On Grand Strand Golf: Like players, superintendents excited for World Am

Many of the approximate 3,340 golfers competing this week in the 32nd Myrtle Beach World Amateur Handicap Championship spend the year eagerly anticipating their opportunity to return to the event.

The feeling is mutual for many of the professionals and superintendents at Grand Strand courses.

The tournament is an opportunity to prepare their golf courses to be showcased to players from around the country and globe in a competitive event that adheres to the United States Golf Association’s Rules of Golf.

For many, it’s a fairly rare occasion.

“Not everybody is privy to a PGA Tour tournament that the pros will play, so it’s nice to have that type of feeling when you’re going out setting up a golf course in anticipation of some of your better golfers coming through your golf courses,” said Jim Brown, a Founders Group International Director of Agronomy who oversees 10 courses. “You want your golf courses to look great and play great. It gives us a little incentive to step up our game a little bit.

“It really helps our maintenance staffs as well. I think they get more involved this time of year when a tournament is coming through.”

The tournament is being played on 57 golf courses over four days this year, with the championship round at Barefoot Resort’s Dye Club.

“I love the World Am and the overall concept of the event,” said Jason Monahan, general manager of both Farmstead Golf Links and Meadowlands Golf Club. “Being the World Am you’re bringing in amateur golfers from literally all over the world. You’re showing off Myrtle Beach and showing off our destination every time you host a round. You’re showing them what the golf community in Myrtle Beach is all about.

“I can’t imagine there are too many other events that are played anywhere in the world that creates this much competition with the diversity in the field.”

The club professionals and superintendents work in concert with each other to prepare the courses, though each has specific duties.

Superintendents handle all agronomy and course condition matters. Professionals and pro shop staff handle tournament operations and setup, though some of the duties can be shared.

Pro shop staffers often handle the marking with a colorant and stakes of the course’s hazards, out-of-bounds lines, drop areas and ground-under-repair areas, and pin placements for each round.

“When you talk about setting up the course for the World Am, it’s about getting a course tournament ready and we rarely do that,” Monahan said. “It’s not often we have a tournament that is that strict with the rules that we have to go through that setup.”

The course marking takes anywhere from 4 to 8 hours and the marking remain highly visible for about 14 days, according to Monahan, and pin sheets are created giving the exact location of each hole.

“You’re creating the competition, and where you place that pin on the green can make or break that person’s day,” Monahan said. “You have to find that pin location where you want to challenge them but not beat them up all day long. The standard rule of thumb is six easy, six medium and six hard.”

Gender, age and handicaps are usually considered for the pin setups and green speeds, which are set by superintendents, along with fairway widths and rough heights. Prior to each tournament round, maintenance workers will rake bunkers, mow greens and tees and cut fairways if necessary. A growth regulator chemical is often used in fairways this time of year to slow Bermudagrass growth.

As far as rough? “Normally it’s good and full by now,” said Max Morgan, the other Director of Agronomy for Founders Group, which owns and operates 22 Strand courses. “If some guys have been cutting it shorter they might skip a cycle to let it grow a bit. But we want the guys to find their balls so we don’t want it too high.”

Morgan, who has been an area superintendent for 34 years, said the tournament comes at a good time for premium course conditions, and courses conduct agronomic maintenance such as aeration and verticutting in advance to have their courses healthy for the World Am.

“It’s a great time to have it in my opinion,” Morgan said. “Nothing else is going on, all the summer maintenance is finished and all grass is grown in.”

The tournament serves as a maintenance springboard into the fall golf season.

“Tournaments give you a reason to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts,” Morgan said. “It’s a nice way to get your golf course all tidied up, get all the loose ends tied up so you’re good to go after that.”

A lot of courses go the extra mile.

At some of Brown’s stops in 25 years in the market, the staff would remove the dew off the tees and fairways before each World Am round by dragging 100-foot hoses between golf carts.

Jay Nelson, who spent 30 years as a Strand superintendent before recently entering the solar energy business, said he would wire off sections of tee boxes with chicken wire to keep them pristine for use during the World Am.

To prepare greens for tournament play, Brown said courses have double cut and rolled their greens to make them smooth and fast, and many Founders Group courses will still roll their greens, including International World Tour Golf Links.

Staffs weren’t as large as they once were, however. “A golf course superintendent has to be pretty inventive now,” Brown said. “We always had manpower years ago to do a lot of the extra things and detail work.”

Just as World Am participants make lifelong friends with fellow participants, they sometimes forge lasting relationships with golf course staffers. Monahan has had a few players keep in touch with him and return for non-tournament rounds, particularly a pair of players from the Midwest and Massachusetts who will call to have lunch.

“It’s a cool thing to think you’ve made that much of an impact on the customer from that one event that they want to stay in contact with you,” Monahan said. “That’s what it’s all about when you think of it, creating that relationship with people from all over the world.”

Diaz misses finals

Roberto Diaz of Myrtle Beach missed the cut this past week in the WinCo Foods Portland Open in North Plains, Ore., and failed to make the four-event Web.com Tour Finals, which begin next week.

Diaz entered the tournament 77th on the 2015 Web.com money list and needed to finish in the top 75 on the list to qualify for the playoffs, through which 50 PGA Tour cards will be awarded for the 2015-16 season. His missed cut dropped him to 82nd at $57,011.

The cut ended up being at 2-under 140, and Diaz shot an even-par 71 in the first round and was 1 under through the fourth hole of the second round. But on holes 5-7 he bogeyed a par-3, made a triple-bogey 7 on a par-4 and a quintuple-bogey 10 on a par-5 to plummet to 8 over en route to a 9-over 80.

To qualify for the playoffs he would have needed a tie for 17th at 8-under 276.

Diaz finished 78th on the final regular season money list last year. The finish of 82nd gives him workable conditional status on the 2016 Web.com Tour as well as an exemption into the finals of the Web.com Tour Qualifying Tournament.

Players in positions 76-85 on the money list automatically qualify for the $510,000 72-hole final stage of Q-School from Dec. 10-13 at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where Diaz will have a chance to improve his status for 2016.

He can earn nearly full status with a top-10 Q-School finish and improve upon his status with a top-45 finish. The top 10 are exempt through the third status reshuffle after 12 events, and players who finish in positions 11-45 are subject to the second status reshuffle after eight events.

Diaz may get into a few early-season events regardless based on his status from his money list finish.

GolfTalk live from MB

The GolfTalk Live radio show based in Philadelphia and hosted by Tony Leodora is being broadcast Saturday from the Strand and the World Am.

The show is expected to have an interview with the winner and other tournament insight from Leodora. This past Saturday’s show was a World Am preview that included interviews with Golf Holiday and tournament officials.

The show airs from 7-8 a.m. on Philadelphia's WNTP 990 AM, from 3-4 p.m. on WOND 1400 AM in South Jersey and 10-11 a.m. on ESPN 1230 and 1320 in the Lehigh (Pa.) Valley.

GolfTalk Live can also be heard anytime at www.golftalklive.net, and during the broadcast Saturday at www.wntp.com.

Leodora is also the host of The Traveling Golfer television show, which airs on its network of websites listed at www.travelinggolfervideo.com. The Traveling Golfer began airing as a weekly feature show on Comcast SportsNet and The Comcast Network throughout the Philadelphia, Mid-Atlantic, North Jersey and Pittsburgh markets.

Haas has game

Jerry Haas, the men’s golf coach at Wake Forest, brother of former PGA Tour member Jay Haas and uncle of current PGA Tour member Bill Haas, showed once again that he has some game of his own this past week.

Haas, who won the 2014 Carolinas PGA Section Championship, captured another CPGA major title with a six-stroke win in the 91st Carolinas Open at Bryan Park Golf & Conference Center in Greensboro, N.C., after shooting a 9-under 69-70-65–204.

Haas entered the final round a stroke out of the lead but needed just 21 putts in his tournament-low 6-under 65. The win also gave Haas the 2015 CPGA Bob Boyd Player of the Year Award and an exemption into either the PGA Tour’s 2016 Wyndham Championship or Wells Fargo Championship.

Haas competed in the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club two weeks ago and tied for 17th in the 76th Senior PGA Championship.

Among players from the Grand Strand, amateur Ryan Wilkinson of Galivants Ferry tied for 17th at 8-over 221, Derek Watson of Myrtle Beach tied for 25th at 223, Stuart Clark of Pawleys Island tied for 30th at 225, Ryan Tyndall of Murrells Inlet and amateur Tee Opperman of Pawleys Island tied for 42nd at 231, and Dale Ketola of Little River tied for 46th at 233.

First Tee turns 10

The First Tee of Brunswick County is having a birthday party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding by county residents and retired Navy veterans Rusty and Carol Petrea.

The program has reached more than 20,000 Brunswick County children through its youth development and golf programs.

The anniversary soiree from 5 p.m. to roughly 7 p.m. Sunday at the Carolinas Leadership Academy on the campus at Cinghiale Creek will include food and beverages and testimony about the program’s impact from 10 current or past participants.

The campus is located at 445 Tarkln Court near Shallotte. Those interested in attending can RSVP by calling 910-754-5288.

This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 7:36 PM with the headline "On Grand Strand Golf: Like players, superintendents excited for World Am."