6/10/2020 - By William Buehn

Talking tournament prep with Jake Mendoza as he gets Detroit Golf Club geared up for the rescheduled Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Not too long after Jake Mendoza set on with Detroit Golf Club back in February of 2018, the venue was marked for the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic, leaving Mendoza with only about 8 months to prepare his new course for the 2019 PGA Tour event. This year, he was granted an extra month of prep time when coronavirus hit the snooze button on the PGA tournament schedule. Originally on the books for May 28-31, the 2020 Rocket Mortgage Classic has now been rescheduled for July 2-5. Though, the calendar date isn’t the only thing that’s changed for the tournament this year. As one of the first few tournaments back on this year’s amended PGA schedule, the event will take place with no spectators. That means no grandstands, no hospitality structures, no concession stands, no temporary restrooms, etc.—just media and tournament staff. That probably sounds like a dream to any superintendent prepping for a big tournament, but it hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park for Mendoza and his team. They’ve faced some challenges, but thanks to an all-star crew and a fantastic club behind him, the course—now eagerly awaiting the alarm clock to sound again—is ready to go. 

Grateful to secure a rare open-block on Mendoza’s busy pre-tournament schedule, I caught up with the Head Superintendent to see what it was like dealing with all of the uncertainty and preparing for a tournament in the coronavirus climate.

What kind of an effect did the coronavirus situation have on your club?

Well, it had a huge impact to our spring. We actually got lucky and had good weather coming out towards the end of winter and into spring. With the early tournament date, we were able to bring a handful of staff members back before the virus really impacted everything. So, we had 12 people working in March when the stay-at-home orders and everything started getting enforced...With the good weather in the spring we actually started playing golf in early March. It was walking-only and temporary pin locations in the fairways on one of the courses, but we were playing golf in March, which is exciting for Michigan! When the stay-at-home order went into effect, we followed everything to the “T,” consulted with the club lawyers, made sure that we were up to speed on all of the executive orders, and went above and beyond to keep our employees and members safe. We immediately enacted a staggered start system for my staff, so we had as few people as possible in our facility at one time, immediately enacted a very thorough disinfecting procedure for all of the equipment, the lunchroom…wiping down door handles five or six times a day—doing everything we could to keep the people that were here safe. And also staying in touch with our seasonal staff that were not back yet. Making sure that they knew what steps we were taking preemptively to keep people safe and when we were planning on being able to bring them back. 

What did your closure look like?

We were shut down for about a month. No golf, yeah, which made things easy for us. We were able to get a lot of work done. With only twelve people here, if we would have been playing golf, we wouldn't have been able to keep up with getting the golf course ready for daily play, let alone ramping up towards a PGA Tour event. So, it helped us out in the long run. 

What’s the status of play on the course now?

As soon as the governor edited the executive order and started allowing golf, we opened up for walking only on both courses with all of the standard COVID-19 procedures in place. No bunker rakes on the golf course. No ball washers. Encouraging people to not touch the flagstick on the putting green. Doing everything we can to keep everybody socially distant, but still enjoying the club, giving them an escape from all of the activity that was going on outside of the golf course. We operated walking only for about three and a half weeks, and now we’re allowed to send out golf carts, but it's limited to one person per cart. We’re allowing two carts per foursome—two people have to walk. Each cart can have two bags on it, but only one person driving, so it's been kind of a learning experience. Luckily, the way our club is set up, if people wanted to switch walking or driving after nine holes, there's easy access to the cart barn. They could stop by, have their cart sanitized and then switch drivers and play the back nine opposite. So, if they didn't want to walk all 18, we had an option for them. This week, the executive stay-at-home order was lifted. So, starting June 8th we’ll be able to get closer to normal. As a group, I think we've been very creative and done everything we can to keep people here, keep members here, keep people engaged and keep people playing golf as safely as possible. 

Did the coronavirus situation force you to adjust your tournament prep at all?

Yes and no. With everything being up in the air and undecided in regard to the tournament, we decided that it would be in our best interest to keep working towards that original May schedule date. You know, there were all kinds of rumors about it moving, cancelling all kinds of stuff, but none of that was coming from the PGA or the people that actually make the decisions. So, we were just working towards that original date. We did have to change a few things around just because of a lack of staff. Lower mowing repetitions to start the year, gradually work into things. A lot of the spring cleanup, debris cleanup, and getting bunkers back into shape after a long winter were pushed off. We focused on the inside-the-ropes areas and had to play catch-up on everything outside the ropes as we added more staff. But our thought was, worst-case scenario, if the tournament gets cancelled or moved, our membership gets to play on a tournament-ready course for a longer period of time. 

As the situation unfolded and things changed daily, how did you deal with the uncertainty of everything, especially considering you had a tournament on the line?

So, the biggest impact was the staffing that we talked about. Outside of that, our tournament date was still on the PGA calendar up until the beginning of May. So up to that point, we were still assuming that we were going to have the event as scheduled. We didn't know what the event would look like. Would it be no spectators? Limited field? You know all the variables were still to be determined, but that didn't impact what we needed to do. We needed to provide tournament quality conditions regardless of how the event was staged or when it was staged. So, we kept working towards those dates. In early May, the PGA evaluated the calendar and started making changes. You know, we were waiting for their decision to see exactly where the event would happen. So, until we knew for sure, we just kept working towards that original May date. When the announcement was made that we were pushed back to June 29th through July 5th, it was basically “Hey we're gonna be ready in May, and we just need to hold on and maintain those conditions. Yeah, we can throttle back a little bit. We don't need to push mowing reps. We don't need to be stressing things out. We just need to hold on through the month of June and be ready to go one month later than we had planned.” So, it was a fairly easy process to adjust and prepare for a later date. 

Sounds like it was a good decision to just be ready no matter what. 

Yeah, I mean like I said, the worst thing that could happen is our members got to play on nearly tournament-ready conditions for an extra month. Nobody was disappointed about that; everybody was very excited. Especially after a month of not having access to their golf courses, coming back to the conditions that we were able to produce, everybody was very excited and happy to be back playing golf.

Course will look a little bit different this year without all the grandstands...etc.

How is the tournament going to look different this year?

Well, let's start with the operational setup. Obviously, with no spectators there's no concession stands, no temporary restrooms, no corporate hospitality. So, it actually made things a lot easier for us. The build-out had started before everything got shut down. So, as soon as we went on the stay-at-home order, the build-out of all the hospitality structures was paused until we had the ability to safely have people work and had more information. We learned after the event was rescheduled that it was going to be a spectator-free event, or a media-only event. So, we knew immediately that the preparations were going to be easier from a build-out standpoint. Yes, we’ll still have TV towers and we’ll have some screening for logo purposes for TV. There will still be rope up to protect all of the cabling for the TV cameras and whatnot. So, it'll look similar to a normal PGA Tour event. You just won't have the atmosphere and the crowd. From our staffing standpoint, we are going to be somewhat limited on volunteers. That's more of a safety thing—keeping people socially distant and making sure that we have fewer points of contact between our staff and the players. Last year we had about 30 to 35 volunteers per shift. This year we're going to have 13 volunteers, and they’ll be assisting us only for the morning shift. So, we'll have to get creative in our scheduling. Some things that we staffed last year won't be staffed this year. There will be some multi-tasking. As the course superintendents are supervising and managing all of the staff and volunteers, they'll be stopping to check moisture levels, whereas last year we had a dedicated person checking the greens for moisture. We had a team that was measuring firmness and green speed last year. This year, that’ll be done by a staff member that's doing another task at the same time. So, it's our goal to still produce the same tournament conditions as last year, but just to do it more efficiently with less people. 

So, people will just have a few more hats to wear this year?

Yes, definitely.

Yeah, I imagine with no spectators, everything will be really nice and quiet for the golfers. 

Yeah, I think it'll present for TV pretty well too. You’ll actually be able to focus on the caddy and golfer conversation. You won't have all the noise and the roar of the gallery in the background, and it'll be different.

How has Harrell’s been a part of the equation throughout all this?

Two things specifically. First, Doug Johanningsmeier (our Harrell’s rep) has been a huge help in reviewing all of our agronomic plans and helping us decide the timing of different things. He’s just a good sounding board for me. I'll tell him what my ideas are, and plans are, and he might point out something that I don't notice. He’s just been a huge asset for me and all of our planning. And then POLYON®. We did a big POLYON® app in the rough last year trying to recover from last year's event and produce a healthier, more vibrant rough for our members, while also pushing towards having a longer, more dense, more penal rough for the event. And the extended release and knowing how the product is going to release allowed us to adjust for the new tournament date very easily. You know, I called Doug and we pulled up the release chart and we were able to look through and adjust our plan and know that we were going to see the release we wanted with that product already on the ground.

“Without a really strong team alongside me, it would be impossible to keep up.” The size of Mendoza's team may be a little limited this year, but what they’re able to achieve surely won’t be.

Nice. So, it’s going to take you through the extended tournament date?

We'll be seeing the release on that POLYON® through the second week of July, so it's perfect timing. Towards the end of that release, when we get done with the tournament, we can evaluate what we need to do from recovery standpoint. Without the gallery and spectators and all of the extra traffic that the hospitality brings, hopefully there’ll be less recovery and we can focus more on fertilizing for general member play and continuing to thicken the rough to produce better conditions for next year's event.

So, what’s the secret to success? 

I think the biggest thing is, with all of the moving parts and things changing rapidly, without a really strong team alongside me, it would be impossible to keep up. My North Course Superintendent Evan Herman and South Course Superintendent Kenny Eggler have really stepped up and made it so that I can focus on all of the changing aspects of the tournament and the coronavirus situation...So without a good team, we wouldn't be able to make all these adjustments—and that extends even to Doug, our Harrell’s Rep, being there to help us every step of the way.