Turf Pirate

By Anthony L. Williams, MG, CGCS, CGM Turf Pirate's Journal

another thrilling edition of a turf Pirate’s journal and a New Year full of adventure and opportunity. It is customary this time of year to make resolutions and goals about the you that you would like to be by year’s end. We are certainly supporters of SMART, GREEN and LINKED goals here the Galactic Headquarters of the Ancient and Honorable Tribe of Turf Pirates. However, we believe within the Tribe that it’s managing change especially big change that makes a person worth their salt. So todays spin is about changing the flag. When the ownership or management changes at your club how do you as the turf manager ensure that you and your team transition, or as we Turf Pirates say, “become the ones who change the flag”. I know a thing or two about transition and changing the flag. In fact, in the last 37 years I have served four properties roughly 1,000 miles apart serving eight companies/brands (Nestle, Stouffer, Renaissance, Marriott, Canongate/Sequoia, Four Seasons, TPC, Century/Palmer Golf) working in the Private, Resort and Public areas of the golf industry. Most recently (December 2022) I helped transition our Dallas property (The Sports Club of Las Colinas, formerly known as TPC Four Seasons Golf and Sports Club Dallas at Las Colinas, by the way stayed tuned to a bold new name for our property in 2023) into the Century Golf Partners/ Arnold Palmer Golf Management family. I am honored to have made the transition and am grateful for the professionalism of all stake holders to keep the operation going at a high level throughout the eleven-month process. A mid paragraph shout out to everyone who saw a brighter future and worked to make it real. You see change is sometimes tough and difficult to predict but when you have the right attitude and vision change is simply necessary to grow and craft a better situation for you and everyone involved. The key is to control your emotions, show your true worth and see a better, shared future. Knowing that perception is reality apply your intellect and sweat equity into developing skills that are highly valuable and bridge effectively the gap between to old way and the new way. Simply put into turf pirate terms you should aspire to live at the intersection of tradition and innovation. All of the transitions I have experienced have made me better. I was not always able to see the value of the hard lessons until later, sometimes it’s darkest before the dawn. Take heart turf pirates if you are going through a transition or just tough times remember that faith is believing in things unseen, things that will arrive perfectly on time not one second early or late. Stay the course, grow your skills, work your plan, say a few deep prayers and relax. A calm sea has never made a skillful sailor must less captain. Embrace the New Year with a positive spirit and vision of an Apex future. Guard well turf pirates those you allow into your inner circle and if the season calls for it, change the flag professionally and/or personally. Embrace the opportunities presented with great certainty and whenever possible reach out to a fellow turf pirate for support and insight, together we are stronger. I am once again learning new policies, people and programs and I could not be happier as my team and I hoist the new sails and make way toward the horizon. Wishing everyone a prosperous New Year!

child, it takes a dedicated team to “raise” a municipal golf course to a sustainability level worthy of Audubon International’s environmental certification.

There’s no more dedicated team than the consortium of experts who together led Harpeth Hills — one of seven golf courses operated by Metro Nashville Parks & Recreation — to that hard-earned height.

Working side by side with the Parks & Rec professionals to get 18-hole, 57-year-old Harpeth Hills certified in 2014, and helping keep them there, is a local non-profit organization called Friends of Warner Parks (FOWP). Established in 1987 and supported by some 1,500 dedicated donors, an active 40-person board, hundreds of volunteers and a dedicated staff, the organization’s mission is to protect 3,195 acres in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, two of Nashville’s 178 metro parks that in total cover over 15,000 acres.

“It’s very much like the Central Park Conservancy in New York,” says Jenny Hannon, Friends of Warner Parks President. “It’s an independent 501(c) (3)organization whose mission is to preserve and protect Warner Parks. And over those years we’ve invested about $40 million into the park. We work very closely with Metro and have had the privilege of working with them for a really long time.”

On the golf front, Harpeth Hills is, so far, the biggest beneficiary of FOWP’s efforts. According to Kevin Forte, Metro Parks Head Golf Professional at Harpeth Hills, the course occupies about 230 acres of Percy Warner Park, with 60 of them designated as native, attracting all kinds of wildlife from bluebirds and turkeys to foxes and bobcats. He says the road to Audubon International certification began in 1999 but was delayed for a variety of reasons — until a committed and connected early FOWP board chair named Kristin Taylor helped push it through. Now he and his staff, including Metro Parks Golf Maintenance Superintendent Brandon Denton, work closely with FOWP, and the Warner Park Nature Center, to keep sustainability — and

Audubon International guidelines — at the center of all maintenance programs.

“We each bring a certain level of expertise in a certain area to the partnership,” Forte says. “We respect one another, and everybody relies on who’s the expert in this area or that area to kind of take control. We come to a commonality of putting things into practice.”

That means bringing the public on board, too. “Golf can sometimes get a bad rap. People think that we don’t care about the natural resources on the golf course. So for me, that was one thing — to show the people that we did care about the natural resources surrounding the golf course. For me, it was being a good steward of the natural resources surrounding the golf course and within the golf course and identifying areas that were priority playing areas and areas that were secondary, and areas that were out of play — and what could we do in those areas that didn’t disrupt golf. Jenny works very closely with the Warner Park Nature Center staff as well. They’re the experts in community outreach, education and natural resource planning and management.”

Denton and his crew put many key sustainability elements into practice every day, from maintaining one of the nation’s longestrunning bluebird box programs to cutting back on fungicides and herbicides and constantly monitoring water quality. These practices apply not only to Harpeth Hills, but other courses in the system — and the entire parks ecosphere. “It’s a park first, golf course second,” Denton says. “That’s the intention. So anything we can do to preserve the integrity of the natural part of the course is really important for us.”

Denton has seen a lot of improvements and upgrades to the course over the years. In 2017 Harpeth Hills installed new Bermuda TifEagle ultra-dwarf Bermuda greens while continuing to enhance native areas — and, again, coordination with all stakeholders is crucial. “We just invited nature into the golf course. And when you look at what it takes to become certified and all the processes, you realize it cannot be done by one person. The collaboration of everyone coming together has been instrumental in getting it done.”

To learn more about how your local golf course can gain recognition for your environmental efforts and learn how to expand your initiatives through Audubon International’s numerous environmental certifications, visit www.auduboninternational.org.

Audubon International, an environmentally focused non-profit organization, offers members numerous certifications and conservation initiatives to protect the areas where we live, work, and play. Their certifications are designed to increase environmental awareness, encourage sustainable environmental efforts, and educate both their members and their communities.