Behind the Bluff
Uncover best practices to participate in life on your terms. Every week, hosts Jeff Ford and Kendra Till guide listeners with short conversations on trending wellness topics and share interviews with passionate wellness professionals, our private club leaders, and additional subject matter experts offering valuable tips. Each episode conclusion includes Healthy Momentum, five minutes of inspiration to help you reflect and live differently. Subscribe now and discover the keys to living your greatest active lifestyle.
Behind the Bluff
Crossroads: Ever Heard of a Reversible Golf Course? | Adam Deiwert
In this episode, we speak with Adam Diewert, the head superintendent of Crossroads Golf Course at Palmetto Bluff, about the unique challenges of creating and maintaining a reversible golf course. Adam shares insights into the intricate processes behind turf management, the collaborative efforts required for a successful golf course design, and his passion for enhancing player experiences amidst the natural beauty of the Low Country.
• Adam Diewert's background and career journey into turf management
• Overview of the challenges in building Crossroads Golf Course
• The significance of maintaining course quality throughout the seasons
• Understanding the unique design and concept of a reversible golf course
• The role of different soil and grass types in course maintenance
• Collaboration between designers, contractors, and maintenance teams
• The community impact and member experience at Crossroads
• Reflections on wellness and personal growth within the golf industry
Are you ready to live an active lifestyle? Welcome to Behind the Bluff, where we believe every moment of your life is an opportunity to pursue wellness on your terms. I'm your host, jeff Ford, and I'm joined today with Adam Diewert, golf course superintendent at Palmetto Bluff. Today we're going to discuss Crossroads, the first new golf course in almost two decades built here in our South Carolina low country Palmetto Bluff community. Adam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeff, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to share some more information about Crossroads.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a lot of fun because the hype online, the hype with our members, it's real. People are excited about this course and it's been getting a lot of play it has.
Speaker 2:It was really busy when we opened and I think everybody who really had fun coming out there and kind of seeing, like you said, something brand new for the community, something brand new for the golfers.
Speaker 1:And you guys have been open a little over a year now. Is that right?
Speaker 2:We're coming up on a year. Yeah, it was January 17th, I think, last year whenever we opened, so just a couple weeks away from our one-year anniversary.
Speaker 1:Well, this episode's very timely then. Yeah yeah, kind weeks away from our one year anniversary. Well, this episode's very timely then. Yeah yeah, kind of a one year review of what we have going on. Yeah Well, so pumped to have you. It's great to get the different leaders in the different locations of this expansive, beautiful property and someone like you who's kind of more behind the scenes making everything look beautiful and playable. Of course, it's going to be great to just dig into how Crossroads is maintained, how you and the team are able to keep it at the level of playability that it is. Before we dig in there. You can sense my excitement. Let's allow listeners to get to know you a little bit. Can you tell us about your background and then walk us through your daily routine as a golf course superintendent?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I'm. I'm originally from Southern Indiana. Uh, I grew up working in cornfields. Uh, my grandpa was a farmer, my dad worked for a seed company, so you know I've been walking through soybean and cornfields most of my early life, so I'm used to working outdoors.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot of landscaping jobs throughout the past lawn maintenance, all those kind of things you typically hear with people in golf courses. Like, yeah, I love being outside, love working outdoors and it wasn't until I made it through college that I discovered that you could actually get a degree and learn how to take care of grass and learn the science and physiology and everything behind the plants. A whole lot more goes into it than I ever thought possible. But I was like, yeah, I love playing golf, I love working outside. Seems like a great, great career choice and I've been in it almost 17 years now and it seems like it's still working out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you were promoted to head superintendent when the course opened correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. I moved down here in 2022 from the Greenville area. I was at the cliffs at Mountain Park up there.
Speaker 1:Mountain Park relatively new course as well, correct it is new.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we opened that course. I was there for the opening of that course in 2013. So we opened up there. As part of that grow in process, moved to Texas. For four years I was at Trinity Forest in Dallas, got to work there, grow that course in from the ground up. See that built on top of an old landfill.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, An old illegal dump in the city of Dallas that just was construction debris for years and years and the city took it over and some investors found the property. It was like, hey, we need to. This all needs to get redone. Let's build a golf course on it.
Speaker 2:So they built a golf course on a landfill built a golf course on a landfill and the construction team there was incredible with the challenges that we had to face. Every step of the way you think you're making progress and then you'd hit something and slow us down for a week or two.
Speaker 1:Like, would you just find some residual garbage? Trash in the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's newspapers, tires, concrete there's just anything you could think of Putting in drainage. We found like a concrete parking bumper that almost broke our trencher. Putting in some drainage. We found that Found a whole engine block from a truck. Putting in another section of drainage. It was we found, I think one guy found a newspaper putting in irrigation. We found a newspaper you could clearly read and it was dated like 1980 or something like that.
Speaker 1:No way you could still read everything on the newspaper. Did you guys save that newspaper?
Speaker 2:We thought about it, but we decided that it was probably covered in a whole bunch of other stuff we didn't want to keep hanging around.
Speaker 1:Maybe your hands touching it wouldn't be the best we just decided to get rid of it.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it was a very interesting process. That was a great group of people to work with and a great project and hosted the Byron Nelson Tournament in 2018.
Speaker 1:At that course, At that course. Yeah, and Texas. Name the country club again it's Trinity Forest Golf Club. Trinity Forest so it's a pretty well-known course, now active membership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have a growing membership down there. They've hosted a couple of amateur events. It's the home course for the SMU golf team. So the men's and women's golf team for SMU is out there pretty much every day. So they have an 18-hole course, kind of link style, kind of similar to Crossroads in a way, and then they have a whole other side of the property with a nine-hole par-three course, two driving ranges and a short game.
Speaker 2:So the First Tee of Dallas also uses the second driving range up there they have their whole separate facility up there with a building with teaching bays like simulator everything in there.
Speaker 1:This is a pretty expansive operation. It is, and you've got First Tee, you have collegiate athletes and you've got the membership utilizing the grounds. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:That was a lot to keep track of, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine. Now I'm sensing a theme, hearing more about your background. You're the guy that they bring in to help build new courses.
Speaker 2:it seems like yeah, it's one of those things that if you talk to people who have been working on golf courses and they have done a construction or grow in, you're going to find guys like me that absolutely love it and want to do as many as they possibly can.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're going to find people who say I'm a one and done. That was the worst experience of my life. I never want anything a part of that again. So yeah, I've joked before I say you either got to be crazy or stupid to want to do more than one golf course construction, and I've just completed three, Three.
Speaker 1:So Crossroads was your third in your career.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Man Well, I just remember in the director's meetings hearing about how hard you and the team were working and you all completed that project in. It was just under a year, right.
Speaker 2:It was a very quick process, that's for sure. Land clearing on the site really began in December of 2022, basically the week before Christmas, if I recall correctly and worked through December, january and February basically doing all of the getting the trees out and starting to work on some of the bigger subsurface drainage to move the water from one side of the property to the other where the waterway was going. And, uh, then the architecture team from King Collins their guys came on property around February of 23 and, working with Cleland site prep, did all the dirt work, uh, moving everything around, building the features. So all of the the uniqueness, uh, one of the unique things about crossroads is all of the terrain and the elevation change and all that dirt was pulled out from where the waterway is right now.
Speaker 2:So we use all that material to build those tee boxes, build those mounds and all those things. So it was a very time consuming process. You can only move so much dirt. And dirt's not easy to move, is it? It's not too, too easy. It helps whenever you got a company that has all the right equipment to move a decent amount in a short amount of time, but at the same time you can only go so fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then once you get the bulk of of it done, then it slows down because the shapers and all the guys from the uh architecture, the king collins group, you know they had uh two guys working on bulldozers, a couple guys working with excavators putting in bunkers.
Speaker 1:So bunkers are in the beginning of the gorse golf course development.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah they'll, they'll get, uh, get those dug out wherever they want them. They'll build up, let land masses. You know, each site's different, each construction project's different. Um, you know, like crossroads, we built everything up so we were able to, they were able to dig stuff into those mounds and shape those bunkers now, when you say build everything up, basically you move the dirt to create more elevation on the course.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and then, like on Crossroads, holes three, four and number nine on our hammer route all run kind of along the waterway there and those are all dug down a whole lot closer to where the water level is.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. Yeah, Was that to bring in more water, or just so it could slope and the ball could go in the water more likely?
Speaker 2:Yeah, get a little bit more, get some more excitement whenever right there along the water, because everything does kind of shape and shift down towards the water and it's just level enough at the bottom where hopefully the ball won't roll into the water too easily, but yeah it's a real possibility.
Speaker 1:It is a good possibility and I've personally played over there a couple times my father-in-law. He's a huge golfer. He's been a scratch handicap for a long time. I'm nowhere close to that level of play, but you could tell when he stepped foot and had the experience of playing nine holes there. It was mind-boggling to him the uniqueness of the slopes of the course specifically on the greens is what he talked about a lot.
Speaker 1:I'm sure we can dive into that. Those details here in a little bit Now. The waterway you were describing removed the dirt and that expanded the inland waterway.
Speaker 2:Do I have that correct? Yeah, yeah, it will eventually be connected to the rest of the waterway. There's going to be an opening, in kind of where our number four green on the hammer route is. There's an opening in the tree line that will eventually get connected to the rest of the waterway.
Speaker 1:Dang. So this, this course, is still evolving a little bit with the inland waterway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's still a lot of changes, probably you know, with all you know never, know what's going to happen with clubhouse and amenities and everything around that area. The food truck and pavilion area has been a great spot. It seems like a lot of members and even just regular you know the hotel guests coming in. They might not come out and play golf, but there's some really good barbecue out there and there are people that just come out there for lunch.
Speaker 1:I have heard that this is one of the best meals on property. Yeah, yeah, I really have members consistently talk about the barbecue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. It's good. I've had, I've been able to sample a few things here and there. It's really tasty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who doesn't like barbecue?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you don't, probably don't live in South Carolina. Yeah, and oddly enough.
Speaker 2:It's sometimes hard to find good barbecue in South.
Speaker 1:Carolina, so they've done a great job out there, couldn't agree more Well, you've definitely transitioned us right into discussing Crossroads, which I love. So it opened about a year ago. The design team, King Collins Group, and you had Cleland they're basically the dirt movers, Yep, and then your team. Are those the three big players to make the course come to fruition? Who?
Speaker 2:else. Was anyone else involved? Yeah, that was the. That was the big one. Um, king Collins had a couple of uh partners for the project that they brought in uh for the irrigation, uh installation and uh putting everything in the ground.
Speaker 1:Does that take a long time, like irrigation for a golf course.
Speaker 2:It is a very time-consuming process. You know Crossroads. Most newer golf courses being built now use HDPE pipe, which is a really thick, durable plastic which does not break down or lose its strength like PVC does over the long term, so you're supposed to get a lot longer life out of an irrigation system Out of the HDPE pipe, out of the HDPE pipe. Hdpe pipe wow. It takes a certain level of training to actually put that in the ground.
Speaker 2:More difficult than PVC. It is because you know PVC, you can cut it. You slap some glue on there and you put it back together and the glue dries and you're good to go With HDPE. Depending on how thick the pipe is, what size the diameter is, you have to heat the pipe to a certain temperature and fuse it together with pressure for a certain period of time, depending on all those variables. So you have to have a well-trained team that knows what they're doing to really get a good installation in the ground for that Of the irrigation system.
Speaker 1:Now, this was King Collins Group and contractors mainly doing that, or was your team involved too?
Speaker 2:It was a. It was a contractor for King Collins that did the installation.
Speaker 1:Taylor Melton and myself were involved with helping pick where all the heads were going to make sure you guys essentially know how the water is going to drain off the course, or you have a good understanding and you guys are going to be the ones maintaining yeah, we're going to be taking care of the grass and trying to keep it alive. So we uh, uh.
Speaker 2:Thankfully we had a lot of support with Chris Johnson and the development team. It was like, all right, we need to get make sure this is all put in. So this is a good and easy surface to maintain. Easy is all relative, I guess, but uh.
Speaker 1:Anything in life, right yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so we were. We're very fortunate to be involved in that. Where heads are going, where quick couplers. We know we're going to need to water certain areas more frequently. Uh, just because of the soil that's underneath Cause. We can see that as everything's getting built, you know this section of the course is going to drain a whole lot faster. This area is going to hold water a whole lot longer, so we need to put drainage in over here. We need to add quick couplers for easy water applications over here. So it was a good. It's great to be involved with that irrigation installation process early on, so you can see where everything needs to go and see all the little nuances that the soil is going to give you in the long run.
Speaker 1:And then that just allows you to be prepared once you take over leading the course. Essentially, yeah. And it's. It's interesting to hear the backstory of how you guys work together in the beginning to to get that drainage right and so that both teams were collaborating together, yep.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, we had a good. They had a very good installation team for the sod. Uh, those guys I mentioned earlier is a very brief. It was a very quick window for establishment of that course. It was yeah, uh, we didn't start putting grass down until July 25th of 2023. And we got the last piece of grass laid on the golf course on August 31st. So just over a month we had all the grass laid, all the green sprigged.
Speaker 1:And in your experience would you say that's a fast turnaround to lay all the grass.
Speaker 2:For the amount of grass that we put down, it was a pretty quick. It was a pretty quick, short timeframe. How much grass did y'all?
Speaker 1:roughly put down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we, we, we laid um. There's about 35 acres of maintained short grass, so yeah, we had even it's probably closer to like 38 acres of sod by the time you take into account all the bunker faces and all of those spots as well. So it was a lot of work laying sod. You know, when you get to a big, wide open area it goes super fast because they bring them on these big rolls. They have a nice little machine that picks up the roll and a good operator can lay one out really quickly.
Speaker 2:And you got guys kind of making sure it's all butted up against the rest of it.
Speaker 2:And then we yeah, we try to get it as even as we can before the sod goes down, and then that's when our team comes in and we start working on smoothing the surface out. After the grass goes down. We put a lot of sand out top dressing fairways early on from in that process, which is something that me and Taylor and Chris really wanted to make sure we got on top of early just to help give us a better surface, a better, a better playing surface from the beginning, from the get go.
Speaker 2:And, uh, it's just paid off. So I think right now we're in, we're in pretty good shape and we're getting it better and better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear nothing but good things about the quality of the course and, as someone who doesn't know much about how you create a course from start to finish, it's interesting to hear that sand is a huge component of this. Huh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sand is big. The more sand below the grass you have, the better it's going to be in drainage and you're going to have a little bit more difficult with nutrients because all the nutrients tend to just flush through sand a whole lot faster because there's not as much organic matter in the soil for all the nutrients to hold on to. So you have to increase your fertilization a little bit more because of that. But yeah, whenever you get sand going down on top which is a one thing that a lot of golfers initially they don't really like whenever they come to the golf course on a, you know, a Tuesday at Maeve river or a Wednesday at crossroads after we're closed during the summer, on those days you know we'll have a nice layer of sand over most or all the greens Interesting.
Speaker 1:Not even when you punch them, not even punch them.
Speaker 2:Maybe not every week, but probably at least every other week during the summer, when the grass is really growing on the greens. It helps smooth out the surface. It fills in all the little ball marks, all the little spike marks from shoes and all that stuff. It fills in the the little voids in the grass and the canopy, so you have a much smoother surface which gives you a better ball roll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're also diluting, like the, the thatch layer in the grass which provides a firmer surface, because the more that you have underneath your, your grass layer, which is basically all your dead grass material growing, uh, that's decaying underneath the surface, uh, the more you have of that, the spongier it is, so the softer the greens are. So whenever we're out there, top dressing through the summer, we're helping, you know, give your ball a better roll on the green. We're providing a firmer surface because we're diluting that thatch layer with each application, because there's less material getting broken down in there.
Speaker 1:So, man, the process is complex.
Speaker 2:There's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well understanding now that sand such an important component is kind of mind blowing, because you always think about that as a one time, a year thing as someone on the outside looking in, and just to go back, y'all laid about 38 acres of sod. The course, at Crossroads. It's about 51 acres.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole, the whole property, the whole site is right around like 51, 52 acres, from the edge of the water to the tree line, uh, on all four sides.
Speaker 1:So well, yeah we.
Speaker 2:So we have 35 acres worth of fairways, we have five acres worth of greens, and then so, yeah, that leaves us with there's a little over an acre and a half on bunkers, so that leaves us with about 11 acres worth of native areas out there, which-.
Speaker 1:The tall grass, that kind of lines some of the fairways.
Speaker 2:Some of the golfers listening to this are cringing right now because that was probably their least favorite aspect of the golf course this year. And you know, native areas on a new golf course is something that usually takes about three to five years to really get established the way you want. Your first year you're still trying to grow everything in. You're trying to get everything established as much as you possibly can. Year two you're trying to figure out all right, this area did really well. We need to adjust stuff in this area and now we're also trying to keep areas playable.
Speaker 2:So golfers aren't losing golf balls as frequently.
Speaker 1:So that's actually something that you and the team consider.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The ability to at least find your golf ball if it goes in the big fields of grass, if you will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we're. You know, while we're out there with the guys, we're working on the course. In the afternoons, we're watching where people are playing. We're watching where golfers are typically hitting tee shots. We're watching where golfers are typically hitting approach shots into greens.
Speaker 1:Members, if you're listening, we're watching is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2:That's so cool to hear. We're not. We're not intentionally, you know. We're trying to stay out of the way and everything like that. But we're also trying to be close enough, like we can see what's what you guys are experiencing on what you're out there playing. So we want to know ways that we can help make your game more enjoyable, make your round more enjoyable, and one notch that golf kind of has against it is it's a very slow game.
Speaker 2:Some people don't want to be out there for five hours. And one great thing about Crossroads you can get out there and be around in nine holes in two hours or less.
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly I think the second time we had gone out on a super hot summer day and we probably played in 90 minutes. Yep, I'm not the type of person who looks for my ball. If I can, I'll look once and then I'll pretty much pull one out of the back if I need it.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, you're not going to win any money. Yeah, not worried about the $3 I lose or whatever. You know, style of ball I'm playing, oh man.
Speaker 1:Well, I it's great to hear about your world and the detail of how you're assessing things, because it sounds like you're in year two Now. It's about making it more playable, billy to find the ball, some of these finer points that really just can't happen in the first year because stuff has to grow in Yep yeah.
Speaker 2:It takes a, it's a. It's a very time consuming process and there's a lot of work that goes in. People don't usually always see They'll see the sand going out. They'll see the you know, the aerification holes during the summer when we're punching holes through the fairways and the greens. But it's doing all that work and evaluating all the other stuff. You know we're making sure bunker depths are consistently checked so nobody's hitting the bunker liners in the greens and breaking their clubs breaking their wrist, anything like that, you know.
Speaker 2:Just like May River, they have a bunker liner. That's gravel with a polymer over it to allow water to drain through it. Crossroads has a different one, which is basically concrete with a different polymer in it which allows the water to move through it. So you know, if we get our sand too thin and somebody takes a nice full swing and they just find concrete it's not going to feel very well, it's not going to feel very good.
Speaker 2:So you know we do what we can to help make sure that, you know, the bunkers are consistently, have the same amount of sand all the way across, so nobody's going to find that concrete Um, and it also plays better. As you get more consistency it's easier to rake out, and all those things. So we're looking at all that stuff. We're looking at where we can improve areas in the native areas Constantly. We're looking at things to. You know, look at the edges of the holes. Thankfully you know crossroads. We have two rows of the property that have trees, unlike May River who has trees everywhere.
Speaker 2:So we have a lot smaller area to look at on trees and all that stuff, but we're looking at. Well, can we thin an area out right here? So people are hitting their golf balls here an awful lot. Let's kind of take some of this scrubby brush underbrush material out right here so people can find their balls a little bit easier. Nobody's hitting the ball over here, we can just leave this stuff a little bit.
Speaker 2:Leave this a forest, so yeah so it's all that, it's all that kind of stuff, you know, and we're, you know, myself at Crossroads, taylor at Crossroads Michael and Jackson, and Jameson over at May River, and Chris is, chris is watching both of both courses. I always, we're always looking at these little things, trying to figure out ways to make things just a little bit better each and every week, I'm sensing there's a lot of nerdiness around it all. There is, yeah, Just knowing Chris knowing you and the team.
Speaker 1:It's pretty parallel with kind of the details that my team and I try to think about. It's so refreshing Like you're really thinking about the member experience every time you assess the courses. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's the playability and then their experience. Out there is always like the top. There's two top things that we look at. We're looking at the health of the turf and we're looking at the the ability of the members to experience the course. So if we can get those two things to work in connection with each other and work together, then people have a great experience. We have a great golf course. Uh, and yeah, sometimes we have to airify greens, airify fairways and kind of make golfers a little disappointed because they're not getting, you know this quick greens like they're used to and everything like that. But in the longterm it's helping for a better golf course. It's working for a healthier golf course, which allows for a better experience.
Speaker 1:Just part of the boxes that have to get checked. So these courses maintain the playability that y'all are able to offer. Now we haven't spoken much about Crossroads and how it's been described as fun and flexible, versatile and reversible. Can you better explain to listeners what a reversible golf course is?
Speaker 2:Confusing whenever you hear about it Whenever I first heard it was going to be a reversible golf course. I have never seen one Doing a little bit more research over the last year or two. There's only really a handful of reversible golf courses, especially in the U? S. We're probably one of less than 20 in the country it goes all the way back to like the 1870s.
Speaker 1:That the first like reversible courses made.
Speaker 2:St Andrews. At the old course at St Andrews was originally rotated on routings every other week. So they played the routing that everybody plays now and they reversed it every other week. And I just found a thing, probably about a month or two ago, and they started doing that again. You can try to win a lottery ticket on their website to try to go. They'll do one week a year. They started it last March or April, so each March or April, kind of depending on the calendar, they'll go and they'll set the course up in the reverse routing.
Speaker 1:So you can play it.
Speaker 2:So you can play it in that reverse route that people haven't played in decades.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a bucket list.
Speaker 2:It would be really neat.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It seemed like the lottery system filled up very quickly for I would imagine, I would imagine, but yeah so yeah, reversible courses have been around for for a long time, but there really aren't a ton uh being built.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think one of the things you know, all golf course architects they have their different styles, they have different things they try to work on. They have have different things they implement on each of their designs to kind of give it like their signature feel. And you know, once you kind of work or play on a golf course designed by one architect, if you go somewhere else in the country you're going to see similar aspects. Um, and it's a little bit easier to do on a course you know that's going out nine holes and coming back with nine holes or you got a definitive routing that you can follow. Um, one thing that Rob Collins was talking about during his process is you know he would be out here frequently because he's looking at things from a 360-degree view on the course. If he puts a bunker in somewhere, he has to look at how it's going to affect people playing from the complete opposite direction.
Speaker 1:That has to spin your head. And he said it took a decent amount of time yeah really you know and I bet you can like put it in one way and then you like think you've been thinking about for a while and then you're like I can't put it in like that, yep yeah so, and that's, and that's the great part about seeing the design process and seeing the construction process.
Speaker 2:You're like one week you'll go and you'll see a bunker there and then the next week or after they come back and look at it, that bunker has completely changed shape or has completely been filled in and moved, you know, to another spot on the hole. And it's, you know, looking at, you know they have to consider most people's ability, they consider the really good golfer's ability, they consider the new golfer's ability and they're strategically placing all these things out there on the golf course. But Rob and his team had to do it on one spot for two different directions.
Speaker 1:So uh, it's pretty impressive, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did a really great job with the design there. Uh, all the effort that his team put into it really gave us a great product to work with.
Speaker 1:Are there any challenges that you and your team face as a result of it being a reversible course?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know there's with being a reversible course, so we can turn it around and play it one direction one day and we'll flip it to the other direction the next day. We'll play the hammer once one day. We'll play the press the next day.
Speaker 1:And hammer and press are the names for the two different setups. They are, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of these areas that we have, as a lot of people have played out there, they're well aware that we have a smaller site, like I said 52 acres of property to fit nine holes of golf on and then flip it, so you've got another nine holes the next day and, looking at it, there's a lot of places where, um, you know, the tee boxes are really close to the greens and the tee boxes are also relatively close to some landing areas for a lot of players. Uh, so safety has been kind of a a thing we've been aware of. You know, making sure people are paying attention to where, as a golfer, where you're hitting, make sure you are looking for other people on tee boxes, like it might be landing in that area. If you play like I do, you have a slice.
Speaker 1:You never know where the ball is how far right the ball is going.
Speaker 2:Um, but at the same time, on our end we also have a small site, which means things are close together, which means there's not a lot of room to get from one spot to another without just consistently beating up the turf.
Speaker 2:And that's one thing we notice a lot especially this time of year, as the grass is going dormant, Um, whenever we take carts out, um, when our guys are taking carts out to go maintain the course, each day when golfers have carts out there. There's a few spots on the course that you know. We have a very finite amount of space, and so we have to drive the equipment in one area and it gets beat up very quickly.
Speaker 1:So the grass gets beat up.
Speaker 2:It's not growing as fast this time of year as the grass goes dormant when it gets cold. It goes dormant first because it's less healthy of a plant, and it stays dormant longer because it has been trying to use up all its energy to kind of just stay alive on the roots and then so we have to increase those fertility rates and try to do other things that we can to help get that grass, give it a little push whenever we get the right weather when does uh grass become like undormant, like what's this?
Speaker 2:the months that you typically see it all kind of varies depending on what grass you have you know we have uh, north bridge bermuda grass on the fairways and t's all the short grass out. There is north bridge. Uh, the greens are tiff eagle bermuda grass. So Bermuda grass really starts to slow down its growth when the soil temperatures get below 60, and then it'll go dormant once soil temperatures get below 55, 50.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's based off the soil temperature.
Speaker 2:Yep, and we're seeing with the North Bridge. You know it really goes fully dormantant, much closer to that 50 degree soil temperature range than some of the other varieties of bermuda grass and also greens up a little bit faster. Once you get above that 50 degree soil temperature it doesn't actively grow until you get above like the 60 65 degree soil temperature in that, in that primary root zone and that like top three or four inches below the grass. So it's really what we're looking at and you know like you're talking about nerdiness before and all this stuff. You know soil temperatures is not something most people think of, but soil temperatures are huge for one. You know our winter growing window is.
Speaker 2:It's also key for determining when some diseases are present, when different insects are active and all those things. So we look at all that stuff to kind of determine when we're making applications for pests across the course as well. So there's a lot of that stuff that we're considering too. But yeah, and and it'll, it'll grow. Bermudagrass grows really well once you get above 70 degrees on the soil. The warmer it gets, the more it grows.
Speaker 1:Fascinating.
Speaker 2:Bermuda grass. Really it's a warm season grass. It loves the warmer weather. It loves the warmer soil. May River overseeds every year. I'm sure you'll get into this with Michael. This is the second year they've overseeded the course with ryegrass and ryegrass is a cool season grass so it does better in the cooler weather. So when that like weird spot for bermuda grass where it's not really doing anything, from like 45 to 60 degrees in the soil temperature, that's prime weather for ryegrass.
Speaker 1:So it's like the opposite yep so it'll.
Speaker 2:It will also, once the soil temperature gets low enough, it will go dormant as well. But you know Bermuda grass everybody gets that ugly yellow color. When am I going to have green?
Speaker 1:grass again. That's got to trip out your team, like if some of your teammates are working over at May River and then they transfer over to Crossroads it's like wow, this is two different scenarios. Yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:It takes a little getting used to. In the past Palom. Uh, I had a very brief window of working with the past Palom grass at may river. I was only over there for 10 months before I moved over to crossroads and, uh, you know it's a finicky grass and it's it grows like it prefers the weather, like Bermuda grass does. It likes the warmer weather and everything Um does it likes the warmer weather and everything Um. But it also tends to stay greener a whole lot longer in the fall too. So it really takes a really good cold snap before you really see the past palim going dormant as well. So each each grass variety is different.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and it seems like, as a superintendent, you've, you've got to know how these grasses respond to the weather and the temperatures. Yep, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know the good part is we have a lot of resources available.
Speaker 1:Uh, ways of testing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we have, uh, there's all sorts of research data from from universities that do, uh, all sorts of studies and tests on the different turf varieties before they even get released. There's a whole evaluation process that turf species go through varieties before they get released as a as like a brand of grass or whatever, and so there's all sorts of data through all those trials and that's what they look at to pick which one they decide to move forward with.
Speaker 1:So you get which one's going to be right for the property.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then that's the great part about about here is we have all. We have all those different options open to us. Just talking with Chris, early on, whenever I started out here, I was like, so why Pass Palum? I kind of knew Pass Palum loves saltier water. It handles the salt buildup in the soil a little bit better. So you've got places like the Ocean Course at Kiowa and all their courses. They have very salty water. They have terrible water quality, high salt content. You throw Bermuda grass on there. That stuff is not going to make it through a summer.
Speaker 1:Not smart, you put Pass.
Speaker 2:Palum out there. It's going to make it through the summer.
Speaker 1:And it's going to thrive and it's going to do great.
Speaker 2:All of the weeds really don't like the salt in the water as well, so you have a lot less weed pressure, so the grass really loves it and it works out. You know, and being this close to the May River and this close to this much salty water, it wasn't clear whenever May River was being built, like how long the water quality would be good, good. So it's kind of one of those things you put in for the worst, the worst case scenario, in case we do get really salty water. Thankfully, for for Palmetto Bluff and May River, I mean all the water quality around here as far as keeping plants and grass alive, it's a very high quality water. It's not very salty at all.
Speaker 1:So it worked out. Yeah, Random question how? How great does your lawn look?
Speaker 2:oh, with all this knowledge my yard looks like crap.
Speaker 1:It's terrible yeah yeah, focused over here most of the time, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, one of the one of the things that, uh, it's kind of like, uh, if you know any auto mechanics they have the worst cars, they know what situation to keep the car running. Uh, but it's. It's the oldest and most run downdown car on the road. So it's the same thing with, at least for me, there are a lot of superintendents and people in turf that have the best-looking lawns in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:You can go one of two ways it's either going to be Rockstar or it'll be a lawn like yours.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of time, effort and money to make your lawn look like it does on a golf course. There's a lot of uh time, effort and money to make your golf, your lawn, look like it does on a golf course. Uh, there's a reason we're out on the golf course as much as we are. It takes a lot of effort, Um, and whenever I get home I'm not ready. I don't want to do that up to my yard. The parallel is very similar with someone who's a chef.
Speaker 1:Like chefs, don't typically love to cook when they're at home. So I totally understand the uh, the, the, the reality of it all. I got one other golf related question for you Favorite hole at crossroads, and please think about it in the perspective of when uh it's the course is going one way and when the course is going the other way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, that's that's tough right.
Speaker 2:It is pretty tough. They're all very fun Visually. I think my favorite hole out there has got to be the par 3, number 4. On the hammer route You're teeing off on a ridge line and you're hitting down towards the water, towards a big green surrounded by bunkers water in the background. Visually that's a great hole. It looks like it's easy because you've got a massive green surrounded by bunkers water in the background. You know that is a visually that's a great hole. It it looks like it's easy because you got a massive green down there. It's a par three um, but it's tricky yeah it's not there's.
Speaker 2:It looks flatter than it is. Yeah, and the ball can run away from you really quick and there's so many bunkers around there and the native bunker behind it. Uh, you know, whenever rob was designing that kind of whole greens complex area, he had kind of like Pebble Beach from the 1950s. I'm racking my brain trying to remember which hole it is. Somebody out there listening will know right off the top of their head. But yeah, that's what he was envisioning with that whole greens complex. It's not an easy hole but it looks good.
Speaker 1:This is par three, hole number four on the hammer route.
Speaker 2:That's a good warning for folks who are playing it or who may come with their families to play it.
Speaker 2:I think on the press route it's an unorthodox. Nobody really plays it. I don't see too many people playing this T location the construction superintendent for King Collins, their on-site kind of design manager supervisor making sure everything's getting put in and the orders and all that stuff we're there working on a T box. It's right there behind hole number four. It's a lower tee box which you can use for number nine on the hammer route it's right down there by the water, tucked in kind of down there by the railroad tie retaining wall. But on the press route it's a par three going to play a number six. You can't see the green. You can't hardly see a flagstick from down there. But if you know where to hit the ball you can get it up there and the slope will run it all the way onto the green.
Speaker 1:So you can get a big drive on this hole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, it's. It's a relatively short hole, it's. You know, maybe from down there it's probably 140, 150 yards, depending on which flag you're playing to um. So, part three, yeah, part three, it's. But, like I said, do you like the part?
Speaker 1:threes because you only have to. You just have to take fewer shots for me. Yeah, it's a little bit easier.
Speaker 2:I see the theme but yeah, it's a it's, it's a very fun. It's a very fun hole. One of my, one of my absolute favorite things about crossroads uh, in general, all the things I've been talking about are very cool features about it. Uh, one of my favorite places on the golf course uh, not very many people know about it. Uh, it's the bonus tee that's on the very big mound. It's kind of right between number two, hammer, and three, hammer. Right beside that green, in between number two, three and five on the hammer route, there's a big mound right in front of a wetland with the pine trees and there's a tee box up there and you can see every green on the property.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Except for the two down along the water over towards the clubhouse, there are two greens on the course that you cannot see from that mound, but other than that you can see every other green on there.
Speaker 1:That's got to be a unique feature to Crossroads. Not every course is built out like that.
Speaker 2:No, or you?
Speaker 1:could see seven out of nine greens.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, there's actually 11 greens complexes out on the golf course.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you can see nine out of 11? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep and uh, you know, on a, on a day that is not very crowded, um, you can go up there and kind of create your own course so you can come back there and you can play all. There's so many crossroads. Like I said, it's a fun course. You can get creative as you're if you're a player out there, especially on days where it's not quite as crowded. On days where it's busy, you got to go in the route that's out there. You can still have some fun, create where you tee off from to an extent.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's one of my favorite features out there is just, uh, getting up there and, like I said, you can pick which green you want to hit to you can. It changes. You know a par three or par five on number five on the hammer route. You can turn it into a short little par three up there. You can try to hit it around some pine trees and make it to number one on the hammer. There's so many different shots up there that you can play a par five from there all the way towards the putting green, towards that area, and it's fun. You've got all sorts of different features obstacles, bunkers and mounds and stuff that you never would think about hitting like being in play. But whenever you get up there, everything that you say like oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's different. You're speaking to the versatility it's. There's a lot there is a lot yeah. And and fun to know that you can. You see that many greens from one tee box? Yeah Well, adam, I've so enjoyed your passion. You can tell you the team. There's a lot of heart that goes into the Crossroads project and keeping it up to speed. The tinkering is continuing to go on, as we've well heard. This is at the end of our episode now, so I would love to hear what does wellness mean to you?
Speaker 2:I think wellness is something that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. You know, people see me walking down the street or walking around Palmetto bluff and, like man, that is the physical specimen of wellness.
Speaker 2:I get that all the time about you, adam uh, you know, only slightly overweight, uh, but no, I mean, I think you know for me, you know wellness has changed a lot throughout I'm 42 years old. It's changed a lot over the last 30 years. You know different life phases and everything like that. You know, during construction at Crossroads, you know we were working anywhere. We're averaging maybe 14, 15 hour days from.
Speaker 2:August through October, through um october, november, just trying to get everything done with that condensed window. So wellness for me at that time in my life was being able to wake up the next morning to make it to work. Uh, you know, this time, you know it's. It's uh, january. What are we on?
Speaker 2:second, january 2nd, so everybody's looking at, you know, january. What are we on? Second, third, january 2nd, so everybody's looking at New Year's resolutions, all that stuff. For me, it's like you hear people talk about being a little bit better each and every day, one thing that we try to look at on the golf course we've talked about it a little bit we're changing things here and there. We're trying to make it better and better, and I think that's the same for me as well when we're in correspondence with wellness. I'm just trying to find a way. That might not be getting physically better, but I'm getting a little bit sharper mentally. I'm trying to learn more, study things from various different backgrounds you know, talking with guys that we work with, learn stuff from different countries you know a lot of that and then working on getting physically a little bit better as we go through as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I like this concept of always trying to get a little bit better, and I like the concept of you're going to have different seasons in your life when you're opening a golf course and sometimes wellness is going to look a little different during that period of in your life, because that's that's purpose. When you're building something from the ground up, purpose is wellness just as much as the physical, the mental, the emotional. And I think you're exactly on point with that definition of tinkering in the same parallel that we do with the golf course or with our professional lives. How can we get a little bit better physically? How can we get a little bit better physically? How can we get a little bit better mentally? And what do we need the most?
Speaker 2:today, yep, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, adam, uh, we pretty much could keep going I think for another hour, no problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, I have enjoyed hearing more about crossroads, the intricacies and just huge thank you to you and your team for the member experience that y'all provide over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thanks for having me on. It's been, uh, it's been fun talking about crossroads. It's such a special place. It's different than anything else in this area. It's different than a lot of places in this country. So, uh, you know you, always one recurring theme or comment that we hear people was like man, I feel like I've just gone and I've walked onto a course in Scotland.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, so it's. It's neat to see something different here and it's fun to talk about it. It's a great. It's a great place. If you haven't got out there to play it yet, if you haven't got out there to the food truck, if you haven't gotten out there at all, make sure and try to find some time here in 2025 to stop in at crossroads. It's a it's a fun place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very special. Well, listeners, feel free to hang out with me for a few more minutes and get your healthy momentum for the rest of your week. Thanks, adam.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 1:There are 86,400 seconds in a single day. Are you getting the most out of them? If you're anything like me, there are days you wish you could have back, there are hours that get away from you, and there are minutes that you absolutely waste. It's never necessarily intentional, it just happens. I live with a broad vision in mind that includes the belief that everyone deserves to live the life they're meant to live. Aligned with this vision is my belief that you deserve to get the most out of your life, because we never know how much time we have on this earth. Often, when a loved one passes or a life event rocks our world, we forget to remind ourselves that life is an absolute gift, a gift with an expiration date. When you start to live life with the understanding that the 1,440 minutes you have each day may not be there tomorrow, you start to act differently, you approach life in a completely different manner, and the best part of it all is that you begin showing up as your true self. So for this week, let's remind ourselves that life is an absolute gift. We all have an expiration date. Use this fact as inspiration to get the most out of your 86,400 seconds each day.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed learning more about Palmetto Bluff's newest golf course Crossroads. If I do say so myself, Adam Diewert his passion is absolutely infectious. He is an asset to us here at Palmetto Bluff. I wanted to take the time to let y'all in on a few announcements, one of which is a huge milestone for Kendra and I.
Speaker 1:This is our 50th episode of Behind the Bluff. We hope you've been enjoying the content. If you have, please scroll to the bottom of your podcast app and give us a rating, preferably five stars. We hope that we can make a difference in more people's lives. And if you were with us for our three-part series on the Staircase of Change, we referred to a template and we wanted to give you an email address so that you could reach out to us if you would like to receive that template. The email address to get that free template is wellness at palmetto bluffcom. We would love to send that your way so that you can not only be present, get direction, but take action in your life. Until next week, Remember to actively participate in life on your terms. Thanks everyone.
