By investing in programs that support turfgrass management students, golf course properties and their superintendents can earn as many dividends as the blue-chip interns they mentor.

Even though golf has been banned or restricted in some states during the coronavirus pandemic, golf course maintenance has still been allowed in almost every area of the country. With the need to continue golf course upkeep, clubs’ grounds departments have tried to maintain proper staffing levels, but have seen some staff members not be able to work because of health concerns or the need to tend to family issues during stay-at-home mandates. For many properties, being able to draw on their relationships with turfgrass-student interns has been a key part of having enough help on hand.

John Kaminski, Professor of Turfgrass Science and Director of the two-year Golf Course Turfgrass Management Program at Pennsylvania State University, believes interns can always be a good fit with turfgrass management staffs, which include senior-level personnel, seasonal staff members, and migrant or unskilled labor.

“Interns are a hybrid of that,” he says. “They have career goals and some experience. Interns bring more than just labor. They bring ideas, thoughts and career-driven passion to do everything it takes to maintain the golf course.”

Creating Intern Experiences

Curtis Tyrrell, CGCS, MG, Director of Agronomy at Desert Highlands Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., has one intern, Jack Daley, from Penn State for this summer. Tyrrell, who has been at Desert Highlands since December 2019, is crafting a new internship program at the property, which includes an 18-hole, par-72 Jack Nicklaus Signature course and an 18-hole, par -41 putting course. 

Tyrell wants to create an internship program at Desert Highlands similar to the one he had at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club, where he spent 10 years as Director of Golf Course Operations. The program at his new club will play to the strengths of the Arizona property, which has an arid climate. And while he typically recruited four interns to Medinah every year, Tyrrell plans to have one or two a year at Desert Highlands.

In his second season as Director of Golf Courses & Grounds at the 36-hole Wilmington (Del.) Country Club, Jon Urbanski, who also had an internship program at nearby Biderman Golf Club for about 10 of his 14 years there, has two Penn State interns this year.

“If we have more than two, then the experience gets watered down for the students,” says Urbanski. “When they leave, we want to make sure this prepared them for the next step in their career.”

With bentgrass on its South Course and bentgrass and poa annua on the North Course, interns get two experiences at once at Wilmington CC, as well as additional input from the two courses’ superintendents, Sean Whiston and Brett Snyder.

“The students have the opportunity to work for a full week with each superintendent on their respective courses and then move over to the other course the following week,” Urbanski says. “This gives them a nice rotation throughout their entire work experience, and provides an opportunity for our superintendents to mentor the student, giving them a different perspective on turf maintenance from me. Each superintendent can depend on the intern day-in and day-out, and the intern gains responsibility and ownership in the operation.”

At the 27-hole Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, Texas which currently has one post-graduate intern from the University of Minnesota, the coronavirus pandemic has affected the internship program, reports Director of Grounds Kasey Kauff. Another intern might join the staff later this summer, but international travel restrictions have kept a third intern from Canada from working at the club. The virus also upended plans that Kauff had this year to team up with Nicole Sherry, head groundskeeper for the Baltimore Orioles, and have a Trinity Forest intern work for the baseball team after concluding his or her work in Dallas.

Prize Recruits

To recruit interns, superintendents rely on job boards and relationships with turfgrass programs and professors nationwide. Tyrrell starts by reaching out to about a dozen programs in the late summer every year. But he is finding it harder to recruit interns because turf-school enrollments are declining.

In introductory interviews, he tries to find out what the students hope to gain from their internships. “There’s always something they want to learn,” he says. “We’ve always brought our interns immediately into our management circle. We give them insight into what it takes to manage a golf course.”

When recruiting interns, Tyrrell tells them about upcoming activities at the course, which could range from bunker projects to a tournament.

“I definitely want somebody that’s got all the basics already, because we want to bring them into the management side of things,” he says. “We focus on giving them next-level experience.”

Urbanski, who also calls recruiting the biggest challenge of internship programs because of the lack of available students, looks for well-rounded, inquisitive interns who show interest in the position.

“Recruiting to me is an everyday thing,” he says. “You have to fill the position with purpose. There’s a reason we have that person here.”

Kauff, who has worked at Trinity Forest for six years, has hired interns for the last four years from a variety of universities, including Kansas State, Purdue and North Carolina State, as well as Minnesota. The N.C. State grad frequently speaks to students at his alma mater, which also opens up the pipeline for him.

An intern’s skill level doesn’t matter to Kauff; last year, he had a female intern who had never worked on a golf course before. “We are open to anything because we can teach them,” he says. “We can train them on the operation of equipment.”

Two-Way Street 

Penn State’s Kaminski stresses that students also have an obligation to prepare for their internships. They should look up the local chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America in the area where they will work, and find out about grass species and pest problems specific to the property, he suggests.

“The biggest challenge is when students don’t have a clear idea of what they want,” Kaminski says. “Do they want to work at a top 100 property or at a property that is holding a tournament? Do they want to work 40 hours or 80 hours a week? Do they want to work with warm-season or cool-season grasses?”

This year, over a dozen Penn State students will be going to golf course properties where Kaminski never has sent interns before. All of them, however, will share one similar part of the experience.

“They all go away from home,” Kaminski says. “There are less distractions that way, so they can focus on their internships.”

To land the most prized recruits, properties have to be prepared to offer students a competitive package that includes a strong network, housing or a housing stipend, and hourly compensation, in addition to the course’s reputation and profile.

This year, Desert Highlands’ intern will have pre-arranged housing, but Tyrrell says the club “is trying to figure out how to bring housing here [on property], so we can compete with other programs.”

At Medinah, the club arranged for an apartment the intern could use at a complex two miles away. But Tyrell doesn’t believe it should matter if interns are on-site or not, as long as they understand the need to respond quickly when required. “Part of their experience is to be the one called when there’s an issue, or to stay late,” he says. “They’re the ones that get the call when the pump station goes down at night.”

Wilmington CC provides its interns with an off-site, two-bedroom, furnished apartment three miles from the property. The housing package includes utilities and linens, says Urbanski, so the students’ only expense is food.

Trinity Forest keeps an apartment in a trendy Dallas neighborhood year-round to house interns. “We push a work-life balance,” says Kauff. “It’s not just about work. We want the interns to have a great time in Dallas for the summer.”

From Classroom to Field

Of course, the greatest benefit to interns is on-the-job training. “You need to plan to manage the students from start to finish, stay engaged with them, and teach them,” says Tyrrell, who will customize internships for students. “It takes time to explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. 

“You have to be willing to do your part,” he adds. “It’s definitely an added job task to your day, but it’s a worthwhile and rewarding one, if you have a passion for teaching, and you’re willing to give back to students.”

Tyrrell prefers that interns already know how to perform basic course maintenance duties, so they can focus on honing skills such as personnel management, project management and development, and spray calibrations. “The purpose of internships is to give students the chance to take everything they have learned in the classroom and translate it into the field,” he says.

As part of offering that opportunity, he has interns attend meetings, contribute to long-term planning, and oversee staff. “We want to provide access to elements of the occupation they normally wouldn’t see if they’re punching a time clock as a laborer,” he says.

In addition, he adds, superintendents need to develop their internship programs in conjunction with other department managers at their club. “We have to think through the goals for the student after he or she leaves,” he says. “What do we need to expose them to? We have to have an open dialogue and include them, so they can sit in on everything and ask questions.”

And as part of the experience, Tyrell says, Interns need to be prepared for criticism and scrutiny from the highest levels.

At Wilmington CC, interns also spend time in other areas such as the mechanic’s shop, food-and-beverage department, and golf operations. “Our program is not solely focused on turf management,” says Urbanski. “We’re trying to give them a perspective on operations of the total club. 

“We can really individualize an educational program for each student,” he adds. “The needs of one student may not be the same as another student. We’re investing a lot in the individual, so there is a high level of expectation with us as well.”

The Wilmington CC interns work 55 to 60 hours a week, just like the superintendents and assistant superintendents. They take care of golf course setup, including putting out tee markers and cutting cups; learn about budgeting; gain insight into chemical applications, including when and why to apply a product and why to use product A instead of product B; and learn how to adapt to changing climate and turf conditions. “They do every facet of turf management that an assistant superintendent does on a daily basis,” says Urbanski.

They also participate in weekly staff meetings and for one week are given the opportunity to run the staff, which totals 65 people in season, under Urbanski’s direction. “The student is really nervous at the beginning of the week,” says Urbanski. “By the end of the week, they’re comfortable. It’s nice to see their growth that week.”

“We don’t want them to be too quiet. We want them to be a sponge,” he adds. “We also want to feed off that student as well, because they have experience that can benefit us.”

For example, one of Wilmington CC’s interns noticed last year how much time the setup routine was taking for the maintenance staff each morning. So he suggested that equipment be set up at the end of the day before. That intern, Cody Sander, is now an assistant superintendent at the club, working primarily on the South Course.

At Trinity Forest, Kauff also stresses the importance of teaching interns why the maintenance staff does things a certain way. “Our goal is to give interns training to be an assistant superintendent,” he says. “They don’t hang out with the crew. They work with the assistants. They sit in the office for meetings, learn how to spray, do daily golf course setup, and run small projects. We make sure they can run the equipment first, and then train them to learn the operation and to be part of a team.”

Kauff relies on interns for new ideas ranging from course setup to more organized ways of carrying out tasks. “We give them the chance to make their own decisions,” he reports. “We don’t micromanage. We like to give them their own creativity.”

Like Tyrrell and Urbanski, Kauff interned when he was a turf student. All three try to model their programs after the experiences they had as interns. And because that kind of pay-it-forward attitude exists, Penn State’s Kaminski has complete confidence in the superintendents who mentor his students. “If the student wants to become a superintendent, they can’t just learn that on their own,” he says. 

“There’s no one best internship; it’s really about the fit,” he adds. “Every time interns work in a new place, they learn new skills or management techniques. Most superintendents are good about giving students as much as they can handle.”

Lasting Relationships

It’s not only the students that gain from their internships, however. They add value to the properties, and sometimes turfgrass management students even end up as full-time staff members at the golf courses where they interned.

“The main benefit to the property is to have employees that care and that are career-minded,” Tyrrell says. “We want to have another guy on the team that has ambition. That is a huge benefit to the club. They bring effort and ownership, and make the team stronger as a whole.”

One of Tyrrell’s proudest achievements when he left Medinah in 2018 was that five of the eight managers on the golf course maintenance staff had interned there. At one time, he had as many as six former interns on staff.

“They enjoyed it. They wanted to come back as a manager,” he says. “It re-enforced that we were doing a lot of things right. We developed people in a way that fit our needs at the club.”

He calls students the best marketing tool for an internship program, hoping that they go back to school and tell their classmates “what an awesome experience they had.” He also believes that students should take an active role in landing internships by initiating contact with superintendents.

“I love it when students reach out directly to me,” Tyrrell says. “I want dialogue and communication. Don’t just let it happen. Don’t just pick one based on name and location.”

Urbanski has hired about a half-dozen of his interns through the years, but he keeps in touch with all of them by text or social media.

“At the end of their experience with us, we would love for them to come work here or recommend our program to their friends at school,” he says. “Then we know we’ve done a good job.”

He also appreciates the contributions that interns make to maintenance operations.

“We don’t want them to be too quiet. We want them to be a sponge,” he says. “We also want to feed off that student as well, because they have experience that can benefit us.”

For example, an intern at Wilmington CC last year noticed how much time the setup routine was taking for the maintenance staff each morning, and suggested that the grounds crew could set up equipment at the end of the day before. That intern, Cody Sander, is now an assistant superintendent at the club, working primarily on the South Course.

“{Through internships] we get to add team members who have a love of the game and a love of turf maintenance that will bring a heightened sense of leadership to our team, to make our property better and elevate the standards we have set forth,” Urbanski says. “When you have someone that’s really dedicated to the craft, it helps out the entire team.”

The first five people Kauff hired at Trinity Forest had interned for him.

“I call it a big family tree at Trinity Forest,” he says. “We’re building a brand in the golf maintenance industry, and I keep up with my interns like a proud parent. I want to help them. It makes me proud to see them succeed.” C+RB