Editor’s note: Welcome to a new weekly feature that debuts in The Wire. “The 10-Minute Interview” is just that, a 10-minute – give or take a minute – interview with people throughout the golf industry.
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In 2010, golf course architect Richard Mandell hosted the inaugural “Symposium on Affordable Golf” in Southern Pines, N.C. The two-day event raises awareness of issues affecting the game and promotes the health of the sport and industry.
This year, the symposium will be held March 31-April 1 at Dairy Creek Golf Course in San Luis Obispo, CA. The list of speakers will include J. Rhett Evans, CEO, of Golf Course Superintendents Association of America; Tim Moraghan, principal, Aspire Golf Consulting and former USGA director of championship agronomy; Dick Rugge, former USGA senior technical director; and Ted Horton, ValleyCrest Golf Maintenance senior consulting superintendent.
The symposium is open to the public. For information, visit www.symposiumonaffordablegolf.com.
Q.: What was the impetus for the “Symposium on Affordable Golf,” and how has it evolved in the few short years of its existence?
MANDELL: The origins of the symposium came out of me being at conferences, mostly in the 1990s, and listening to people talk about everything about the industry other than cost, and listening to people talk about solutions to improve the industry and the game and the business, but never talking about cost.
So the origins of the symposium have been there for a long time. Only about five years ago did I have the resources to pull it off. It has evolved into more of a think tank. We don’t have a big agenda, there is no silver bullet to improve the business of golf and make golf affordable or accessible or sustainable.
There are a lot of things that have to happen. So at the symposium we try to approach things by having discussions and the symposium is one big discussion with people in the industry and golfers at the same time.
Q: When people say affordable golf, a lot of people tend to think of the cost in terms of clubs and green fees, but affordable is much broader than that, correct?
MANDELL: Affordable doesn’t mean cheap, we could knock out the symposium on affordable golf in 20 minutes if that was our goal. We don’t want people to slash prices.
Affordable is affordable to design, construct, maintain and operate, and so, hopefully, the owners can be profitable, yet give an affordable product. So that’s what we’re trying to achieve.
We also know affordable is relative. Between a high school kid, me and Donald Trump we all have different visions of affordability. So a lot of the things we discuss at the symposium are not applicable at the highest ends of the industry, yet there are things that places at the highest ends are doing that Mom and Pop can look at and say “Hey, we can do that, as well” and have it help the bottom line, actually.
The three things we seem to discuss the most are cost and affordability, as well as accessibility – growing the game – and sustainability, which is sort of the new word in the business, and, quite frankly, golf courses are as much or more sustainable compared to other land uses.
So sustainability has been around a long time in our industry.
Q.: Has the symposium brought about any tangible change?
MANDELL: It has brought about awareness. One thing it has shown is that golfers aren’t looking for a lot of things we offer. I think the industry is taking that information and deciding a lot of the excesses are not necessary. And I think we’re seeing some of that, generally speaking.
Specifically, there are people who have been to the symposium, leave and then implement specific ideas into their own golf courses. That’s all we can ask for really, because, again, there is no silver bullet. It’s all logic based and all encompassing.
There are facilities that have come to the symposium, learned from other facilities and taken that information home and implemented it. That’s been a blessing. The white papers from the first two SOAGs provide a lot of that information and are available on the symposium website.
Q.: This is the first time that you’re taking the symposium to California, what was the rationale behind that decision? You will also be talking about water use, as well, talk about that.
MANDELL: Because water is such an important element in California, there are multiple talks that touch upon water.
Water is the biggest cost, operationally, for clubs in California – or at least the majority of them – so if there is a way we can minimize water use, we can minimize cost.
The reason we’re going to California is that people have been asking for a while, “When are you going to take it on the road?”, “When are you going to come to California?
Over the last four years, we have had people from Canada and Scotland and people from 13 or 14 states every year, and we’ve had people from California, but the majority of people are from the East Coast.
So we’re trying to spread things out and get a perspective of affordability in California. I don’t know if the business of golf is a national thing, it might be more regional. One of the reasons why the people in California want us to come and do this is to discuss the same issues that we have discussed in the past, but with a California perspective and see how it differs.
There are some talks that we are doing in California that we have done in the past here [in Southern Pines, N.C.] In fact, the first talk I am going to do is an open discussion called “What is Affordable?” That was the very first discussion we had at our very first symposium. I stood at the podium on the stage and said “OK, what is affordable?” and then the conversation just flowed.
What happened is that is established the symposium as a discussion as opposed to a bunch of presentations at a conference. And there are people who have come to each symposium and they understand that this is one of the places they can speak freely because, for some reason, people can’t always speak freely. That’s what some of the people have said to me.
The California perspective is one we’re interested in learning about.
Q.: One of the topics listed for discussion on the agenda is titled, in part, “Is brown the new green?” So I ask, is brown the new green?
MANDELL: I think it is, but when you say that people flip out and say “Oh my gosh … ” and take it for face value. We’re not saying brown fairways, just less than perfect green. Browner green fairways, how about that?
From an aesthetic standpoint perfect green is fantastic, but from a resource standout it sucks things dry and it’s not great for golf course architecture, because perfectly green fairways focus on aesthetics to me more than a patchwork of different shades of greens and browns that are promoting fast and firm conditions, that promote features that really have something to do with how you play the golf hole.
Golf courses that are always green are always moist and or wet and lots of features are not there for strategy and playability, but they’re there for aesthetics. And the ball doesn’t travel as far and they are not as effective as hazards. Nor does undulation become a hazard that is effective also when the course is so wet.
Q.: Open question, what would you like to add?
MANDELL: Although the Symposium on Affordable Golf is a single cog in the industry’s efforts to make the golf business healthier and to make golf more affordable and accessible to the golfer, we need people to come and participate. This is a participatory event and it’s only effective when we have more people participating in the overall discussion.
Pros and superintendents get continuing education, but we really want golfers there, we want green committee chairmen there. This is a worthwhile event to discuss the issues of golf.
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