Forget the 'Caddyshack' stereotype of golf course superintendents. Today they're high-tech professionals who can earn more than $200,000 a year at the top levels. But when it comes to a major championship like the PGA at Southern Hills, the word goes out and a volunteer army arrives to help get the job done
A week before 35-year-old Russell Myers took over as the superintendent at Southern Hills Country Club last September, the temperature in Tulsa, Okla., topped 100 degrees for three consecutive days. If it's like that again Aug. 9-12 during the PGA Championship, Myers will have to scramble just to keep his bent-grass greens alive—with the world's best players, and an international television audience, looking on.
Luckily he'll have a small army to help him. Will he be up to the task? Myers had spent the previous eight years at Card Sound Golf Club in Key Largo, Fla., a sleepy club with a pace more akin to Havana. The only stress at Card Sound was a periodic hurricane on the horizon. On those occasions, Myers would just pack up and head north.
There's no packing it in now. He's under fire, big-time, as the head superintendent of his first major championship.
But it'll be the 22nd championship he will have worked, counting tour events, the Masters, U.S. Opens, U.S. Amateurs and PGAs.
"I'm not too worried," Myers says. "I've done it all before. It's just that this time, I'll be in charge."
A colleague calls Myers, "the king of the volunteers," one of a new breed who finds time each year to help out at tournaments far from home, just for the experience. Forget the Carl Spackler image. This group earns six figures a year, has a weather radar in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other, a college degree in a back pocket and, when called upon, can mobilize a Normandy Invasion.
In the weeks before the PGA, Myers will have to help coordinate companies installing bleachers, hospitality tents, skyboxes, television towers, portable toilets and concession stands, making sure no one damages the course. Come tournament week, he needs the course in optimum shape for three practice and four championship rounds. Then there are the last-minute demands. A television crew might want tree limbs removed instead of repositioning a camera. Or a PGA official might want a mature tree planted overnight to keep golfers from taking a shortcut. (In the 1965 PGA, Laurel Valley superintendent Paul Erath famously quit at the start of the championship in protest over such a demand.)
Besides the full-time maintenance crew at Southern Hills (52 people), Myers will rely on a volunteer group that will include head superintendents from other major-championship sites: John Zimmers of Oakmont (this year's U.S. Open); Eric Greytok, formerly of Winged Foot (last year's U.S. Open); Craig Currier of Bethpage (2002 U.S. Open, and Myers' college roommate); Paul B. Latshaw, formerly of Oak Hill (2003 PGA, and son of legendary superintendent Paul R. Latshaw); Matt Shaffer of Merion (2005 U.S. Amateur); Mark Michaud of Shinnecock Hills (2004 U.S. Open); Jim Roney of Saucon Valley (2009 U.S. Women's Open); and many others.
Together they'll engage in golf's version of an Amish barn-raising party. The guy handling a hose lightly watering a green might be a $200,000-a-year superintendent from some classic club. Or he might be the guy lugging the hose around for the guy who's watering the green. There are no prima donnas in this volunteer pool.
The volunteer-superintendents build into their contracts the right to take time off, even during a club's peak playing season, specifically to work at major events. It's in each club's best interest that they do so, particularly if the club hopes to host a major someday.
THE FRATERNITY
It's the senior Paul Latshaw, 66, whom most credit with perfecting, if not inventing, the idea of the volunteer-superintendent. Latshaw's first major was the 1978 PGA at Oakmont. He had a small crew, so he put out the word he could use some volunteers. Seven guys showed up.
Latshaw prepped Oakmont again for the 1983 U.S. Open, then moved on to Augusta National, where his predecessor, Billy Fuller, had established a slightly larger pool of 20-plus volunteers. Latshaw started depending on what he now calls "the Latshaw Fraternity," guys who had trained under him, guys who had trained under guys who had trained under him, and so on.
They responded by the dozens and worked their tails off, year after year. Later, when they got great jobs of their own, they never forgot one another. The network blossomed to the point where some clubs can count on 130 volunteer-superintendents or more. Myers, who considers himself part of the fraternity because he has worked events under Paul's son, will have 100 volunteers helping him at Southern Hills; that's the most he can house in local dormitories during the PGA.
"Working a tournament is one of the best things you can do," Latshaw says. "You'll see turf at its peak getting beaten up as bad as it's ever going to get beaten."
Latshaw's fraternity gained notoriety at the 1997 U.S. Open at Congressional, where volunteers hand-mowed all the bent-grass fairways with walking green mowers that week. It was perceived as overkill, but the fairway mowers were damaging the rough with each turn of direction, so he decided to use walking mowers that could turn more precisely.
Latshaw calculated he needed 24 mowers and operators, so he put out the word. Fraternity members showed up with their own greens mowers, started about 4:30 each morning, were off the course by the first tee time at 7 a.m., then headed back out in late afternoons. It was exhausting work, especially for superintendents used to desk jobs. But no one complained.
Myers plans something similar at this year's PGA because Kerry Haigh, managing director of tournaments for the PGA of America, wants to bring fairway bunkers more into play by eliminating the strip of rough that usually exists between fairway and bunker. So Myers will mow the Bermuda-grass fairways right to the edges of bunkers, making shots "pour" into bunkers. Because it's impossible to get too close to bunkers with normal fairway mowers without collapsing their edges, Myers will have volunteers hand-mow the small portions of each fairway that run alongside bunkers.
Myers also has 24 giant electric fans to cool the temperature of his greens during the PGA. They'll likely run during the day and at night during the practice rounds, but he has suggested they could also be used periodically during the tournament. He'd rather not "syringe" greens, to avoid the controversy that developed at the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, where some players complained that the light watering of greens during play unfairly altered putting characteristics.
Blowing air across grass wouldn't alter the speed of any putting surface, Myers says, adding that the fans could be stored under bleachers, retrieved, positioned, plugged in, then removed and stored within 15 minutes, if play could be halted for that long. Haigh has made no final decision on the suggestion but doubts he'll approve the use of the fans during play, even though a legion of volunteers will be available to speed the process.
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