Supers Are Superheroes
By Tom Lang
Imagine being new on the job, and in your first two weeks someone vandalizes your office. Then less than 90 days into your new job, a major storm rolls through and drops dozens of trees on your roof.
That’s the golf equivalent of what Sam Moynihan, the new head groundskeeper at Detroit Golf Club, faced this spring and early summer after moving to Michigan from Maryland. Plus, he had an audience of local golf fans and national TV viewers coming in at the same time for the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Fans onsite saw up close the aftermath of the Sunday evening storm that happened just as professional golfers were arriving on June 25-26 for practice rounds, the pro-am on the 28th and the June 29-July 2 PGA Tour event. But they only saw left over huge tree stumps uprooted because all the tree trunks and large branches that fell during the storm were cleaned up within 36 hours.
“Toward the end of the day we sent most everybody home and I stayed just to see what would happen,” Moynihan told me about the Sunday evening storm that rolled in. “In my office we lost power and I heard a loud crack and a big tree fell on one of our South Course greens and as soon as that happened I knew there was more to come.”
He wasn’t kidding.
About 30 minutes of rain and lightning took place before Moynihan drove around assessing the damage – 12 trees totally lost and the additional dozens of tree tops and large branches that were ripped off other trees nearby.
A big tree fell at the front of the clubhouse and blocked access to the rear main parking lot. That one he and a couple of assistants worked on first. A tree also fell across the practice putting green at the rear of the clubhouse and a main intersection for golfers and fans.
Everything was postponed then until Monday morning to avoid cutting trees in the rain and in the dark. Soon the general manager and director of food and beverage brought in some extra clubhouse staff. About 30 people, including servers and hostesses, and pro shop staff worked on the clubhouse grounds clean up.
Four different professional tree companies came in to assist, with six chippers, two boom trucks, a stump grinder, skid steer and log hauler.
“The whole tournament operations team, my team, my volunteers (grounds crews from other courses in Michigan), and the clubhouse staff. Everybody was all hands-on deck trying to get the property cleared as fast as possible, focusing inside the ropes first,” Moynihan said.
By Monday at 1:30 p.m. the course was opened for holes 11-18 for the pros to practice.
“We couldn’t open hole 10 because there was a large tree that fell behind the 11th tee, which was right in their landing area. In fact, Max Homa hit a ball over there (left side of 10th fairway) and he ended up hitting his ball over the stump that was still there because it was so big we couldn’t get it out.”
The full North course was open for practice by Tuesday morning and the Charity 313 celebrity scramble that afternoon.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had a little bit of stress or anxiety that night before, and just looking at the sheer amount of work ahead of us,” Moynihan said about the start of tournament week. “But we put a good game plan in place, starting Monday morning, dividing everyone up into different sections of the courses, assigning leaders and captains to each area. As things rolled on that Monday you could see we were making a big dent in the cleanup process.”
Doug Ware is the head superintendent for the three municipal golf courses in Livonia, and a past president of the Michigan Golf Course Superintendents Assoc. He was one of the 4-5 dozen helpers on site, outfitted with the Detroit Carhart brand.
“It’s definitely a cool part of our profession, whether it’s a superintendent like myself, or others who send assistants and interns, everyone is willing to pitch in,” he said. “And this year it just happened to be a little extra work.”
Ware said about 10 minutes after he left the club Sunday night he was driving down 8 Mile to Livonia and started getting texts and photos about trees being down, so he knew what they were walking into Monday morning. He added that without the full-time tree services that Rocket Mortgage brought in, their grounds crew could not have cleared out the tree that fell in front of the clubhouse and blocked the access to the rear main parking lot.
“I’ve always wanted to be part of a PGA Tour event and so I’ve done this all five years at Detroit Golf Club,” Ware said. “Now I’ve become good friends with the guys who come to help out, and I like meeting new people coming up in the business. When courses send their assistants, I get to meet the new crop of guys coming up from all over the country. People come from quite a distance (as far as Texas) to help. It’s quite the fraternity, especially here in Detroit with lots of courses close together. People are just a phone call away to help.”
In his second week on the job in April, Moynihan had to deal with the herbicide damage someone (an assumed outside vandal) did to the 11th and 12th greens. He said he got a call from a co-worker that some weird lines were showing up on those two greens. With the colder temperatures it took a few days to show the full damage.
“Over the course of the next several days you could begin to see some sort of non-selective herbicide was killing the grass,” Moynihan said. “We tried a couple different recovery strategies and extra fertility, some seeding, and we covered them just to try to retain as much heat on those greens as possible.
“After about 12 days we weren’t seeing the progress that we were hoping for. So, we made the decision to re-grass the surfaces. We had both greens stripped and prepared on May 15, and on the 16th we had them sodded,” with grass from a special short grass turf company that grows a bent grass poa mix used for courses with older greens with the same type of grass mix.
Sam: we wish you a long and less stressful career than what you started with. Welcome to Michigan.
