Country Club of Peoria in Illinois is overseen by superintendent and New Zealand native Jeff Kerr. Photo by Kyle Mooney
He drives a 1968 Buick Riviera, has been a boat captain and makes his own beer.
Jeff Kerr also proved he has more than all of that going for him to succeed in the golf industry. A GCSAA Class A superintendent and eight-year association member, Kerr traded the island country life of his homeland in New Zealand to find his niche in America. Kerr, 44, oversees Country Club of Peoria in Peoria, Ill. He’s been on location there since 2016, first as an assistant superintendent until being named superintendent six years ago. One aspect of the business that floats the boat of this former skipper?
“I like having nice lawns,” Kerr says.
Kerr had been practically around the world and back before settling in the Midwest. At 21, Kerr landed in Florida as a general manager for a houseboat rental company, where he earned a license to captain tours. It wasn’t enough, however, to keep him on this side of the globe. After more than five years in the Sunshine State, Kerr moved back to New Zealand and served as a skipper and engineer for a travel group.
Twenty months later, Kerr got a taste for grass. In 2008 he was hired as turf manager for Canterbury Country Cricket. Not to get too technical, but cricket is one team facing off against another team and, kind of like baseball, dueling with what amounts to a bat and a ball and an umpire on a playing field. Kerr spent nearly seven years in his role of developing, maintaining and preparing a 5-acre cricket ground that features rolled clay in concrete with grass atop the clay.
How does preparing a pitch compare to prepping a golf course? “My agronomy schooling was based around golf and sand. My cricket work was based around dense, high percentage of clay. Everything kind of falls into place with the basic rules of compaction, traffic, grass types, that kind of stuff,” Kerr says. “In Illinois, we can’t use ryegrass like we do in the south of New Zealand (colder part of the country), which is highly tolerant of compaction and recovery. Due to the heat and disease stress, ryegrass is not a choice we have in central Illinois.”
Ultimately, Illinois turned out to be where it’s at for Kerr. A chance meeting in Scranton, Pa., started it. “I met my future wife (Lindsey) when I was 19 or 20. We were camp counselors in Scranton, a time in my life when I was backpacking around the world,” he says. “At that time, I thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, and she was going to be a tennis instructor.”
Lindsey was living in Illinois. Kerr kept coming to visit her. Finally, he stayed. They married. He spent a summer with the grounds staff for the Peoria Chiefs, a minor league baseball team. All the while, Kerr spent more than nine years as a cricket curator and prepared multiple cricket fields in the region. That was until nine years ago, when golf entered the equation at CC of Peoria. Kerr had some background in golf, having played it in his youth in New Zealand, where years before the first left-handed golfer to win a major championship, Bob Charles, captured The Open Championship in 1963.
Country Club of Peoria is where Kerr has been on the scene since 2016. Photo courtesy of CC of Peoria
For Kerr, the challenge of a golf course compared to cricket wasn’t exactly similar, but he got the gist. “I cut my teeth on grass. I always just loved the presentations of sports venues,” he says.
Kerr hasn’t been on the premises as long as Dan Curless, but he’s making up ground. “To me, he’s a working superintendent. I like that,” says Curless, 65, an assistant superintendent who started at CC of Peoria in 1982. “He does his office work, and he goes above and beyond the work part of it. He doesn’t just take a trip around the course. He’s out there working, whether it’s spraying, tree work or aerification. I think his cricket grass is like our rough (CC of Peoria is 20-year-old A1A4 USGA greens, Declaration fairways, Penn Links tees and a mix of bermudagrass and tall fescue rough). And I know he just wants to give you the best product we put out there for golfers.”
If there was a major learning curve for Kerr upon his golf course introduction, CC of Peoria Golf Professional Scott Brownfield can see the progress. “He had little background in agronomy, but things have been going very well,” says Brownfield, who’s spent 22 years at the club. “He’s worked well with the USGA agronomist. He’s out there with the crew. A worker. He’s always looking to improve and to learn more and isn’t timid about trying things.”
Assistant Kyle Mooney has spent 10 years at CC of Peoria. It didn’t take him long to gauge Kerr, even when his boss accidentally flipped a tractor. Otherwise, Kerr has proved to be a standout leader and mentor. And it didn’t hurt when Kerr gave Mooney the green light to attend Illinois Central College in East Peoria during the day.
“Jeff is a go-getter, and there isn’t a job he will make anybody do that he won’t do himself,” says Mooney, a six-year GCSAA member. “He’s a very smart guy. He goes to seminars, stays on top of his game. He took the time to help me build my career.”
One of the underrated parts about how Kerr constructed his own career and helped create a foundation for himself in golf has much to do with cricket. “Coming from a more in-house DIY and budget-conscious cricket ground,” Kerr says, “I’ve got plenty of experience in getting it done.”
Example: “Instead of a $850,000 professional bunker restoration, we took four shoulder seasons to hand-tool the lowering/re-siding faces back to original architect specs, waiting for the grow-in, to hand-digging out, checking drain lines, replacing bunker liner and fresh sand. It took a while, but we saved $800,000 and had perfectly functional bunkers again. Before the bunker renovation, we spent at least 130 man-hours for every major downpour due to contaminated sand. Edging cool season grasses for 15-plus years, we lost 2 to 5 feet, and the soil faces just ran into the sand. Easy fix, in my opinion.”
In Illinois, he has fixed up his garage to address the golf career of his son, Jordan. Kerr and Lindsey have two children — Lauryn and Jordan. The latter is a 2 handicap. His rise in the game has Kerr playing more golf as well. They even put a golf simulator in their garage. Their home also houses the spot where Kerr brews his IPA and stout beers. “I add New Zealand hops to give it a taste of home,” he says.
What does he miss about home? “Family. My mates,” says Kerr, who sometimes refers to his CC of Peoria crew as mates. “Beaches. Cricket. Rugby. Mountains.”
That 57-year-old car he drives that has just 75,000 miles on it pays homage to home. The license plate: KIWI. Who knows if he and his family will ever move to New Zealand while he continues to learn the hot and cold extremes of turfgrass that is unlike what he encountered in New Zealand. For now, it’s the satisfaction in what he calls his second career as a superintendent that motivates the person who devours kiwi fruit, skin and all. “What makes me happy is when I get the growth regulator correct. There’s something fun about healthy, fast greens,” Kerr says. “It’s such a good feeling.”
Howard Richman is GCM's associate editor