A job is what you do when someone tells you to do it. Art is what you do when no one can tell you how to do it. That is how Tom Zoller attacks each day at Tehama Golf Club, where the Jay Morrish design is his canvas.
Located in the hilltops of Carmel, California, Tehama, is a rustic layout in a pastoral setting that embodies the rugged persona and reputation of its owner, Clint Eastwood. Ensuring the property continues to reflect that image is the job for Zoller and his assistant Gavin Dickson. How they choose to accomplish that is where art enters the equation.
"It's been left to Gavin and myself, you know, whoever is taking care of the golf course, to find the path we are going to follow," said the 58-year-old Zoller, who has been at the course since shortly after it opened 17 years ago.
"It's a real creative environment. After you're here a while, you get a feel for the freedom, then your creativity starts kicking in," added Zoller, a self-described right-brained artistic type. "A lot of clubs give you your marching orders. Here, you're off and marching on your own. It's pretty cool."
Zoller and Dickson ride the course together twice each day, once first thing in the morning and again in the afternoon. It is during those rides together that they decide what they want to do, how they want to do it and when. Because of its location - the property is carved into the side of a high hilltop and is within site of the Pacific - Tehama is unapologetically exposed to the elements as are many other courses along the Monterey Peninsula, and the property always seems to be in a state of flux.
"I think Tehama continues to reveal itself every day. We drive around two times a day, observe things and check for problems. Each day, something will just reveal itself to us, we'll play with it, and if we like what we've done, we'll do more," Zoller said.
"Tehama is always evolving. It's going to change. We want everything out there to look like it's intended to look that way. That takes some creativity."
The pair bring varied experience to the job, which they say has helped foster that creative environment. Dickson, in his fourth year at Tehama, is a graduate of the turf management program at Walla Walla Community College in Washington. Zoller, who played golf locally at Monterey Peninsula College, started his career as a superintendent more than 30 years ago in Oregon.
"We bounce a lot of ideas back and forth off each other," Dickson said. "It brings a lot of balance to what we do."
For example, one of those rides gave birth to islands of turf installed in bunkers on No. 11. And when Zoller was building a split-rail fence on the ninth hole, Dickson suggested erecting a longer one along No. 10 to replace a chain-link fence that prevented golfers from driving over a hillside.
Having a singular owner gives them the freedom to tackle such projects. It also helps when that owner has a vision for the property.
"He has an eye for rugged beauty. If he doesn't like something, he'll say it and we'll tear it out," Zoller said of Eastwood. "We put up the fence because it lends itself to the property. At the time, he was here playing, so we know he saw it. Nothing was said, so we left it in.
"Mr. Eastwood is the greens committee; he's the board; he's everything here."
While Zoller and Dickson enjoy allowing their creative juices to flow, a big part of their job is to make sure the golf course, particularly the greens, are the best they can be. And they're pretty darned good. Many PGA Tour pros, club pros and other superintendents and assistants who pass through Tehama have left saying the bentgrass greens there are the best they've seen.
"The playability of the golf course is always No. 1, and any improvements are our secondary responsibility," Zoller said.
Producing greens that might roll as fast as 13.5-14 for a tournament and keeping them healthy in sometimes-challenging conditions can require an artist's touch at times.
Zoller has worked with Marc Logan of San Francisco Bay-area Greenway Golf on a high-iron, high-sulfate fertility program that also includes the use of surfactants to hold water and desalination products to flush impurities, depending on the plant's needs at any given time. The program is part of a philosophy that keeps the soils on a parabolic roller coaster ride of conditioning that in the long run, Dickson says, produces a plant that is healthier and more resilient to stress.
"If your soils are good all the time, the grass is too active. We want the turf to be kind of stretched out a bit. In the long run, it makes for a stronger plant if it's stressed out once in a while," Dickson said. "We want it to have to work a little bit. We don't want it be riding this flat plane. We want it to be peaked out at times and under stress sometimes."
Developing a greens-management program was one of the topics at last year's Northern California Golf Association Assistant Superintendent Bootcamp. Former superintendent Eric Greytok, CGCS, now of Macro-Sorb and SMS Additive Solutions, told the group they should network with other superintendents and assistants nearby and learn about their fertility programs. Upon hearing that, Dickson said he scribbled onto a piece of paper that 'no one else would agree with our program' and he slid it to Ross Johnson, an assistant at Pebble Beach Golf Links, who was seated next to him. Johnson nodded in agreement.
"It's not a typical greens program, or anything that a university would recommend," Dickson said.
Even California's 5-year-old drought has helped bring out the artsy side of Zoller and Dickson.
The pair have repositioned hundreds of irrigation heads on at least 13 holes to maximize efficiency in some areas and turning the water off completely in others. The result is an even more rustic look that fits right in with the surrounding topography and even improves playability on the golf course.
For example, some of the most severe hillsides on the course, especially those near greens or fairway landing areas, gobbled up errant shots when they were green. Today, most of those same areas are various shades of tan and brown and send golf balls careening toward the green.
"The drought has made the course even more a part of the surrounding landscape," Zoller said. "It's been a real positive. It took a while to find out how to manage our water so that we didn't have failure with the turf on our greens and tees. It also took a while to come up with a program that works. Instead of the drought compromising the golf course, we've come to find out that the drought may very well have made the course better."
Of course, none of this would be possible, Zoller said, without an understanding and supportive owner, great crew and skilled mechanic in Hector Uribe.
"One of the biggest reasons our greens are so great is that we have a mechanic who gives us mowers that can cut greens without undue stress to the tissue that leads to disease and all kinds of other stress," he said.
"He gets the mowers to where the reel and bedknife don't contact each other, but still cut a piece of paper. He's into all that spiritual mower (stuff). We're lucky we get to work for him."
The culture at Tehama also means there are no 60-hour (or more) workweeks and no committee meetings, so everyone - superintendent and assistant included - are able to enjoy a life off the course. For Dickson, that means playing softball on a team with other assistants and superintendents from the area.
"We don't go home stressed. We put in a good day's work, and still have time for softball, working out, golf, all the fun stuff in life," Zoller said.
"We're lucky to have the opportunity to work at such a beautiful place with a good staff, great members and an owner with a great vision."
