A preview of the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass
It’s late January, and Jeff Plotts, director of golf course maintenance at TPC Sawgrass, host course of the Players Championship, wishes he had more time. Time to prepare, time to perfect, time to plan.
But as any superintendent knows, time is not on his side.
“It sounds kind of crazy, but the best advice I was given right away in my career was, ‘Just circle the date, it’s coming regardless,’” Plotts says. “You just need to do the very best you can throughout the process. It just takes timing and planning.”
As of late January, the crew in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., was keeping a close eye on a difficult weather pattern for the area.
“This has been a prolonged period of cold where we’re now seeing some of the bermuda really expressing itself in dormancy, whereas typically that’ll stay green throughout and then the overseed comes on,” says Lucas Andrews, assistant director of golf course operations at TPC Sawgrass. “I think we’ve got a good enough base of seed down. We’ve still got enough time right now. We’ve been through this before. Every winter is a new learning opportunity for us.”
An atypically cool winter combined with hurricanes has Andrews and Plotts and the crew at TPC Sawgrass excited for warmer temperatures to wake up the course, but only Mother Nature can deliver that. For now, the crew is focused on controlling what they can control — which is a lot.
What they can control
There are several exciting projects of note that this year’s Players Championship will put on display:
Trey Rogers III, Ph.D., Michigan State University, has been working on a test green at Sawgrass to explore the benefits of ‘variable depth greens.’ The concept hopes to improve uniformity on greens, regardless of slopes and undulations.
“A typical USGA green has about 12 inches of root zone mix. With undulation, the low areas have a tendency to stay a little more wet,” Plotts says. “We’re adding a deeper root zone mix at the lower portion of the green. On a high spot or a knob, we want to shallow up that root zone mix and have it hold extra moisture. … But before we commit to anything, I like to test it. We’re testing it on a regular basis to understand how it performs.”
New this year will be the return of a mighty oak tree near the No. 6 tee box that was lost in 2014.
“That was a pretty epic project in itself,” says Andrews. “The ability to recapture something here that was so iconic is pretty awesome to see. The results are better than anyone would have expected. We were able to enhance the view around the tee while recapturing the classic shot of this majestic oak tree hanging over the tee and forcing players not to manipulate their shot but to think about it. It’s what Pete Dye was intending on every shot out here; there’s not a single shot you can sleep on out here.”
As far as pest control, the crew at Sawgrass points to mole crickets as their primary nemesis. They’ve been successful in eliminating them.
“We make our application in the spring. If you time it right, it pretty much lasts throughout the season,” Plotts says. Sawgrass relies on Fipronil 0.1G from Quali-Pro.
“Here in northeast Florida, you turn around for a second, and you’re getting attacked by a pest,” Andrews adds. “Fipronil is an absolute guarantee. It’s nice to lean on a partner like Quali-Pro and know that the product is going to stand up to the challenges that are thrown at us every season of the year.”
Back to school
Sawgrass expects another strong volunteer force, featuring superintendents from around the world, to arrive on the Saturday before tournament week. Sawgrass is a massive property, so the crew likes to have the extra day to show volunteers how to get around the course.
And, of course, that volunteer crew supports a regular staff who have been delivering results on The Players for decades.
“We’re blessed to have a great team and great support,” Plotts says. “It’s exciting here. Every day since October we’re building something. You can just see things come together as we’re leading into the tournament.”
Andrews says that in his eight years of working alongside Plotts, he’s seemed to learn something every day.
“There’s not a wasted moment on the golf course that we’re not figuring out how to be better, learning from what we’ve done,” Andrews says. “Everybody knows Jeff is a big Georgia Bulldog. He has a very similar management style to an SEC football coach. I tell people when they get here — you may have been a superintendent elsewhere, but you’re going back to university when you work for Jeff Plotts.”
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