Frank Rossi, Ph.D., leads a group of attendees at an Interactive Facility Tour at Hawk's Landing during the 2026 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show. Photo by Phil Cauthon
It was another cold day in Orlando on Tuesday at the outdoor In the Field Interactive Facility Tour with Frank Rossi, Ph.D., at Hawk’s Landing presented by PBI-Gordon.
About 50 attendees braved the weather as Rossi — instructor at Cornell University and 35-year GCSAA member — and Nick Wilson — Class A director of grounds, Hawk's Landing Golf Club and 10-year member — gave an inside look at Wilson’s course.
Wilson’s crew of about 32 staff oversees 220 acres of hotel grounds — including 70 acres of golf — at the largest Marriott in the world. With 1,700 rooms at an average of 85% occupancy, that creates a lot of traffic on the grounds.
“There’s a lot of waves in that traffic. Obviously when we get a convention like we have now, it’s 100% occupancy. That creates a lot for our resort grounds team,” Wilson said. “We’ve done a lot in the last five years from a landscape perspective to really enhance the property. But then you get a cold snap like this and as you’ll see we’ve had a lot of damage the last few days. These are record lows.”
“We have 20,000 annuals and do four change outs per year and as you can see we have a lot of tropical plants that do not like this weather. But we’re confident as the weather warms up with some good cutbacks, we’ll get everything looking good again.”
Rossi asked Wilson about overseeding with bermudagrass, which the course does to keep things green in cooler months.
“The overseed is for transition purposes,” Wilson said. “Obviously when you have a hotel and everybody is looking down on your golf course, they want to see a green golf course. So the overseeding is there to have some striping and some color but not necessarily trying to have it as a carpet because we have to grow grass in the summer time as well. We’re going to overseed every year because that’s just what this property needs.”
“Every resort in town is doing that,” Rossi said. “Maybe even some of the high-end clubs are overseeding. But the majority of courses are not overseeding. So 400 pounds of seed per acre, right? You guys from the desert will notice that’s quite a bit less than you might be using out there. It’s all 419. I’m really impressed with how it’s held up under the really cold weather — it’s really held its color.”
As Rossi and Wilson led attendees on a tour of the course, they stopped on a green and took a soil sample, which Rossi showed the group.
“So we’re looking at the rings of the tree, the life of the green. This is all pretty solid,” Rossi said, pointing to the top two inches of the nine-inch soil sample. “It is really sandy. And these were built 39 years ago — it’s the original sand. So that would have been, what 1985? We weren’t building good USGA greens in the 80s, I promise you that. The specs weren’t really good until the mid-90s.”
Rossi asked Wilson how much topdressing during the season. “If you threw sand, it would just sit there on the surface. Are you able to do light topdressing during the season or do you have to rethink with so little growth how much you can fuss with the surface?”
Wilson replied: “You have to use a very, very fine sand and very light topdressing. So the goal is to try to go every couple weeks, though obviously weather can change that a lot. So we’re trying to do as much topdressing as we can.”
“How about the Dry Jecting?” Rossi asked.
Wilson said once a year in July. “We’re doing the Maximus, so that goes down about four to six inches.”
Rossi also asked about the water quality. “Do you think the poor water quality contributes to some of the algae and other problems? Can you talk about the quality of the water?”
Wilson replied: “It’s reclaimed water and a little bit high in salt and very high pH. We try to hand-water with fresh water as best we can on the greens and keep the reclaimed off the greens. In the summertime months we’re getting enough rainfall that most of the time the only overhead irrigation the greens are hopefully getting is just to water in topdressing.”