Brian Hickey, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Palmer Hills Golf Course in Bettendorf, Iowa, and 33-year association member, leads a station on golf course hole design during a First Green Experience event at TPC Deere Run. Photos by Andrew Hartsock
When Jonathan Graham was first asked, about a month ago, if he could help facilitate a First Green event in conjunction with the John Deere Classic, he knew he’d need some help.
It wasn’t hard for Graham, the GCSAA Class A superintendent at TPC Deere Run, to find it.
Three fellow superintendents in the Quad Cities area answered the call and worked the three stations of a First Green Experience as part of Youth Day activities on Wednesday at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill.
Dozens of youngsters, many of whom were decked out in matching T-shirts signifying their participation in local summer camps, visited What’s Underneath the Golf Course (led by Tim Gravert, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Crow Valley Golf Club in Davenport, Iowa, and 22-year association member), Design Your Own Golf Course Hole (as instructed by Brian Hickey, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Palmer Hills Golf Course in Bettendorf, Iowa, and 33-year association member) and Cool Tools on the Golf Course (thanks to Andrew Cooper, superintendent at Short Hills Country Club in East Moline, Ill., and six-year association member).
“I got a text last week,” Gravert says of his recruitment. “It said, ‘What are you doing Wednesday?’”
Gravert knows a thing or two about First Green events.
In May, he hosted a group of about a dozen high schoolers from Central DeWitt High School in DeWitt, Iowa, at Crow Valley GC. They were members of a horticulture class that makes the rounds touring various horticulture/agriculture sites.
“They said ours was the best field trip by far,” Gravert says. “I had them do everything — walk mowing, rolling.”
Tim Gravert, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Crow Valley Golf Club in Davenport, Iowa, and 22-year association member, introduces young attendees to the science of turf during the First Green Experience event, held just before the beginning of the John Deere Classic.
Hickey, too, has some experience with First Green, GCSAA’s science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) environmental outreach program that uses golf courses as hands-on learning laboratories to introduce youths to the industry. Hickey regularly hosts local eighth graders — more than 300 over three days.
“When it got to be that many, I had to ask for volunteers,” Hickey says with a laugh. “I couldn’t talk afterward.”
Hickey has seen firsthand how First Green can steer youngsters into the profession.
“I tell them, ‘When you turn 16, you can come work for me,’” he says. “I’ve had quite a few show up later: ‘You said I could get a job.’”
Unlike a typical First Green field trip, where young attendees experience several stations hands-on and in-depth, the First Green Experience, held the day before the PGA Tour pros teed off for the first day of the John Deere Classic, was more like First Green Lite.
At Gravert’s station, participants gaped at a cross section of a golf course green and a bunker made by Alex Stuedemann, CGCS, a 26-year GCSAA member and the former director of golf course operations at TPC Deere Run, and now director of agronomy for the PGA Tour’s TPC Network of facilities. They also could run their fingers through (or over) grass mowed to rough, fairway and greens height.
Andrew Cooper, superintendent at Short Hills Country Club in East Moline, Ill., and six-year association member, showed kids visiting Deere Run some equipment used to maintain the course.
Under Hickey’s direction, the youngsters got creative designing a golf hole. Cooper — a former assistant at TPC Deere Run in his second year as superintendent at Short Hills CC — introduced the kids to some of the equipment found on golf courses.
The first two stations were held in somewhat climate-controlled tents, while the third was positioned outside in the heat.
“I drew the short straw,” Cooper joked.
Wednesday’s event wasn’t the First Green’s only foray onto this pristine property. Graham annually hosts a traditional First Green field trip every spring, routinely introducing roughly 100 local third graders to golf course maintenance through the STEAM lens.
“I think the teachers are more amazed than anybody,” he says.
If Graham, a 13-year association member, was feeling any additional pressure about putting on the event in conjunction with what he called a challenging advance week for the John Deere Classic — a cold offseason abruptly gave way to a windy, sweltering summer — he didn’t seem to show it and credited his volunteer help.
Andrew Hartsock is GCM’s editor-in-chief.