you do turns out the way you'd like. Most of the time it works out pretty good, but every now and then, you know, anyway, we have definitely been challenged with those greens. We are much better than we were and we are continuing to improve. We've actually, over the last I'd say three weeks now, really started to try to improve the speed on them Because, for I don't know a couple months there we were just trying to get them to heal up.
Speaker 2:You know, we had some physical damage from an application that we made and we've been making that application for many years, but we made an nematode application and there was some physical damage from the equipment that they used to do that and so, yeah, it's been a challenge, but we feel pretty good about where they're at right now. Of course, we're scared because you know, we're worried, optimistically worried, but we're definitely definitely better than we were and we're, we think we're heading in the right direction.
Speaker 1:You mentioned something about a curfew application. Well, that was the nematode. That's the nematode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we do, for we've been doing that for 10, 11, 12 years yeah, I mean a long time and we'd never had that kind of damage, you know. So those greens are different and I guess there's a learning curve involved, but we've made a lot of progress and we've learned a lot over the last year and a half, you know. So we're definitely better than we were before, and the surrounds gave us some trouble. We were trying to manage those at a lower height of cut and it's just so much contour, you know, sharp ridges and transitions, that it stresses the grass up because you're mowing these, this concave or convex surface, with a flat blade.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so, if you think about it, at the apex of that, that brown surface is where it mows tighter, you know. And so we actually raised the height of cut. We kind of said, hey, let's back off of that and let's like try to mow those at a higher height of cut. In that, you know, help. Oh yeah, big time, big time. But I think also some of the things that we've been doing in conjunction with that has been helpful as well.
Speaker 1:How's the weather working to all of that.
Speaker 2:Well, good lightly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was good, you know, for three or four weeks. Yeah, again, we had some issues with the Bay Island greens and that was a weather thing. But it was the reverse. You know, when the storm surge came in it took out one of our pump stations, the pump station that service the Bay Island 18 holes. We were down for a year without that pump station and we were depending on the marsh pump station to to supply the water for both the marsh golf course and for the Bay Island golf course. When we renovated our irrigation systems we tied all three of our pump stations together with a 12 inch main line which gave us the ability to move water in the same volume that you would from its own pump station to any golf course, from any other pump station. So we can move it anywhere on our 54 holes with the same volume from any pump station. So that was a savior that saved us. That saved our you know what.
Speaker 2:But we went like 18 days without any rain in July there, july, august and it was a rough summer and just from my perspective, it was hot, it was hot, it was dry, and we're running two golf courses worth of water out of one pump station and one irrigation water holding pond. So we're pumping a lot of water because it is super dry, super hot. We would pump that lake down to a point where our pump station was shut down, and so that happened to us. At the time we had marsh open and so we were trying to make sure that marsh got watered, because it was the golf course that was open and then so we would schedule that water first and then we'd schedule the Bay Island water to come on after that. Well, there were several times that. Probably at least five times maybe.
Speaker 3:Yep that it ran out, so that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the lake got so low that our pump station shut down on low water level. So and I know that there are a couple times that happened that the greens had some areas that got dry and it set us back in those spots and so we battled getting those back all the way through the next two, three months and we got them back. Now, I mean, they look pretty darn good. We may only have just a few outliers now, but that was. You know that was a struggle. You know it was a challenge for us to get those back, but we isolated them and we managed them differently than we did. The greens took as much stress off of them as we could and you know so they learned a lot from this stuff.
Speaker 3:There's no blueprint to that.
Speaker 2:No storm surge blueprint. That's right.
Speaker 3:No, no, you do. You learn quite a bit and just try to bank that knowledge and hope that you never need it again. You know, knock wood on that one.
Speaker 2:I tell everybody, I know exactly what I'm going to do if we get another storm surge.
Speaker 1:Write my letter of resignation.
Speaker 2:No, I think you know, all in all it's just work, you know, but we've. I feel like we came out of that whole event. Obviously we had to do a lot of repair, but I think we came out of it better than we were before, you know. I mean, we improved a lot of things and then, you know, there was just some things that happened. It was like you couldn't have predicted. The wetlands basically got cleaned out.
Speaker 3:I know, it was amazing what happened there.
Speaker 2:You know, I could imagine, you know, being flooded with salt water, but I couldn't imagine, you know, that a huge, what five, six, eight acre wetland would completely float out.
Speaker 1:I know I was shocked. I remember just going out there with the drone and you know, with you driving out there and I was just like in shock of everything that was on the golf course shoes and I mean and I think you know, during that whole time, what I've learned from golf maintenance operations, all the operations that I know you guys work so hard. I'm in awe of all of you. I know in filming it I mean it's a lot of work, I couldn't even imagine where to start, I know.
Speaker 3:You started at the beginning, you started at the beginning I know, one bite at a time, one yeah.
Speaker 2:Dan Miles used to say how do you eat an elephant right, Right, Right universe, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:One bite at a time. One bite at a time. But Well, you know, we basically just started on the golf course. We thought we could get open first. I mean, which was Creekside?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I think the members are very appreciative of everything that you've done and I think this podcast is good because you know there's a lot of information that you know you can't write a whole letter on everything that we just discussed. No, you know it's a good. That's why I'm appreciating podcasts even more. You could have a conversation and really let the members have an insight on everything that you do.
Speaker 2:Well, it's great to be able to go into the detail. I mean, I'm not one to sit down and do a lot of typing, as you could imagine.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But you know I have never been at a loss for words when talking about golf maintenance right.
Speaker 1:That's right how I think the members appreciate that Well. Anyway, I'm glad that we got together, had this discussion and hopefully down the road we'll have more. You know, anytime you wanted to have something to discuss or let the members know. Well.
Speaker 2:Dustin's been with us for 13 years now. I want to make sure that I introduce him properly, you know. But he's been with us for 13 years and he's been a superintendent for those 13 years. But two years ago I guess it was or was it three when we Three Yep. So three years ago we changed things up.
Speaker 2:It's something I always wanted to do, but you know, both the Marsh and the Bay Island golf courses are on the west side of the street together and they share the Marsh practice facility. So I felt like it would be a good opportunity to combine those resources, the people, the equipment and have an economy of scale there. You know, creekside sits on the east side of the street. It's got its own practice facility, short game practice area, croquet lawn, so there's a lot that goes on over there and so it's good to have that group separated.
Speaker 2:But we took Dustin and we put him over both Bay Island and Marsh and they has a superintendent under him and our goal would be to have an assistant under him as well. But anyway, we get this economy of scale where he can move folks back and forth in. A great example of that is what we just did on Monday and Tuesday. The Marsh Course was closed in the afternoon on Monday and we took all the folks from both courses, which is about 30 people, and we went, went over to the golf course that was closed and we did all the work to the greens that we do and whatever trimming and whatever other things that we can fit in.
Speaker 2:So I'm crying and edging and stuff, stuff that you know if you can get it done when the golf course is closed, it's better for the member.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for sure you know, because you know the member if we can let them get out there and play golf in nice peace and quiet, right, that's, that's our goal. You can't always do that, but anyway that's our goal, I mean, and so we try to do as much during those closings with that large group of people, and we did the same thing yesterday on Bay Island. So and that worked out well and Dustin's been doing a great job of managing both of them. He, we built them together and he grew them in both of them, so he knows both those golf courses, like the back of his hand.
Speaker 1:I can only imagine.
Speaker 3:Too well.
Speaker 2:And Dustin and I have a little something in common we're both Lake City boys, we grew up in Lake City and we both went to Lake City Community College.
Speaker 3:Oh really. Yeah, we don't claim it very often, we'll be too. Yeah, good for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, he's done a great job for us and I think, as we go through and do these podcasts, it'd be really awesome to be able to bring these guys in, because they do work hard and they yeah, and they don't.
Speaker 1:You know the members might see you from a distance. They don't really know who you are, Right? So I think that's why it's good to do the podcast, so the members get to know you better, they get to know their, their staff better and and all the work that you put into it you too, hal. So, anyway, thank you very much, dustin and Hal.
Speaker 2:Thank you, becky, you're joining me in this podcast, yep.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much and I know the members will appreciate this and hopefully we'll hear from you again.
Speaker 2:Yep, you bet We'll do this again soon.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.