2023 NLT Symposium on Municipal Golf
In-Depth Recap and Review of Key Takeaways
At Driving the Green, we endeavor to be humble students of nature and practitioners of its wisdom – call that wisdom the “Natural Intelligence” of 4.6 billion years of evolution.
Nature can teach us about the principles of effective communication – even the nature of human anatomy teaches us how to listen. It’s been said that because we have two ears and one mouth, we ought to listen twice as much as we speak. We’re all sensitive creatures – in the best “sense” of the term – after all, humans have two ears, two eyes, and two nostrils. Actually, I discovered recently that we have four paranasal passageways, suggesting even greater importance for deep breathing. To breathe deeply and remain present in the gift of life’s ongoing and miraculous evolution is quite literally “to be inspired”.
Inspiration = Respiration
The NLT Symposium reminded its guests of the visceral and embodied feeling of inspiration - a literal “openness of breath”. The lively forum united salt of the Earth folks from around the US who are continuing to “walk the talk” in municipal golf as champions of community engagement, sustainable development, and providing great golf to more people. The following provides a summary of key panels and talks at the event, which ranged the gamut from architecture to community engagement, agronomy, and even the “secrets” of the game.
Panels included these topics (in order):
Monday, October 23rd
Keynote by Tom Coyne (2-2:45PM)
Architecture Panel (2PM-3:30PM)
Municipal Golf Governance & Management (3:45PM-5PM)
Tuesday, October 24th
Fundraising & Marketing (10:30AM-11:45AM)
Agronomy & Course Maintenance (1:15PM-2:30PM)
Partnerships & Community Engagement (3PM-4:15PM)
Closing Networking Session and Talk with Gil Hanse (5:30PM-7:30PM)
Summaries for All Panels
NLT Symposium on Municipal Golf, Held in Washington, D.C. from 10/23-25, 2023
Keynote Address (Tom Coyne)
(Monday, 1-1:45PM)
Best-selling author and Sullivan County Golf Club operator Tom Coyne delivered a compelling keynote address, inviting the audience to consider why we came together for a shared mission of bringing “more golf to more people”. In Tom’s case, as for many, his relationship with his dad brought him into the game, and then the game brought him into a long journey of discovery.
Tom shared that he doesn’t believe fondly in the excessive approaches of some golf courses. “Golf doesn’t have to be a Garden of Eden” is how I might paraphrase. Instead, a practical and utilitarian approach known commonly to municipal golf courses can help the game change more lives – that is, mowing grass to a reasonable height and putting holes in the Earth meets the basic needs of the player. Yet, the game provides much beyond our basic needs. For one, it invites the discoveries of pure potential and deep connections that can last a lifetime.
Architecture Panel
(Monday, 2PM-3:30PM)
Garrett Morrison of the Fried Egg moderated this 90-minute discussion featuring the following panelists:
Troy Miller - Architect, Charleston Municipal - Charleston, SC
Mike Young - Architect, Warmouth Sands - Vidalia, GA
Jay Blasi - Architect, Chambers Bay - Seattle, WA
Discussion points included how golf projects can get off the ground, what “design-build” means, and where golf designs typically waste the most money and resources. Panelists agreed that the golf course is typically the largest park that a city has -- so the city, along with the course’s operators or other internal stakeholders -- must treat it accordingly (as a community asset). The conversation also highlighted how bunkers lead to a less satisfying experience for beginning golfers, experienced players, and superintendents alike.
DTG takeaway: What are the first principles of a great golfing experience, and how does the architect facilitate that experience? Follow-up chats revealed that golf experiences (plural) depend on a variety of factors beyond the designer’s control, but having the right design elements in the right places (a minimalist or even “essentialist” approach) can lead to a variety of experiences that inspire beginners and scratch golfers to play the course on repeat (but without stressing superintendents or the planet).
Municipal Golf Governance & Management Panel
(Monday, 3:45PM-5PM)
Rachel Carter, Senior Director of Memberships at the NGCOA, moderated this ~75-minute panel about recent successes and challenges in municipal golf regarding the funding, stakeholder engagement, balancing/competing needs, competitive pressures, and timelines of capital improvement projects. The panel featured:
Steve Leary - Former Mayor, Winter Park, FL
Michael Raby - Director of Golf, BREC - Baton Rouge, LA
Daryl Crawford - General Manager, Papago GC - Phoenix, AZ
Rachel Carter shared from NGCOA data that “85% of facility owners report that expenditures are up on capital improvements”. She prompted the crowd to test the validity of these data, and a majority of raised hands from attending operators confirmed that they had planned or already increased their capital spending.
Panelists discussed how the circus of subcontracting leads to projects going well over budget and many other inefficiencies. Each municipality’s ecosystem is a unique “Rubik’s Cube” in unlocking efficiency improvements (and addressing key challenges listed above), however core themes of success stories include using data to take emotion out of the RFP process, involving the buy-in of key internal stakeholders (particularly greens keeping staff and superintendents), and keeping a fervent eye on the potential unmet needs of customers and the surrounding community. Michael Raby provided a harbinger quote of the ensuing talks for Day 2 (which were to focus more on community listening and humble inquiry):
“An expert is just someone who has failed in every possible way in a specific domain.”
This reminds me of a common saying in jiu jitsu, expressing a similar sentiment of persistence:
“A black belt master is just a white belt who never gave up.”
Fundraising & Marketing Panel
(Tuesday, 10:30AM-11:45AM)
Moderated by Bill Potter, Vice President of Communications and Engagement for First Tee of Richmond, VA, this panel focused on the fundraising and marketing models of golf courses led by:
Martin Elgison - President, Bobby Jones Golf Course Foundation - Atlanta, GA
Tim Andersen - Founder, Barrier Free Golf - Chaska, MN
David Wagner - Board Member, Highland Park Foundation - Cleveland, OH
Martin Elgison of the Bobby Jones Golf Course Foundation shared how this historic Atlanta muni course has leveraged a unique naming rights model (or at least unique to golf course operations) to raise funds for capital improvement projects. “You would be surprised how many things you can name”, Martin shared as he discussed how donors worked out branding rights for golf holes, the restaurant, and even the practice putting green. Panelists then touched upon the importance of digital marketing and social media followers in generating viral excitement about projects, while getting ahead on telling the story of net positive impacts.
DTG take: Martin Elgison discussed a cautionary tale about a reporter’s interview that led to an article about the “tree massacre at Bobby Jones”. That incident also sounded like the massacre of truth for this muni course, as important details around the myriad of environmental and community engagement successes were intentionally neglected from that reporter’s article. We can’t let perfection be the enemy of progress, especially in balancing the needs and concerns of diverse stakeholders in a municipal golf ecosystem. When we focus on progress instead of perfection, especially in municipal projects, we see in the cases of Bobby Jones and Chaska Loop how perseverance pays off in creating a true community asset.
Agronomy & Course Maintenance Panel
(Tuesday, 1:15PM-2:30PM)
Moderated by Michael Stachowicz, National Park Service Project Manager for the National Links Trust Projects, the agronomy panel addressed key themes of addressing the visibility of great superintendents’ work, along with how in-house projects can lower costs or circumvent the circus of bloated budgeting that results from subcontracting upon subcontracting (typical with external vendors). Panelists included:
Clay Payne - Superintendent, Buffalo Dunes GC - Garden City, KS
Len Curtin - Superintendent, George Wright GC - Boston, MA
Rich Shilling - Superintendent, Jeffersonville GC - Jeffersonville, PA
Superintendents are some of the hardest workers in the nation! It’s a thankless job with high-pressure demands, long hours, and a lack of visibility that can lead to them feeling small, neglected, and forgotten. Three key solutions arose from the talk:
1) In-house projects can empower superintendents to lead a bigger role in operational visioning,
2) Master Planning creates coalitions and continuity within municipal leadership contexts; and
3) Superintendents themselves have a responsibility to tell their story proactively.
DTG takeaway: This panel presented further thoughts on a key and contentious theme of the conference: trees. Capital improvements or renovation projects on golf courses frequently require tree removal to improve upon the routing (and product) of a golf course’s design. Moreover, tree removal (or non-removal due to pushback) can even lead to safety concerns or accidents with players on the course. Safety is a first principle of great design (a prerequisite, really) and while trees offer many climate benefits (which supports safety and sustainability over the long-run), having the wrong trees in the wrong places can harm safety and operational sustainability in the short-run.
Partnerships & Community Engagement Panel
(Tuesday, 3PM-4:15PM)
The enthusiastic Azucena Maldonado, Founder of the Latina Golfers Association, led an insightful panel from experts of diverse backgrounds:
Dave Andrews - Director - The Path, The Park - West Palm Beach, FL
Maria Stroup - SVP - Education, Social Responsibility, Community Engagement of Cobbs Creek Foundation - Philadelphia, PA
Andrew Szunyog - Project Manager – Sustainability, NLT (and Driving the Green) - Washington, DC
Some of the most unique solutions for a problem set come from the most unique perspectives. That’s certainly the case for Maria Stroup, whose little experience with golf combined with a Master’s Degree in Divinity and a rich background in human-centered community engagement make her an optimal leader for Social Responsibility Programming in the West Philly golf scene. She shared impactful and quotable axioms, such as:
“Don’t decide. Don’t prescribe. Just listen.”
— Maria Stroup
Her experiences and successful actions (as an educator of 25+ years) precede and expound upon the seeming simplicity of those words. She and Dave Andrews both have backgrounds in YMCA leadership.
Dave Andrews also shared his wisdom as a leader of community engagement in West Palm Beach, where center stage includes education and genuinely changing the lives of young people. He agreed that it is paramount to “listen to the needs of the community”. Educational and development programming at The Park transcendently aims to develop not only more golfers, but also tomorrow’s leaders.
Last but not least, Andrew shared about his work in putting together this symposium for the second consecutive year (and being involved for three years), and everyone at the conference agreed that the symposium itself is a championed effort of stakeholder engagement, led by Andrew and others at NLT. Andrew mentioned our Materiality Assessment used for aligning golfer needs with investment priorities for Sustainable Development Goals. He also offered another quotable axiom among the panel, this time about in-house project development:
“Partnerships create capacity.”
— Andrew Szunyog
Closing Talk by Gil Hanse, Golf Course Architect
(Tuesday, 6:30PM-7:30PM)
Gil Hanse designed The Park of West Palm Beach (discussed by Dave Andrews in the previous panel), along with many acclaimed projects in municipal golf. Tiger Woods hit the opening tee shot at this new venue, and celebrated it as a “one-ball golf course”, meaning that even the beginner golfer can play the entire track while never losing a golf ball (along with the hope that is needed to keep playing golf or becoming a core customer).
One of Gil’s latest projects will be the renovation project of Rock Creek Park, owned by the National Parks Service and operated by the National Links Trust in Washington, D.C. as a part of its three-course municipal golf system. His talk called back to the keynote address that beckoned “why” we work in the golf industry. Grounded in gratitude for his mentors and teachers, Gil spoke effortlessly and naturally to some of the essential principles of golf course design:
Listen to customers and key stakeholders early and often – get their “sense”, and you’ll earn their “cents”
Keep the golfer “hopeful, and engaged”
Design layouts that require a “low level of precision to play, but a high level of precision to play well” (wide courses with timelessly challenging nuances come to mind, such as the Old Course and even Augusta National – they invite beginners and challenge champions)
DTG takeaway: Gil discussed architecture as “seeing potential”. Perhaps we might assess community development and municipal golf leadership as “seeing potential in the ability of others to see potential”. That’s something that the National Links Trust has performed admirably: the architecture of community. Community itself is something that we can design and see potential for creating, and a sustainable community facilitates human relationships that allow us to see potential in one another – along with ourselves.
