[Josh Smith]

What would you suggest?  Real stuff.  Seeing how people are looking to lessen costs in all facets of life, what are some real ways you suggest we can lessen dollar inputs in golf applications. 

I don't remember a specific thread on this, so forgive me if I missed something good.  Seeing JSPayne's irrigation thread, (seemingly important in saving $$$ and natural resources) and seeing another thread about detailing issues on the course (to me, not having read too much of that thread, seems less than important at the end of the day, with some exceptions of course)

I have a few minor suggestions but would like to hear others.  I know labor is a huge part of golf course upkeep.  I am not trying to suggest crews should be cut in half, I would hate to see dedicated workers let go, but do you think we could change certain things about how we upkeep golf courses, save money and possibly even make the game more fun.

Ps.  I am an assistant greenskeeper at California Golf Club/landscape oil painter, so please don't say get rid of assistant greenskeepers!

[Joe Hancock]

Josh,

I think bunker maintenance is on top of the list. It's a hazard that gets more labor input than greens at some courses.

Along with drying out the course(reducing fertilizer and chemical dependency), going back to higher volume mowing equipment makes sense to me.

Reducing the number of intensely maintained landscape areas on a property would make a difference.

Being frugal in all maintenance purchases is a given, but a lot of clubs by from "old friends", etc., not always getting the best deal for the club. (True for contract labor as well)

The clubs greatest asset is it's people, and that's the last place to cut costs, IMO.

Hope you're well,

Joe

[paul cowley]

Josh....I'd reverse the job description title and put landscape oil painter first because.....GUYS, THIS GUY JOSH IS REALLY GOOD AT PAINTING.

Aside from that Joe makes a lot of sense.

Take all the rakes off the course, and only allow them on maintenace vehicles....but only once a week!

Note: I actually spent the last three days on a site DESIGNING a golf course....and it was good.

[John Moore II]

I think rakes in the bunkers are fine, but cut back on maintenance to them. Only maintain them once per week. That would be fine. But Joe is right on, cut back on chemical use and that sort of thing. Both the Head Super's I worked around in Pinehurst loved to open up the water mains and pour it on the course. The 2nd Assistant super almost caused us to lose the greens in mid-July because of his love for overhead irrigation around the greens (he turned on the primary irrigation when the air temp was about 96 and relative humidity at about 75%) But dry grass (from what I have been told) is far more resistant to fungus and other bad stuff.

But overall, you have to look at labor hours as well. Thats something that few want to admit to. But far and away the biggest part of the maintenance budget (and any business budget). If you keep labor hours high, you will still be spending a large sum of money. If you really want to cut the maintenance budget, you have to look at labor. Given this job market and such, I am somewhat embarassed to even hint at that, but its the truth.

[Joe Hancock]

John,

I agree with you about labor, but only if there are glaring time/ people management errors. Overtime in excess, too many people doing not enough work, etc. are all things to fix. If the labor force is efficient and adequate, then cutting labor can undermine team morale and affect course conditions more adversely than expected.

I'm assuming good people management in my suggestions above, otherwise your call to address labor has merit.

Joe

[Mike_Cirba]

Joe has some great ideas.

Is there a way we can make the great Anerican viewing public watch the recent Open at Hoylake and the Tiger/Marucci Am at Newport 24 hours a day during Masters week and we'll be getting somewhere.

[Lyne Morrison]

Josh - cut back on bunker maintenance - they are meant to be hazards!

Review maintenance planning and budgets in view of changed economic conditions - re prioritise as necessary.

Reduce mowing areas, allow natural grassy areas to develop in out-of-play rough and fairway carries.

Consider the value of using grass hollows in some areas rather than sand bunkers.

Reduce maintenance of detail areas - cut back on ornamental landscape beds, trimming around signage and traffic control measures, ropes etc

Think sustainability - invest in staff training - stay up to speed with current trends.

Communicate with your members re the positive benefits of implementing revised initiatives.

Cheers -- Lyne

[RJ_Daley]

This causes me to wonder if the courses that have up to now been marginally making it with lavish, over ornamentalized, and have big budgets because they have so much labor doing all the purty and fluffy stuff on the grounds, aren't actually in a better position to adjust and survive than the owner/managers that from many of our views have always run a lean and economical golf operation.  Certainly, it would seem to be the case that the courses with plenty of fluff, have the larger potential to cut costs and still survive, than the ones that are and have already practiced the lean and mean approach, if they find themselves in the dire need to cut more costs.

[Pete_Pittock]

Lease or share equipment, rather than owning.
"hire" members for greens crew in lieu of dues.
more divot sand stations, like every two or three holes
get your own ethanol/alternative fuel station and recycle anything organic
or go electric.

[Steve Okula]

Apply growth regulators to intensively mowed areas.

As a case study, I was mowing tees and approaches on 36 holes 3 times/week, and it took 2 people 8 hours each, what with getting on and off the machine to move and replace 4 sets of tee markers. Here in France, with high taxes and social charges, that's roughly $20 per manhour total cost to the club. So each mowing costs $320 in labor, plus another $30 or so in fuel, and hard to calculate wear and tear on the machine. Total cost about $350/ per mowing, $1050/wk or $4200 per month.

Now, I spray Primo twice a month to these areas. It requires one man 6 hours to treat the same area, a more skilled employee costing $25/hr, total $150 for the labor, 1.2 kg Primo costs $140, $10 fuel, it adds up to $300 per treatment, or $600 per month.

The Primo treatment means I can now maintain the same surface with only 2 mowings per week, saving $1400/month.

So I have a net gain of $800/month on mowing tees during the growing season. Added benefits are less interference to the golfers, and the turf becomes more dense. At the same time, by reducing the mowing by one third, I add 50% to the life of the machine, at least in theory.

I have found a similar economy in treating fairways and bunker slopes, as well. Greens however, we mow every day regardless, and so the savings are less, though there is a little in the reduced clippings and sopping to empty the catch baskets.

[Sean_A]

Keep greens at sub double digit speeds
Take a hard look at the bunkering and fill in the fluff bunkers
Reduce time spent on bunkers
Use less water and feed
Let the little things which don't effect how the course plays go

Ciao

[Adrian_Stiff]

All the points made are sound, however you have all missed the main point and by doing these things you need less assistant greenkeepers. The main reduction to cut the costs will be in the labour, if you mow greens every other day you have less fuel cost, less wear cost to the mower and less labour cost. The bunker maintance idea is great but largely a labour save. If you dont reduce labour then what are the staff going to do. Sadly it will mean jobs.

[James Bennett]

At my club, the course budget is perhaps 40% to 50% of the spend.  If I was trying to do some cloth cutting, there are some other areas I would look first, like the other 60% to 50%!

We are lucky to have $500,000 to spend on our course.  Yes, some have 3 and 4 times that, but others have so much less. 

James B

[Philippe Binette]

A) get rid of any kind of flower beds (Ugly, out of scale and expensive)

B) reduced the acreage of mown areas, wall to wall mowing is expensive... personnally, from the forward going back, I would not mow anything except the tees (of course), a bit of the surrounds and a path.  If somebodoy keeps topping the ball in the long stuff, just point the forward tee.

C) slow down greens a bit

D) work on drainage

E) get rid of carts

[Scott Furlong]

Adrian before I defend the Assistant Superintendent......are you joking? 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Josh,

I wouldn't cut any good asst. supers.  I would send them to management school. I am always amazed at the results some guys get out of a labor force of 10 and a budget of under $500K. Some of those courses look as good as those with twice the labor and money.  So, I think good management is the key, particularly in keeping the crew motivated.

Obviously, if I looked really hard at the lower budget courses, I could probably find some tree trimming, cart path edging type of projects that could be done.

And, it would never hurt to close half a big clubhouse and downsize food ops, which nearly always lose money, as suggested above.  I believe golf is still the main moneymaker at most clubs and other activities don't really pull their weight, but do pull $$$ out of maintenance.  As always, its club specific and as always, I could be wrong.

BTW, suggestions of reducing water, fertilizer and greens speeds are also highly course specific.  Some don't pay for water, for example, and some have turf species that do just as well fast as they do slow, maybe better.

[JSPayne]

Josh,

Good to hear from you on here....and glad things sound very successful for you guys at Cal Club. I really would like to get over and see you soon.

To pass on a couple of ideas.....

The reductions in maintenance are key I think, as we only have so much control over material costs. Less bunker maintenance, less detail trim of inconsequential out of play areas (native areas, cart paths, etc.) as mentioned above are all good ideas.

A couple things I've personally been doing:

This year I've purchased and planned much more in the way of using wetting agents, water conservation agents, and other soil ammendments designed to help my irrigation do it's job better, and hopefully lessen the need for such intensive hand-watering, as that is the bulk of our labor hours and overtime in the summer. I won't know how effective it is until after this summer, but my fingers are crossed. We won't get away from hand-watering completely, but I hope using these products makes the job more managable.

Eliminating overtime.....my course has always done it, but I've worked at plenty of courses that still pay overtime for the guys who work on the weekend. We have two weekend groups, and anyone working the upcoming weekend has to take one weekday off to keep total hours for the week at 40 (weekend shifts are 4 hours each morning). I have a crew of 10 (including me) and I've spaced the days off such that we effectively have 9 here everyday, as one guy each day has their day off.

Another local private course forced into reducing payroll has decided to go beyond what we do and only work a half day on Mondays, when the course is closed. Of course, this means cutting back time that can be spent on projects and major maintenance practices, but in times like these, we all may be forced to put any non-critical projects and improvements on the waiting list and just adhere to pure maintenance practices. For this course I mention, the entire crew voted they'd rather take a small hit as a group than be forced to lay off a few people.

Although it's not the ideal way to operate in maintenance, hiring more part time and temporary workers could help as well. Doing shift work or only keeping extra guys on during peak maintenance periods means you won't have to spend on benefits, uniform costs, and will realize payroll savings anytime a guy needs to take a day off as they won't have any vacation or sick pay to use. Like I said, less than ideal, but our golf shop and restaurant run with only 1-2 full time employees and everyone else on part-time shift work in order to keep payroll costs as low as possible.

As much as we hate to hurt our employee's incomes, payroll is the area we have the most control over in making savings. A few other expenses I have been able to save on is: buying cheaper course accessories and focusing on ways to take care of them to make them last longer....researching and testing cheaper fertilizers against the ones I'm using to see if the results are still within desirable thresholds.....repairing small motor boneyard equipment as opposed to buying brand new ones....fighting for a reduction in expensive bi-annual mandated water quality testing.....renegotiating our employee uniform contract (was easier than I thought to save $1000s just by asking).

Hope all that helps...and maybe there's something there you haven't thought of yet. I'll keep my eye on this post as well, for further ideas to reduce expenses here. Luckily, we're doing almost everything mentioned already, though I may look more into doing my own case study with use of Primo in areas off the greens (although we already only mow tees and fairways 2x/week).

[Brad Klein]

I think the issues cut way deeper and more extensively than any efforts at expense management can begin to address. I've suggested as much in a recent Golfweek column.

http://www.golfweek.com/commentaries/klein-021109

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian before I defend the Assistant Superintendent......are you joking? 

Of course not. If you want to cut costs it means labour. It is the rule of the world, everything you do is ultimately tied to labour if you cut £1 from your economy you remove £1 from anothers, the domino effect. It is not a slur on on assistant superintendents, I am not suggesting you cull from the top, but ultimately saving costs means labour, the biggest costs in UK clubs will be labour I suspect the US is no different.
Phillipe- I don't quite understand how removing golf carts will cut costs!!!

[Steve Okula]

All the points made are sound, however you have all missed the main point and by doing these things you need less assistant greenkeepers. The main reduction to cut the costs will be in the labour, if you mow greens every other day you have less fuel cost, less wear cost to the mower and less labour cost. The bunker maintance idea is great but largely a labour save. If you dont reduce labour then what are the staff going to do. Sadly it will mean jobs.

Adrian, labor makes up about 65% of the average maintenance budget. I don't see how you could talk about seriously cutting costs without considering labor. Less fertilizer and water, for example, means less time spent applying both, and less time spent mowing because of the reduced growth. Anything you do will ultimately affect labor.

That's not to say you need to lay off people. Most golf courses work their crews plenty of overtime in the spring/smmer/fall. They may see a few hours less of OT, but it doesn't mean homeless and starving.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Overtime is a small part. It will mean jobs, if you want real ways to cut costs. THE ORIGINAL QUESTION This industry will be no different to any other. There is absolutely no point in making the mowing savings and using staff to do 'other jobs'.

Remember not all clubs will need to, but the reference is to those that will have too....

[Greg Chambers]

Cutting labor is the only immediate and most effective way to reduce costs, without sacrificing course conditions.  In order to not worsen course conditions, one must get very creative with the scheduling of tasks.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I know Supers who have taken care of putting greens/lawns at private homes.   
Clubs could look at the possibility of starting lawn care businesses and making the service available (for a fee) to their members and the general public.   

[Scott Furlong]

Adrian,

I understand cutting labor, but what I don’t understand is the reference to “less assistant greenkeepers”.  If you are referring to Assistant Superintendents, I think you are way off base.  What is an assistant greenkeepers in the UK?       

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Generally speaking clubs in the UK start off a long way behind those in the States in numbers of green staff, but we don't have your extremes of climate. A great many British courses grow themselves - OK they don't manicure themselves,  but that is a separate issue.

In a way this goes hand in hand with the general difficulties found by some members' clubs where we have more golf courses than we need for the number of golfers. As we've said in other threads members are leaving marginal members' clubs and going to the pay-and-play facilities, joining fees are being waived and many clubs which charge an average £1,000 a year membership (nothing to pay thereafter) are finding worrying declines in their membership numbers.

Yet course wear is getting seriously worse, with heavy trolleys, buggies and 100% play, every part of the year. It's a headache for Greenkeepers/Course Managers (our terms).

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