Restoring a GemCommunication and careful planning and organization pay offBY DAVID KUYPERS

'i"Corroded old pipes were no longer capable of providing adequate hydraulic flow, so coverage and turf performance suffered.

In1929 construction began onCutten Fields in Guelph, Ontario.Arthur Cutten was a Guelph native

who had amassed a sizable fortunethrough various enterprises in Chicago,Illinois. Cutten envisioned creating aworld-class recreational resort for hishometown, and he planned to donateit to the city once it was built.

He enlisted his friend, Chick Evans,a very accomplished amateur player, todesign the golf course. Evans was thefirst player to hold the U. S. Amateurand U.S. Open titles in the same year,1916. Unfortunately, like many,Cutten's fortune vanished in the stockmarket crash of 1929, and by the timeCutten Fields opened in 1931, therewere serious financial difficulties. Theclub had a series of different stewardsthrough the years, including golfcourse architect Stanley Thompson,who assisted in the design. Eventuallythe club, now known as the CuttenClub, became wholly owned by theUniversity of Guelph, whose propertyis adjacent to the club. In 2005 the

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membership leased the land and all theassets back from the University tooperate independently as a member-owned and operated private club. Themembership had a strong desire tomake significant capital improvementsto the golf course and the facilities, aninvestment that the University had nointerest in funding.

In 2005 the club hired DavidKuypers to be the golf course super-intendent and charged him withdeveloping a plan to move forwardwith the capital improvements and toimprove the overall conditioning levelof the golf course.

THE PROBLEMSMost of the challenges stemmed fromyears of under-funding the mainte-nance of the golf course. This left anaging infrastructure, dated designstyles, and extremely poor growingenvironments. The irrigation systemwas a steel, center-row system, withblock systems around the greens datingto the 1950s. The pipe was undersized,

terribly corroded, and in poor repair.It was simply incapable of deliveringwater with the necessary control, con-sistency, or volume to sustain turfeffectively. The golf course had beenrenovated in the early 1990s in aneffort to reduce maintenance costs, andsome of its best and most dramaticfeatures, a signature of Thompsondesigns, were eliminated. Worse yet,an extensive tree planting program wasimplemented through the 1980s and1990s. Coupled with strong golferresistance to removal, the trees wereliterally choking the golf course andhiding its best asset, the topography.The tree plantings also had createdgrowing environments that wereincapable of supporting reasonablequality and reliable playing surfaces.

Clearly, the course needed a tremen-dous amount of work, and a plan wasneeded to deal with the fundamentalinfrastructure flaws and the growingenvironments. These problems had tobe corrected before any restorationwork could be undertaken. The dete-

Too many sprinklers on one line spell insufficient pressure and poor coverage.

rioration of the course was so severethat very aggressive solutions werenecessary, and nothing short of a majorproject would have the desired effect.However, membership approval wasrequired before anything major couldbe undertaken.

On the plus side, all but one of theoriginal greens were intact, and whilethey had shrunk to a fraction of theiroriginal size, their original shapes wereobvious and the green complexes hadgreat character. Clearly, the originaldesign was classic and interesting, butit took some imagination to see it. Thedesign was well worth restoring, so theidea of "preserving and enhancing"was adopted as a theme.

THE TEAMWith such varied problems, a team ofexperts from different disciplines wasneeded to provide the input needed todevelop the plan. A second team wasneeded to present the project to themembership for approval. The agro-

With a zone or block system, the low sprinkler heads in each zone can weep, creating obvious problems.

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Years of sand being blasted out of bunkers created a droughty. infertile soil that was not capable ofsupporting healthy turf.

nomic side of the team consisted ofGolf Course Architect Ian Andrew,Dave Smith of DCS Agronomics, TimFredericks of Fredericks McGuire Irri-gation Consulting. Dave Oatis of theUSGA was brought in for a TurfAdvisory Service consultation with afollow-up visit by Dr. Jim Baird toreview tree plantings with the club'sarborist. This team was coordinatedthrough David Kuypers, golf coursesuperintendent. A plan was eventually

developed that addressed all of the keyproblems, but it then had to be approvedby the Golf Course and GroundsCommittee, the Finance Committee,the Board of Directors, and ultimatelythe membership. The golf coursesuperintendent acted as the principalinformation agent as the plan workedits way through these committees.Once the plan had been approved atthe board level, another team wasrequired for the purposes of gainingmembership approval.

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THE PLANThe operational plan called for a com-prehensive tree management programin year 1, followed by the installationof a new irrigation system in years 2and 3. The irrigation system installationwas complicated since the system hadto be designed around features thatwere not yet constructed. Finally, thegolf course renovations, including teeand bunker construction, would beundertaken in the latter half of year 3.

In order to put the operational planin the proper context to be communi-cated to the membership, a strategicplan was developed for the club as awhole. The strategic plan examinedthe business environment that the clubcompetes in and the club's relativestrengths, weaknesses, and opportuni-ties. It also considered threats that theclub faced in the marketplace. Theplan was projected out over five yearsand would be reviewed each year asthe economic environment changed.

The plan could be delayed or acceler-ated depending on the financial perfor-mance of the operation. The strategicplan was intended to be both broad inits vision for the club and its future;however, it also detailed the stepsneeded to fulfill this vision along withthe dues increases and capital assess-ments needed to fund the projects.This full disclosure allowed the mem-bership to understand what they werebeing asked to approve and how muchit would cost them.

THE COMMUNICATIONSTRATEGYThe first approval hurdle was the irri-gation system. A decision was made tostart communicating the rationale andprotocol of the tree management planat the same time. There often is astrong emotional side to tree manage-ment programs, and the plan was tostart the communication process slowlyto allow members to come to gripswith it. The initial communicationwas done as a presentation to the entiremembership and to specific groups ofthe membership. The problems result-ing from the awful growing environ-ments and the antiquated irrigationsystem were clearly enumerated alongwith the proposed solutions. In additionto these membership presentations,there were numerous articles writtenfor the club newsletter. The USGATurf Advisory Service Report, whichalso clearly identified the issues on thegolf course, was made available throughthe club Web site, and there were evensome demonstrations on the golf course.Once the strategic plan was finalized,it was presented in conjunction withthe operational plan to illustrate thefinancial implications of the project.Grant Robinson, architect of thestrategic plan, presented it to the mem-bership while Superintendent Kuyperspresented the operational plans. As thevote drew near, the need for theseinitiatives was boiled down to fivesimple talking points that were thencommunicated to the various com-

A topnotch new automatic irrigation system with good control and hydraulic flow is an essential toolfor effective water management.

mittees and key members for the pur-pose of spreading accurate informationin membership circles. The effortsproved successful, and phase 1 of theproject passed with no opposition.

The communication strategy forphase 2 of the project was different intone than in phase 1. There were feweragronomic reasons to renovate bunkers,tees, and cart paths because the decisionhinged more on what type of golfcourse the members wanted. Sincemost members liked the course to startwith, the idea of restoring and enhanc-ing the original, classic design wasvery appealing. There were three partsto the communication strategy ofphase 2:

1. The strategic plan, which hadbeen updated after year 1, was presentedby the treasurer to communicate thevision of the club.

2. The methodology behind therenovation work was presented by thegolf course architect. The goals wereto restore the original design intentionsand shot values of the golf course,increase the amount of teeing area(particularly forward teeing grounds),and improve a dilapidated cart pathsystem.

3. The progress of phase 1 also was akey component of the communicationof phase 2. Initially, weather issues infall 2006 had slowed progress, but thespring of 2007 allowed much of thatlost time to be made up. More impor-tantly, phase 1 was on budget throughthe duration of the project.

Again, the efforts at communicationproved successful. Phase 2 passed by awide margin and was undertaken inthe fall of 2007.

While the projects were underway,there were many avenues throughwhich members could be updated onthe progress of the project. The Website was updated daily with progressreports, pictures, and the area of thegolf course that was being worked onthat day, especially if it involved theclosing of all or part of a hole. Therewas also a large proj ect board in the

main lobby of the club that notedwhich holes were finished, which werenext, and the estimated date of com-pletion. Finally, the golf shop wasgiven daily updates on the work inprogress. The golf shop staff is the firstand sometimes only contact for theplayers, and it was important for themto be able to give accurate information.

THE EPILOGUEThe communication efforts certainlyadded to the overall workload of thesenior management team and themembers who volunteer to sit onvarious committees. The investmentof time and talent by these individualsmade for a smooth approval process

and generated significant goodwillfrom the membership toward a well-executed plan. Most important, theextensive planning and organizationefforts that took so much time andenergy paid off in the end. The coursewas improved immeasurably, andseemingly insurmountable problemswere overcome in the process of thestep-by-step solution. Not surprisingly,the golfers at Cutten are happy to seethe end of the projects and are lookingforward to enjoying the golf course in2008.

DAVID KUYPERS is golf coursesuperinten-dent at Cutten Club in Guelph} Ontario}Canada.

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