The CSGA Links Volume 6 Issue 4 August 2018 | Page 24

COURSES
repair with. So I kind of took it as an onion and kept
peeling the onion back or building the onion out each
year. We can’t just do it all in one step. Now I have my
plug nursery up to about 15,000 square feet. I’ve got this
massive nursery behind the shop, it’s really cool, and so
ultimately I could replace a whole green if I had to.
AP: The idea of the plug nursery being that when you
are re-sodding you have these phenomenal old variet-
ies of grass that go back to 1926 when the course first
opened and so they match.
SR: It’s a mix of German bent, it’s a mix of Velvet, it’s a
mix of Pencross it’s a mix of Poa. I mean some of this
Poa here is better than anything else. It’s bullet proof. It’s
matured and transferred to a permanent type [of grass].
It’s pretty good stuff and when we do do plugging it
matches really, really nice.
Tree Removal
AP: How do you take down trees in a university run
forest? You haven’t gone anywhere beyond where
course was when originally built, have you?
SR: Correct. Folks will come in and say Oakmont did
this and whoever did that. But our aerial photograph
from 1934 is our template. We are not clear cut. We have
never been clear cut. But we are restoring the tree avenues
or the playing avenues with the trees back to 1934. That’s
the first documented tree line footprint so to speak. A lot
of it was agronomy because around greens we cut a little
bit more. I’m not an architect and don’t pretend to be an
architect but I do know where east and west and south are.
And back in the day, when they built the 16th green, the
trees were 60 feet tall, and we just took one behind the 16th
green that was 120 feet tall.
AP: That’s quite the difference. What do you have to do
within the confines university structure to be able to
take down trees?
SR: Originally it was really hard. You know, ‘What are you
doing?’ We picked an area between the third and fourth
holes outside the clubhouse. We just wanted to come up
with a stagger row that matched the 1934 aerial. We did
that. We were able to clear out the underbrush and we
were able to get the native grasses looking fairly good. And
it was accepted. So the first year we just did one area and
everybody loved it it was wonderful and it was a success.
So we used that equity in year two and onward, and with
a logging company we were doing a hundred trees a day…
Originally, to answer your question, it was a hard sell. They
had a plan, they had a need, they had a want, but didn’t go
through with it. So year one we said try it, see if you like
it. Year two we went two times that, year three we went
three times, and right through 2009 we were taking down a
thousand a year or more.

We just had a huge storm blow through
Connecticut and there are a bunch of courses and a bunch
of towns and a bunch of schools closed and they really
suffered. Mother Nature’s way of pruning with macro
bursts and microbursts and tornadoes and that kind of
thing. We had several bits of damage around the property
but most of it was inconsequential. Ten years ago we
may not have re-opened this year if that storm had come
through here.
AP: I remember years ago when you had trees down over
the driveway and the course was closed a week or two.
The smallest green at Yale is
“The Short” par-3 fifth
24 | CSGA Links // August 2018
SR: Yeah, that was 2009 and 2010. With the hurricanes that
came through. One had easterly winds and one had west-
erly winds and they both presented all kinds of challenges.
We still have some dead soldiers laying in the woods out
here. We suffer when storms come through but I think
we’ve been pretty good at identifying who the weak sol-
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