Holistic Approach

The Players Club at Deer Creek is largely self-sufficient for its golf course construction projects, and a solid supplier relationship helps to ensure that the equipment needed for any job is always at the ready.

Projects are never in short supply at The Players Club at Deer Creek in Omaha, Neb. From building a short-game facility to renovating bunkers, the grounds maintenance staff always has plenty of in-house renovation work to do.

“I have a great staff of skilled guys,” says Head Superintendent Ahren Wonderlich. “We’re not afraid of any challenge. I have a lot of faith in my staff to get it done.”

In addition to Wonderlich, The Players Club grounds crew includes two full-time employees (an assistant superintendent and a mechanic) and 14 or 15 seasonal employees, to maintain 27 holes of links-style golf on two courses. The 18-hole Championship Course, designed by Arnold Palmer, features rolling bentgrass fairways as well as natural wetlands and waterways across nearly 350 acres. The Highlands 9, designed by Palmer and Ed Seay, includes three par 3s, four par 4s, and two par 5s and features bentgrass tees, fairways, and greens.

To strengthen the support that The Players Club staff needs not only for everyday maintenance of its property, but also for the special projects it takes on, the club began to participate in a fleet management program in 2012 with Jacobsen, the Textron company with U.S. operations based in Charlotte, N.C. The Players Club has always had Jacobsen equipment on hand, but it acquired additional pieces when starting the program. “Ninety percent of my shop is [now] orange,” says Wonderlich, referring to Jacobsen’s signature color.

The Players Club’s fleet now includes two LF550 fairway mowers, an AR-522 contour rotary mower, an R311T rough mower, and three ECLIPSE 322 riding greens mowers. While all of the equipment serves its purpose, Wonderlich says the greens mowers are especially indispensable to his operations.

“Without greens mowers, we don’t have golf,” he explains. “You’re judged on the quality of your greens, and without the proper equipment to get the job done, you have nothing.”
The ECLIPSE mowers are known for a quality of cut that is comparable to walking mowers, he notes. “You can adjust the reel speed and increase the height of cut,” he says. “You can cut more blades of grass without sacrificing the height of cut. You can control the height of cut, which leads to healthier grass, and still maintain a quality ball roll and quality green speeds.” The property’s typical mowing height is between .115 and .120 inches, with a frequency-of-clip setting of .120 inches.

Hands-On Ownership
Wonderlich and his team are further supported in their efforts by Steve Merkel, CGCS, who serves as an agronomic advisor to The Players Club. The property currently owns about two-thirds of its Jacobsen equipment (primarily the pieces that are used on a daily basis), Merkel notes, and has a lease-to-own agreement on the remaining one-third.

“We’ve had good luck with the quality of the equipment, and we’ve had great service and support from Turfwerks, our local dealership,” Merkel says. “From equipment acquisition to finding creative ways of keeping payments down, we’ve been pleased with Jacobsen’s relationship-building and holistic approach to fleet management.”

Bunker Mentality
Beyond reliable support for day-to-day operations, the Jacobsen relationship has also helped The Players Club with its special projects. Currently, Wonderlich’s staff is renovating greenside bunkers on the Championship Course. “We’re making them smaller and reshaping them,” Wonderlich reports.  His staff has completed its work on the greenside bunkers on the back nine, and will finish the front nine this year.

“We have plans to work on the fairway bunkers next, to fill in some that don’t come into play,” Wonderlich adds. “Some of them are there for aesthetics, but it doesn’t make sense to maintain them. We’re trying to make the best decisions on which ones to change, and which ones to eliminate.”

Overall, the 27 holes at The Players Club currently include about 130 bunkers, many of which are quite sizable. “Bunkers eat up a lot of our time,” says Wonderlich. When he first came to The Players Club in June 2011, the property had to bulldoze two bunkers that took 30 minutes each to rake. In addition, reveals Wonderlich, some of the bunkers have extreme, high faces, and “after a storm, it would take two or three days to put them back together.” This time-consuming process was the driving force behind the renovation project, he adds.

Already, The Players Club crew has seen a reduction in the amount of time it spends on bunker maintenance for those that have already been renovated. Additional productivity gains are provided by three Jacobsen Groom Master II bunker rakes, both for day-to-day needs and to harvest sand for the renovation. The club also made use of its two utility vehicles from Cushman, another Jacobsen brand, to haul sand and gravel for the project. “They were instrumental in finishing up the work,” notes Merkel.

Along with the ongoing bunker work, The Players Club at maintenance staff also completed in-house construction of a short-game facility last fall. The 8,000-sq.-ft. facility also includes a putting and chipping green. “When our membership grew, that’s when we looked at the addition of our practice facility,” notes Tim Halpine, General Manager of The Players Club at Deer Creek. “We had a range, but no true short-game facility. The practice facility was one of the last pieces of the puzzle that we didn’t have.”

That project began in mid-August, and the crew seeded the green in September. “Other than the bulldozing work, everything was done in-house,” notes Wonderlich. “We did the irrigation [ourselves], and put in a practice bunker.”

Customer Satisfaction
The Players Club’s equipment also plays a vital role in helping the club meet the needs not only of a membership that exceeds 700, but of the surrounding community as well. With an on-site tree nursery, the maintenance staff has planted spruce and white pine trees to help screen the golf course from surrounding streets and busy roads. The staff serves two homeowners associations, one on the original course and one on the nine-hole course. Once a week, it also mows parks in the development and maintains other common grounds by performing tasks such as mulching, weeding, trimming and planting.

The grounds crew has also developed an extra revenue stream by mowing vacant home lots five times a year; currently, the crew takes care of about 200 lots at the beginning and end of the season, as well as on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day. “That’s revenue that goes back to the club,” says Wonderlich. “It’s a nice way to make a little extra money.”

Wonderlich also frequently plays golf with members of The Players Club members or pro shop personnel, as a way to take notice of what other tasks his staff could take on. “I like to play at my course to see it from a golfer’s standpoint,” he says. The outings let him spot details such as where tree limbs come into play or where unwanted weeds are growing. “I can be picky, and maybe some of the members don’t notice the things that I might,” he notes.