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Within view of downtown Miami, Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne has been a fixture in the South Florida community since its opening in 1972. The mangrove-laden gem owned by Miami-Dade County hosted the PGA Tour Champions for 18 years in a past life and received plenty of accolades along the way – until economic realities slowly lowered the quality of course conditions.
One of the primary reasons for this was that Crandon had to spend roughly $1.1 million for water every year to handle about 130 acres worth of turf. The daunting bill arrived as a byproduct of expensive municipal water and the need to cover a lot of grass, especially during the busier winter season when rain is a rarity. The math became problematic. In order for the course to survive, the cost had to be passed along to golfers or a major budgetary change needed to happen.
In late 2017, the county looked for that major change by hiring architect John Sanford to come up with a turf-removal solution. When Sanford turned to the USGA for guidance, the findings were described as nothing short of a revelation – by handing out GPS loggers to golfers at Crandon and tracking exactly where they went, it became obvious that much of the turf being watered would go many days, sometimes weeks, in between seeing a golf ball rest within its territory. One of golf’s grand assumptions is that the game is difficult, causing any given swing to send any given ball to an unlimited number of locations. At Crandon and a growing number of courses throughout the country, they are finding out their golfers don’t have nearly as wide of a variance as that assumption would have them believe.
The data helped create a master plan of removing 42 acres of turf and turning it into crushed stone or other natural areas that require minimal upkeep. The new water bill is down about 35 percent, enough to save more than $350,000 annually on water while also spending less on nutrients, mowing, labor and all of the other resources that went into maintaining the rarely utilized turf.
This mission for resource efficiency may not be the sexiest department in growing the game, but it has emerged as one of the most vital as the golf industry moves to make player experiences better while helping courses optimize their maintenance. The tool is called Deacon, a web-based app delivered by the USGA’s Green Section that hopes to be a one-stop shop for owners and superintendents who want to evaluate their facilities with GPS heat maps, detailed pace of play reports, green speed charts and a number of other abilities that could alter the game in a revolutionary way.
“If you look at a golf course that is 100, 150 acres, all of that land does not uniformly apply to the golfer experience,” said Matt Pringle, managing director of the Green Section at the USGA. “Every golfer will putt from a green, but there are certain bunkers, fairways or other areas that don’t come into play almost at all. They have little to no impact on the experience.
“If you can save money that normally goes into maintaining these areas, that directly impacts green fees. The more efficient the course is, the less expensive golf can be for the average consumer while they can be having a better experience at the same time.”
The origins of Deacon – named after Arnold Palmer’s father, who spent 50 years as a caretaker and superintendent at Latrobe Country Club – started with Jim Moore, the former director of education for the USGA Green Section who is now retired. Moore argued that golf course superintendents know many details about their facility – how many pounds of nitrogen need to be applied, how many applications of pesticide there are, etc. – but they don’t maintain information about where on the course that goes. If they did, they could figure out which areas of application were more valuable to the golfer experience than others.
"If you can save money that normally goes into maintaining these areas, that directly impacts green fees. The more efficient the course is, the less expensive golf can be for the average consumer."
Matt Pringle
Moore’s idea involved making a map of the course that has each different playing surface, so GPS heat maps of where golfers go can be matched with the amount of resources used for a given area. For example, a bunker 20 yards behind a green may look aesthetically pleasing, but it costs a lot to maintain a hazard that one golfer may find every three weeks. If that turned into a naturalized area along with some of the turf around it, how much money, labor, gallons of water and pounds of nutrients could be saved?
Deacon, which costs $999 a year and features 10 different course management tools, is hoping to have a few hundred paying customers this year. Many courses beyond Crandon have already benefited, such as Charwood Country Club, a daily fee course just outside of Columbia, South Carolina, where the GPS loggers showed that far more golfers were going into the woods off the tee than was realized. They decided to push back the overgrown areas near the woods so that it could be easier to find golf balls and become more playable at the same time.
“When we picture golf in the U.S., we think of Pinehurst and Pebble Beach, but the backbone of golf is small business,” Pringle said. “It’s privately owned, public-access facilities with small staffs. That is who we are really trying to help. The health of the game relies on how enjoyable the experience is for the average golfer, and they are mostly playing at these types of facilities.”
The tool, which is hoped to replace the handful of apps superintendents have to use for different parts of maintenance, won’t only benefit American facilities. Golf Ontario recently facilitated a relationship between the USGA and City of Toronto where a combined 28 acres on five Toronto courses – Don Valley, Tam O’Shanter, Humber Valley, Scarlett Woods and Dentonia Park – were converted into cross-country skiing trails while having minimal impact on the courses themselves. Where the trails were constructed was thanks to the discoveries from Deacon. For example, on the second hole at Don Valley, not one player hit into the greenside bunker that is more than 10 yards from the left side of the green. Information like that helped decide where snow loops could be placed for cross country skiers and hikers.
Just more than 50 percent of the golf courses in the U.S. are located in cold weather climates, in addition to hundreds of Canadian courses, so this type of thinking could have major ramifications in how golf course land is used in winter.
It could make the real estate more valuable, saving more golf courses from closing.
“I think it’s important for the municipal model that it’s not just one activity,” USGA agronomist Zach Nicoludis said. “You can expand to make it more available to the community throughout the year. By and large, these areas we’ve converted are well outside the typical corridors of the golf course, and if there is a little bit of damage from the paths that necessitate a recovery in the spring, it’s not that big of a deal because it’s on an empty golf course and it’s not really in play anyway.”
Those involved with developing Deacon in the past handful of years are excited at the possibilities of what this could mean for golf courses and golfers.
It’s just the beginning in a new era of efficiency.
Top: Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne has used the Deacon tool to reduce 35 percent of its turf and thus cut its annual water bill by a corresponding $350,000.
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