At one time in his career, Matt Lean worked in a magic shop. Although today he faces almost-unheard-of challenges and limitations as superintendent at a modest nine-hole course in South Florida, Lean provides big-budget conditions without resorting to sleight of hand or pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
In his sixth season at Monterey Yacht and Country Club in Stuart, Lean has to overcome a host of budget, labor and equipment constraints in the daily performance of his duties. He rarely gets to buy equipment, and when he does it's used, usually coming through a local distributor that acquires off-lease machinery from other clubs.
"Everything I get," he said, "usually has over 1,000 hours on it."
Lean laughs now when he recalls taking a fairway mower onto the course in one of his first days on the job in 2010.
"It was so old that the reels came off when we stopped it," Lean said. "They weren't even bolted on. We had to chain them on."
The unit was so old and so week "it couldn't even carry me up a hill," Lean said. "Then the frame cracked in half one day while I was mowing with it. I asked the club if it was insured, because I was going to drive it into the pond."
Each morning at Monterey Yacht and Country Club is like a 100-meter dash for Lean and his assistant, Joe Dovutovich, a 66-year-old retired steelworker.
Between the two of them, they mow greens, tees and fairways, perform any necessary spray applications by 11 a.m., giving them the second half of the day for detail work and other agronomic practices. Some days, they might not see each other for hours.
"We're on a pretty tight schedule," Lean said. "Joey can go out and mow tees. I can go out and spray behind him or mow fairways. We might not even see each other until 10 or 11. If something happens, if we get an irrigation blowout, we're screwed."
Lean attended turf school at Indian River State College in nearby Fort Pierce, but never finished. He is eager to share some of what he has to do to get his job done each day, but wonders whether there are enough superintendents out there scraping by with a skimpy budget who can appreciate what he goes through every day.
"I honestly don't know if anyone can relate to what we do here," he said.
Although there is a big difference between Monterey Yacht and Country Club and the many high-brow properties surrounding Stuart, MYCC members have the same level of expectations.
A non-descript layout built in 1970 on a grand total of 15 acres of managed turf, Monterey winds through a 55-and-older residential community dotted with dozens of multi-unit condo buildings. About 100 rounds per day are played there from September through March, and in the summer when members aren't playing, some watch from their screened patios each morning to make sure Lean and Dovutovich are playing shepherd over their investment.
To meet their expectations, Lean has become a master at finding ways to do more with less and he does it faster.
He works out of a maintenance facility that is smaller than a two-car garage, and he has to share that space with another department that oversees managing shrubs and other ornamentals.
He grooms greens with a brush system he concocted by attaching the heads of push brooms he bought online to the mower buckets, a system he says saved hundreds.
Instead of using a soil probe to monitor subsurface moisture, he uses a cheaper probe designed for use in the top inch of potted plants. If the probe indicates the soil just below the surface is dry, Lean can confirm or debunk the findings by pulling a quick soil sample.
"I can't afford the bigger meter," he said. "If I'm in the 5 range, I know I'm OK. If it gets below 5, I know it's getting dry. I'll then pull a soil sample and feel the sample at the end."
The club doesn't own a Stimpmeter, so there are only three levels of green speed at Monterey: "slow, fast and faster."
Lean hasn't become a master of doing things the unconventional way in an attempt to save money. The money isn't there, so he finds another way to do things so they get done, otherwise they don't get done. Period.
"I don't look at it as saving money," he said. "I'm trying to find a way to do things efficiently. I'm trying to do things the easiest way we can and get the most out of my time.
"Everything here is a budgetary issue. Inexpensive is what we're about, because we don't have the budget."
Although he doesn't have the sheepskin that other superintendents display framed on their office walls, he is convinced there aren't too many degrees of separation between him and those who produce Augusta-like conditions for TV each week.
"I don't have the pedigree like everybody else has," he said. "I don't have anything against those guys. I wish I was at some fancy-pants course. I love the way they look."
He should know. For years he has been producing the same conditions with far fewer resources.