Member Spotlight

Member Spotlight on Justin Browning – Golf Course Superintendent at The Course at Sewanee

How long have you been at Sewanee and what does your job include?

I’m the superintendent at The Course at Sewanee. I’m starting my third year. I started in April of 2020. It is a special place to come work, it is a community in its own. Day-to-day operations are normal for a golf course superintendent, just maintaining the property, getting the greens cut and the course ready for the golfers. The course was renovated in the 2011-2012 timeframe by Gil Hanse and that alone is very special, especially with the last couple of years of Gil Hanse being on TV in some major golf events, you really see the similarities. Going forward we probably will continue to see that.

How was it coming into a new position during peak Covid times?

Here it was very different. This university makes the students stay on campus, so they pretty much created their own student bubble. The students were not allowed to leave the domain, they had places set up for positive cases and the course was pretty much private to alumni and students, so they did not pop that bubble until the following May. It was easy to get around and get things done, but it was also quite a different experience than even in the Nashville area or anywhere else.

When we opened back up, the way things move around here is a little bit slower, word doesn’t get around. This is kind of golf’s little secret place. Avid golfers know about it, but the guy that lives right down the road may not even know that this course is here. Maybe a month or two later, we really did start seeing the numbers increase. It was peak golf season, April/May/June.

What was your career path before this job?

I was born in Clarksville, Tennessee. I grew up playing baseball and golf. I started golfing probably at eight years old. Fast forward to college, I got into the Austin Peay baseball program as a field tech/equipment manager, where I probably started my love of turf, just taking care of the ballfield, making sure everything looked right. I met the golf course superintendent at Clarksville Country Club as he was out there working on some of our irrigation. His son was going to come play at Austin Peay, that connection turned into a temporary summer position that I filled. I worked through the summer and fell in love with the golf course side of turf. I got a full-time position with Henry Lane at Clarksville Country Club in 2006. I stayed with Henry through 2014, where a management company decided to part ways and went a different direction, that opened up some new avenues for me. I moved right into kind of a foreman role and soon into an assistant role in the 2014–2015 season. The management company decided to go a different route again, and I was the interim superintendent for the summer of 2015. The management company had a guy coming in, and I was moved to assistant. A job opening came up at Eastland Green Golf Course, also in Clarksville, and I spent a year there, then went back to where I cut my teeth, at Clarksville in 2016. I worked there until I came to Sewanee.

How did you parlay a history / political science degree into a career in turf/golf?

At that time, I was so involved with the APSU baseball team, I had a full scholarship to do what I was doing with the baseball team and the baseball field. With APSU not having a devoted turf science program, my original thought was to be a high school baseball coach and history teacher. Somewhere along the way that didn’t interest me as much as I thought it would, so enter the love of taking care of turf. That took its place, and I was able to do that on the baseball field and through learning from Henry at Clarksville Country Club. Going and getting that ‘degree’ that way. To me it’s just as important as having a turf science degree.

What has TTA and TGCSA done to help grow your career?

It’s possibly the biggest part of my career growth. I asked Henry if I could go do a Rutgers program or Penn State and he said, “Stay here and learn for a little bit, get your feet under you, and I can teach you a lot.” Never did I think I would be as involved as I am locally with our chapter, but the time I came in, there were a lot of guys my age that I’m really good friends with in our industry, and they asked me to join and be part of the board for the Middle Tennessee chapter. That was the beginning of it in 2016.

I feel like when I got in on the middle Tennessee board in 2016, we were in a really solid place. Dan Johnson was the president at the time. We were able to carry on a pretty good board and then the pandemic kind of blew us to pieces in Middle Tennessee. Nashville was a different monster, Covid really handcuffed us on what we could do. And we could only do so much Zoom calling and Zoom meetings. In the last year, I feel like our participation is getting back to that level, where we’re kind of rebounding, turning that corner and getting good, strong meetings with good speakers. I’m happy to see that and be a part of it.

I worked my way up, I’ve served as president a couple of times. It is important to understand that we have a network and you’re never too humble to ask somebody which way you should head. There’s no right answer, there’s so many ways to do this job. To see how differently other superintendents and colleagues do it can only make you better at what you do. Being able to communicate with these guys in our area that do the same thing, take care of the same types of grass, understanding that we are here for each other, it’s not a competition. Granted, we do want our courses to succeed, but we also want each other to succeed.

I’ve also recently accepted the GCSAA Delegate position for Tennessee, where I’ll serve at least through the end of 2024. I’ll evaluate at the end of that term whether I want to continue.

What are some unique challenges of your job / location?

We are in the mountains, at about 2100 feet elevation, so our climate is quite different. I live down in the valley, about a 20-minute drive, and we are normally an eight- to ten-degree difference when I leave work and go home. I’ve been working with Dr. Brosnan to dig into our climate up here. We’re comparable to Columbus, Ohio, with our yearly temperature. It is a challenge, and winter damage affected everybody in the mid-state this year. It definitely affected us. I think we can approach this to find ways to use our climate as an advantage up here, we can see what they’re doing in those areas that we are comparable to, which we are doing moving forward. We’ve worked pretty hard on getting a plan in place to do so. A lot of times it’s a benefit that it’s that much cooler up here in the summer. But it’s also that much colder in spikes in the winter as well. It’s not always a curse. I wouldn’t say it’s a problem that we run into, but it can be at times.

This course was built in 1915 by Chancellor at the time, Bishop Albion Knight. So the Bishop built the golf course using the football team to clear off the trees. In 2011, they brought in a renovation team, which was Gil Hanse. They opened back up in June 2012. They did a fantastic job, the bones here are still very good.

In 2018 it was public course of the year when Tim Parsons was here. I hope to bring that back. Moving forward we are going to look at doing a bluegrass type of grassing renovation on our fairways,tees and collars around the greens to match our bentgrass greens, which is cool season and our fescue roughs. So the course will be treated as a full cool season golf course. Hopefully we’ll have that done by the spring, so we’ll implement as much bluegrass as we can this fall. We’ll be sodding collars, seeding our fairways and tees that aren’t getting a lot of iron play.

The new types of bluegrass that can be used in sports turf weren’t out when they did the renovation in 2011, so the best route was to go with the 419 bermuda, but now that this is here, we’re able to implement it and use both of the grasses. I think is going to be a win for this mountaintop. It’s where we’re heading and Dr. Brosnan and Dr. Horvath have been out here to show my directors and presidents why and how, they’re such great resource to be used in our area. The course should be making some noise, this place is still growing, still getting better and still a great place to work.

How many people are on your team and what do day-to-day operations look like?

I have an assistant and a mechanic, and three other staff members, so we’re not a big staff. We’re a nine-hole facility, so we can manage. We have room for one and a half more people, so sometimes we’ll pick up students in the summer if some golf team members stay back. We don’t have many problems getting things done as long as we don’t have huge projects in the way during the growing season.

Our day-to-day stuff isn’t any different than anybody else’s. We keep the greens sprayed and caught up on fungicide programs and we walk mow greens often, five maybe six days a week during the summer. We’re closed on Monday, so we’re able to handle a lot of big maintenance projects, topdressing or if we have to vent our greens or do bigger tasks like that without golf getting in the way. Other than that, it’s a great day to get ahead of the week’s projects. It’s not a test to work around golf, but it’s good to have that day to plan around and get those things done. We have a little crew but they’ve been around a while. I’ve got two brothers on staff that are twins, they’re 62 years old, but they can outwork most 18-year-olds. They’ve been here since before our renovation, so this is theirs more than it is mine. To have guys like that on crew that are so proud of this place, you can’t replace that.

What is the best part of your job?

There’s a lot. The best part could be just driving up the mountain and seeing the views of the sunrise off the bluffs. The best part of being a superintendent to me is passing on information to the younger guys. Whether its information about doing your job or how to hold yourself around others or in meetings, things like that. Tricks of the trade – I was fortunate enough to have a superintendent, Henry, that passed on things like that. If I can pass that on to younger guys, that’s probably the best part of being a superintendent. Being here at Sewanee, it’s just a beautiful course, a beautiful campus. Just a special atmosphere.

What would your advice be for people just starting in the industry?

Learn as much as you can hands-on, get in the business and move around, even if you’re just cutting greens on the weekends, because you can learn a lot in a classroom, but nothing teaches you the process of the day. Also, learn from different superintendents because there are so many ways to do this and none of them are wrong. You don’t know until you write something on a dry erase board the day before, thinking you’re ahead and that night an irrigation break happens or it rains and then you’ve got to erase everything you wrote down, so you have to plan, and then have a plan B. You’re always moving, you’re always proactive, you’re always reactive. For a guy coming in to have that mindset would put you ahead of the game.

I don’t see me doing anything else. It’s a special type of job, you’ve got to be ready to be up early, and that’s not a bad thing. A lot of times you’re home with family at a good time. When the bus comes home and the kids get off, a lot of times you can be there. That’s what I’d tell someone coming in — just get out there and work, get your hands dirty and see how your superintendent is moving through the day and learn from that.

What do you do outside of work? Family / hobbies?

My wife Khrystin and I have been married 14 years. We have two girls that just turned 11 and 12, Brooklynn and Preslee. We are chasing softball, cheer and basketball. I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s stressful, we’re always on the move, which makes it where when you’re not on the move, the couch sounds very rewarding and refreshing. If we’re not on the run, I’ll sit around on the pool deck and watch football or baseball and swim. We have good friends in the neighborhood and if we’re not in the neighborhood, we don’t mind going to the beach for a few days.

I love spending time with friends and colleagues in the industry in our area. We like to golf and meet up, talk about work for a little bit because we can’t help it. We watch Titans games, Clemson football, Braves games, luckily my girls are okay with that and they’ll watch games with us. But right now, we’re on the road constantly. We’re home for a minute, we’re off to practice or games. But we wouldn’t change that for anything and I’m very happy to have the time to accommodate that.