Fashion trends might start in Paris, but challenges associated with pests, diseases and other issues affecting golf course maintenance often start in Florida, or at least manifest in a more advanced state and for longer periods of time.
Hurricanes, nematodes, mole crickets and many troublesome diseases might not be unique to Florida, but many show up with a veracity often not found elsewhere.
As Hurricane Irma began creeping up Florida's southwest coast on Sept. 10, 2017 at Category 4 strength, at least a dozen golf courses in the Naples area were in the midst of a renovation - including Lexington Country Club.
When Lexington superintendent Laurie Frutchey returned to the course after the storm had passed, she reached out to a few trusted colleagues to seek input on what the event might mean to the renovation. Among those on her speed dial were Bayer area sales rep Zach Lane and Todd Lowe, the former USGA Green Section agronomist and now a member of Bayer's Green Solutions Team.
Progress on the Lexington was set back two weeks. There were other renovation projects in the area that experienced setbacks measured in months, not weeks.
"2017 was a brutal year," Lane said during a Bayer-hosted summit focused on the company's support of superintendents in Florida.
Any support at all was just fine with Frutchey, who has been the superintendent at Lexington for the past 18 years. History has taught her that she can lean on Lane and Lowe when things aren't going so smoothly. So too can other superintendents across the region and throughout the state.
You could see where it was attacking in the profile layer. You could see an orange layer in the grow-in layer. It lasted all year.
A year after the hurricane went through southwestern Florida, almost all the greens on Lexington's front nine were succumbing to a disease eventually diagnosed as fairy ring. Among those she called for help diagnosing Lexington's ailing greens were Lane and Lowe, who was a Florida-based Green Section agronomist for 18 years.
"It took a lot of time on our hands and knees to figure things out," Frutchey said.
Once the problem was diagnosed, "it was a textbook case," Frutchey said.
"You could see where it was attacking in the profile layer," Lowe said. "You could see an orange layer in the grow-in layer.
"It lasted all year."
In-the-field support that sometimes includes recommending competitors' products is one of just a few things Bayer is doing to promote the careers of superintendents in Florida and elsewhere.
Those efforts include the Green Start Academy held jointly with John Deere, that provides career development for assistants, and the Superintendent Grant Program that sends 10 superintendents to the Golf Industry Show. That program was expanded after Irma to include another five superintendents from hurricane-affected courses in Florida.
Among them was Preston Stephenson, a regional superintendent for Pope Golf based at Misty Creek Country Club in Sarasota.
He was fortunate to lose only three trees during Irma, but his modest team of eight did all the clean up work, removing layer upon layer of debris to get the course reopened in just three days.
"You couldn't see the turf," he said.
David Dore-Smith, superintendent at Copperleaf Golf Club in Bonita Springs remembers Irma well, too, including 30 inches of rain over two weekends, 300-plus trees that came down and using a chainsaw just to clear the road on which he lives just so he could get to work and clear more trees.
We don't recommend just our own products.
Like other superintendents, he has a disaster-preparedness plan just for events like Irma, Dore-Smith also remembers phone calls from Lane and Lowe to remind him about other practices to manage his turf in advance of a hurricane, including some unlikely advice.
Their concern was issues like take-all root rot, Pythium root rot and Bermudagrass decline.
"We don't recommend just our own products," Lane said.
"I'll say it, we told him to use Primo (from Syngenta), blast the golf course then shut it down."
Regardless of whether the disaster is weather related, or the sudden onset of disease or pest pressure, it is critical to remain calm and professional, said Gregory Jack, superintendent at TPC Treviso Bay in Naples.
"How are you handling yourself? How are you presenting yourself? What are members seeing?" Jack said. "It's not always about growing grass. It's not always about what you're doing. It's about how everybody perceives you, or how everyone working around you sees you.
"Are you getting enough information to others so they can see what is happening and going on?"
Apparently, that same advice applies to vendors, too.
