As if overseeing daily management for 10 golf courses weren’t enough, summertime brings a whole series of challenges for Kevin Robinson, Pinehurst Resort’s golf course maintenance manager. And higher temperatures are just the start of it: there’s the boys’ and girls’ North-South Amateurs, the U.S. Kids — and, this year, the U.S. Amateur Championship, which will sprawl across the resort’s No. 2 and No. 4 courses from August 12-18. But Robinson is no stranger to preparing for elite-level USGA events: Robinson has worked at Pinehurst since 1992, and he was No. 2’s course superintendent in 2014, when his preparation for the 2014 U.S. Open was universally lauded (well, almost). Pinehurst promoted him to his current position later that year.
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LYING FOUR: This is probably a stupid question, but what’s the biggest difference in your job now, compared to when you were the super at No. 2?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Just more projects — worrying about everything and everybody. There’s just so many fires to put out. But it’s fun. It’s always a challenge to get everything right, and finally we have every course open right now — nothing’s under construction right now.
LYING FOUR: Is this y’all’s toughest time of the year, weather-wise?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Not as bad now, other than No. 9 — they’re still on bentgrass. Bermuda grass has been a lifesaver and a game-changer to people in this industry that live around here.
The third green on Pinehurst No. 2.
LYING FOUR: So what does your relationship look like from day to day with the superintendents at the individual courses?
KEVIN ROBINSON: I get the chemicals and fertilizers and scheduling; they decide when they need to put out a fungicide or a fertilizer application. I have two sources that I buy from. The superintendents come to me if they need to discuss any new or current things that are going on. They run their ideas by me, and most of the time I OK it, but they know to run it by me or Bob [Farren, Pinehurst’s director of grounds and golf course maintenance] first. I’m blessed — I’ve got a bunch of good guys here that’ve been at Pinehurst and worked their ways up.
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LYING FOUR: It just hit me the other day how much tournament play y’all are getting this summer.
KEVIN ROBINSON: Oh yeah.
LYING FOUR: Does that complicate y’all’s job in a way that it wouldn’t if y’all were just getting 100 percent resort play?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Yeah — I mean, you’ve got the North-South — men’s, women’s, and juniors; you’ve got the U.S. Kids; of course No. 4 just had the 15- to 18-year-olds, and we had to watch where they were hitting, because we’re trying to preserve the teeing grounds for the Amateur. But it’s fun hosting all these. It keeps us busy — and it sure is good for the local economy. [laughs]
LYING FOUR: What do y’all’s preparations look like when you have a big event coming up? Let’s say the North-South. What does y’all’s work look like in the weeks leading up to an event like that compared to regular old daily play?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Well with the North-South — unfortunately, we’d like to do more, but we can’t just shut the course down like we do with the Amateur or the U.S. Open. So we have to have guys come back late in the evenings to get some extra mowings on greens, to start speeding them up for the caliber of play that’s coming. You try to get some afternoon closings or just schedule some guys to come in late.
The ninth hole at Pinehurst No. 4.
LYING FOUR: What about when it’s a USGA event? How do they fit into that?
KEVIN ROBINSON: That’s a whole different story. Then you shut down for a week to two weeks prior to the tournament and start fine-tuning everything: extra mowings, dotting every I and crossing every T. Plus, we’re fortunate with nine courses that when we have something like the Amateur or the Open, we can draw from a lot of workers here. We’ll get guys who have worked on No. 2 or No. 4 from the other courses — like assistant superintendents — get them and a couple of their key players from their courses and get them over here to get in our routine. That way, when it gets to be tournament time, we’ve got people who are familiar with the course and ready to work.
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LYING FOUR: Holding the U.S. Am on two different courses — does that make your job easier or harder? Because I could see it both ways. On the one hand, it’s a lot more ground to cover; but on the other hand, each course ought to be getting less wear and tear every day, right?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Right. Having it on two courses — if there’s a huge storm, then it’s gonna be a big challenge to put both courses back together, to fix all the washouts and stuff; and especially if it’s on one of the first four days, when it’s all double tee times. The two practice rounds are double tee, and the two practice rounds and double tee on both courses. If we get a huge storm event in the first four days, then unfortunately we’re going to have to rely on the Rules of Golf to help us out with water standing in bunkers, washed-out areas, and stuff like that. We’ll call in some local help from other courses if something like that happens.
LYING FOUR: Two weeks out from an event like the U.S. Am, what work is left to do?
KEVIN ROBINSON: We’ll close for the week leading up to it, just to get divots healed and patched, some extra mowings, bringing the heights down a little bit on some fairways and surrounds. They’re basically where they need to be right now. That’s the beauty of having the Amateur on Bermuda greens in August: you’ve been conditioning the Bermuda all summer long. You don’t have to worry about doing any sodding or anything like that, unlike if it was springtime and the Bermuda was coming out of dormancy — then you might be worried about some areas. Also, we’re pretty staffed up on help too, you know, because now our college kids have been here all summer long.
LYING FOUR: Is there anything different about the way you set up No. 2 and No. 4 for this event, or are you trying to make them as uniform as you can?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Pretty much as uniform as we can. The USGA will handle all the pin locations and stuff, but for the first two rounds, they’re trying to get through as many golfers as they can, so they’re not gonna make it too difficult. They’re gonna try to get a pace of play where everybody is getting around pretty good.
LYING FOUR: The U.S. Am will be the biggest event on No. 2 since the new greens went on. What’s it like caring for Bermuda greens, versus bentgrass — other than needing less water?
KEVIN ROBINSON: The biggest thing is that we know we’re not gonna kill the Bermuda. The thing about bent in the summertime is that you’re just worried, because you have such a small root system. You’re just hoping to see greens stay alive, and you can’t do as much conditioning because you’re at the most stressful time for that grass. But with Bermuda grass, you’re just concerned with how great you can condition it, because you’re not worried about catastrophe.
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LYING FOUR: So obviously, this is y’all’s first summer of play on the new No. 4 course. Is there sort of a getting-to-know-you period where you just have to find the problem areas as you go?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Definitely, but we knew a lot of it. The most telling times are going into winter, and getting into spring — green-up. You kinda know your trouble areas. We were real worried about the greens, because it was a very wet, cloudy winter. We had some thin spots that we were worried about, but once we started getting some warm days and sunlight — it’s amazing how these Bermuda greens bounce back. There was very little patching and sodding that we had to do. We thought, “Oh God, it’s gonna take us all summer to get them ready, and then we’re gonna have the Amateur,” but that wasn’t the case.
LYING FOUR: When the resort gets ready to do major work on a course, like what happened at No. 4, how early do you get brought into those conversations? I assume Gil Hanse doesn’t just show up on a bulldozer one day and say, “Hi, I’m here to wreck your golf course.”
KEVIN ROBINSON: We get together several times about how we’re gonna attack it and do the job. You have to have a good gameplan when you go into something like this, and we did. We flipped all the sod that we could on the existing course, because it was a wintertime project and we couldn’t wait until spring to start sprigging and sodding — and thank goodness, because with all the rain we’ve had, everything would’ve washed away.
LYING FOUR: I guess you’re coming up on finishing your first 12 full months of play on No. 4. How has that course held up?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Keep in mind, it was basically a nine-month project. A lot of places have the luxury of sprigging their greens in June and not opening until the following June. We opened in September. It’s done very well. Unfortunately, we had, like, two hurricanes right before we opened. They wanted more sandscape, but they paid attention to what was going on, and we went down to look at some courses of ours that have some centipede areas in between roughs and fairways — the non-play areas — and we went down to the Pit golf course that we bought back in 2010, because there’s a lot of centipede out there. The wire grass grows through the areas that are a little sparse. So we put that in some slopes and some wash areas to help fight the washout, and it looks natural.
LYING FOUR: How were y’all able to turn that No. 4 job around so quickly? It’s not like you can crank up the sunlight knob to hurry up a grow-in period.
KEVIN ROBINSON: I think flipping the sod was the big thing. Once we flipped it and got a little warm weather that summer, it was grown in. That helped a lot. Of course, we weren’t only building it — we were having to put it back together as we went. I can’t tell you how many two-inch thunderstorms we had during the project. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times where I wasn’t optimistic that we’d get it open without stuff being washed out, but we managed to pull it off.
Pinehurst No. 4’s 11th hole.
LYING FOUR: And when you say “flipping the sod,” what does that mean?
KEVIN ROBINSON: That means we used the existing sod; they’d get a couple of holes ready, and we’d take existing sod from holes that hadn’t been torn up yet, and take that sod and use it like a sod farm.
LYING FOUR: So you were basically just rotating your sod around.
KEVIN ROBINSON: Yep. That worked out really well.
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LYING FOUR: So you’ve got that classic, sandy aesthetic now on three courses up there — four, if you count the Cradle. Is that something that is becoming more uniform at the resort’s courses?
KEVIN ROBINSON: Eh, I’m not sure. The wiregrass is native to the Sandhills, and I think there’s some areas on the other courses where it would look good. But I don’t think we need to get too far ahead of ourselves and put it everywhere. I think we’re about at our limit. [laughing]
LYING FOUR: Well one of the big selling points on the No. 2 reservation was the hope that it would result in decreased maintenance commitments. Has that happened? I mean, when you look at how much water and time and everything else goes into No. 2 compared to, say, No. 9 — is there a big difference?
KEVIN ROBINSON: We did not decrease the labor hours. The native areas are very difficult to maintain, but it does take fewer inputs, as far as fertilizers go — and obviously, less mowing. We just reallocated our hours; we never cut 10 people off the crew or anything like that. And that’s the beauty of Bermuda greens: normally this time of year, we would be pulling weeds out of bentgrass, hand-watering bentgrass, babying bentgrass. Now, we have people available to do sod projects, fix bunkers, spray weeds in the native areas, things like that, patching divots — more fine-tuning, more grooming than just keeping the place alive and waiting for cooler weather to tackle projects.
LYING FOUR: I can remember watching the U.S. Open in 2014, and folks on TV were basically saying that the native areas on No. 2 take care of themselves. I take it that’s not quite accurate?
KEVIN ROBINSON: No, and there was no book on how to take care of wiregrass, either. We didn’t know. Leading up to the Open, we didn’t spray anything over the top like what we would do over Bermuda grass, because we were scared that we’d spray and kill something that we’d spent hours and hours and hours to get established. And that’s why we’re so picky about seeing carts drive out there — we hate to see carts drive over it, because we know how long it took to get one wiregrass plant established, much less thousands.
LYING FOUR: What does maintenance in those areas look like? Is there anything other than maintaining for weeds?
KEVIN ROBINSON: We tolerate some of the smaller-growing plants, especially little flowering plants. If there get to be too many, then we’ll start to eliminate some of them but not a total elimination. There are certain things like crabgrass and goosegrass and dogfennel that we have zero tolerance for. We’re always getting rid of that stuff. Before the Open, like from 2010 to 2014, it was all about backpack-spraying Roundup when you had weeds, or going out and pulling weeds. In that four years, we’d been doing some testing on what you could spray and when you wanted to spray it — because there’s certain stuff we wanted to grow in there. And we didn’t want to spray a pre-emerge on it and keep certain things we like from growing. And we’re still learning. But they’re also coming out with weed-specific stuff now. We like broomstraw, we like wiregrass and several small flowering plants. You can’t just have sand, or it’s just gonna wash.
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All photos: credit Pinehurst Resort
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