286:Board Chats - Breaking Down Golf Course Agronomy with Danny Gwyn

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Chats here on Private Club Radio. Thanks to our friends and partners, concert Golf Partners boutique owner operator of luxury golf and country clubs nationwide. If you are interested in recapitalization for your club, head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom. Today we are all about agronomy. We get to talk with the SVP of agronomy at Concert Golf, danny Gwynne, and we have a really fun conversation. We talk about what is agronomy, what goes into it, what are the challenges, what does a day in the life of an agronomist look like? So, because, I'll be honest, I didn't know exactly. So it was interesting to hear about the agronomy and the superintendents, and it's not just about playing golf and chatting to the members all day. There really is a lot of money management, employee management, that goes into it, and just a lot of general stresses and challenges. Yeah, so we have a really fun conversation. I learned a ton. So please welcome the SVP of agronomy from Concert Golf Partners, danny Gwynne. Where is home base for you?

Speaker 2: 1:14

Raleigh, north Carolina. I like Raleigh, I do too. I've been to North Carolina all of my life, a couple of different cities, but yeah, I wouldn't live anywhere else, honestly.

Speaker 1: 1:27

It's a great area. I've done the NC State University Club a few times. Oh yeah, nice. What's your background? So who is Danny?

Speaker 2: 1:37

So wow. So I got in the golf business when I was 14. It's really the only industry I've worked in. It was really just a part time job because I grew up my first job was working as manual labor and tobacco fields and I realized really quickly I didn't want to do that and my father did that by design to teach me what hard work was really about. So I decided I needed to go get serious about everything else and I got in the golf business and worked a lot when I was in high school and then decided to go to NC State and get my agronomy degree and the rest kind of fell into place after that.

Speaker 1: 2:22

And how long have you been with Concert 4?

Speaker 2: 2:25

Just over five years now.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Oh, nice, congrats. Now, you know, it's a little bit of a newer area for me, the agronomy, and I think for a lot of our listeners too. You know, can you just give like a bare bones or just like what is your definition of agronomy? Like what are you responsible for? Like, responsible for what do you? When people say, like what do you do? What do you say Like what's agronomy?

Speaker 2: 2:54

It is a really good question and I get that frequently. So for me and the golf business, agronomy well, I'll go back Agronomy overall is basically the study of crop science and growing things economically. So for me in the golf business it kind of relates to that. The same way, our job is to produce the best product we can, the best condition, golf course we can, but to also do it in a fashion to where it makes economic sense. So for us it's you know, our conditions, our expectations of conditions change every year. Expectations go up and then all of our costs and things like that are going up as well. So it's a multifaceted. We have to be Really good with growing things. We have to be good at managing money, we have to be good at personnel management, just like anything else. We have to do a little bit of everything and try to do it really well in my head I was just going oh, it's just the, the grass and the greens.

Speaker 1: 4:05

And when you were like, oh, the budgeting of people, I was like, oh snap, okay, this is a lot bigger there's a lot that goes into it, so yeah so does every golf course superintendent have a degree in a ground me, or how does that work?

Speaker 2: 4:20

is that.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Is it like a nice thing to have?

Speaker 2: 4:24

it's a great tool to have, I would say, if you're younger and you're trying to get into the industry, I think it's a necessity. I will tell you, there's a couple of guys that I've worked with in the past that did not have an agronomy degree maybe they had a different degree and they were some of the best superintendents I've had a chance to work with. I think it's a it's a good tool, but I think a lot of people, especially younger guys, and I went through this to Once I finished school. That's when the real education really started, because then I had to go figure out how to apply what I had learned and that's when everything got going. So it's a great tool, but you're still a one. You're still on an island, so to speak, because it's you and your staff Against mother nature and everything else, and you just have to be ready and ready to apply those things that you've learned.

Speaker 1: 5:21

So it is. So it is more than just hiring somebody to watch after the greens. There's so much more detail and work that goes into it.

Speaker 2: 5:28

Wow, yes and, as I said earlier, our expectations from the players and our members goes up every single year and we have to adjust to keep them happy and maybe some of the things that we have to do to the golf courses adds additional stress to the courses, so it's constantly moving target.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Oh yeah, especially now with all the costs going up of everything, and members are, you know, players are going to want to, you know, see more value also. So they just want this, don't want the price to go up, and it's the same course. They want to have some, some funness, some change.

Speaker 2: 6:02

I want to see the value, and it's so competitive to with members in certain markets, and maybe a member at club acts are going to compete with club. Why our golf courses in far superior condition than yours, and so it's snowballs, snowballs.

Speaker 1: 6:21

So what's the day like? What's a day in the life of an agronomist.

Speaker 2: 6:26

It is a long day. You start extremely early sometimes in the year you start, you finish extremely late because you're at the wind of mother nature, whatever the golf schedule looks like that day. There could be days in certain markets where you're 1415 hour days because your golf course is under so much stress and if one mistake happens that's going to affect your career and that's going to affect the club success for the rest of the year possibly.

Speaker 1: 7:05

What would be challenges like? So you know, you just mentioned 14 hour days, all the conditions. What are some like the biggest challenges that agronomists I love that word agronomist what, what? What are some like the biggest challenges that you know they and you face on a daily or weekly basis?

Speaker 2: 7:23

There are certain areas of the country that I'll use to highlight great example of, I would say, in the northeast, from the DC market through Philly, even to Long Island, the the types of grasses that were growing in those markets Can be susceptible to weather extremes, especially in July and August. Too hot, too dry, too wet could be anything, and those grasses are on such a razor's edge of being alive or being sick or failing that any, I mean it can honestly change from hour to hour. So we have to be very careful about stop it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have to be very careful about water management in particular in that market. Too much actually can be a very bad thing, and if we don't have enough, then things can get very bad also. So it is your own erasers edge If you get into drought. You have to adjust to that. It's tough. That is the toughest market, in my opinion, in the United States to grow grass.

Speaker 1: 8:40

What is sick grass?

Speaker 2: 8:45

Just a general term. It can be diseases, it can be insects, which we have an increase of the insects that we have to deal with now Because, again going back to what I said earlier, we do things to put so much pressure on meeting the members' expectations of green speeds and things along that line that we are encouraging other things to become more prevalent, such as insects disease. Again, this sounds crazy, but you can overwater a green or a golf course. In specific conditions it can cause tons of disease pressure, tons of issues with the turf itself. It's something always, honestly, sick grass can be anything from insects disease, too wet, too dry, just unhealthy.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Me and my friends had some sick grass in high school, but I think that was totally different. Are there other things that can go wrong in that world? So we have the grass sick grass. Are there other factors and things that can go wrong, and what do you do in those situations?

Speaker 2: 10:08

Everything can go wrong. Honestly, irrigation systems are designed to help you in situations. No irrigation system is perfect, so it's really designed to help you in situations of drought. Irrigation systems fail, things go wrong Water you may be in the middle of a drought and the water doesn't run that night, so the following day you're trying to fix whatever issue went wrong and you're also trying to keep your turf alive. It can be as simple as mechanical injury from the mowers we use. They can cause damage. There's hydraulic systems on them that can cause damage.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Frank think about that.

Speaker 2: 11:00

People can cause damage to players, but also our staffs can cause damage if they don't operate all the equipment properly.

Speaker 1: 11:12

So it's not maintained the blades aren't sharp enough. Correct.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Correct. Or they move wrong areas with the wrong unit, or they spray the wrong product in the wrong area. It's a lot.

Speaker 1: 11:24

So certain products for certain areas.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Well, yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Actually, that makes total sense, because if you detail a car, you don't use the same products inside and out. So yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, now do capital improvements fall under agronomy, in your sort of role?

Speaker 2: 11:44

Sure. So typically in our company we would produce a capital improvements. I don't want to use the word wish list because that's not what it is, but a suggestion from the club of what they think they need to do whether it be to the golf course, club houses or what it may be and then we'll evaluate those. Once a product project gets approved, it's up to the superintendent to carry that out, so we'll help them make sure that the pricing is agreeable If a work is agreeable, but then it's up to the golf course superintendent to get that done. If we're renovating all of the sand traps on the golf course, it could be any number of different things bridges, all kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 12:34

How do you like? What's your process? So your SVPs, you oversee a lot of the properties.

Speaker 2: 12:42

Correct All of them, all of them, all of them.

Speaker 1: 12:47

So capital improvements, how do you I'm trying to phrase this so maybe like help me out, but is there a certain number that you might assume that you're going to need for, like the following year? Like, how do you plan for capital improvement from like a 30,000 foot view, like level Obviously you can get super, super deep, but as like a big overview, how do you even sort of plan for a capital improvement?

Speaker 2: 13:11

It's always best in our industry to have like a five year plan. You know, and every golf course is different, every course was constructed differently and it also could be important as to where the course is in the United States and what market it's in. So it's always good to have a five year plan and our supers and we're here to help them figure this out as well Our supers should know the most urgent things that are coming. In other words, if we're spending, if we're having a lot of issues with our sand traps and we're getting complaints about them, obviously that's going to go up on the list as a priority and it's just up to us to help them evaluate the needs of each club and try to be smart about what comes first. And I have regional superintendents in the field that are current superintendents, but they also assist me with four or five other clubs in their geographic area and we rely on their expertise also to help us figure this out.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Is there a certain amount that you kind of like account for, so meaning you know, let's just say it's a million dollars a year. Do you then assume in five years it's going to be 1.1? Like you have certain numbers or like projections that you kind of base your capital improvements on. We do, or is it so like all different a little bit, because each course is sort of different?

Speaker 2: 14:45

Each club is so different and that's one of the good things about concert. We don't try to cookie cutter and run every club the same way. So every club has their strengths and weaknesses and we try to manage those. So it's really dependent on the club and where we want it to grow to is has a lot to do with how the funds are allocated.

Speaker 1: 15:09

Gotcha, because I know a lot of people, especially now you know it's trying to milk any little bit of profit out of the club. In the course there are Penny, penny wise and a pound foolish. I forget what the what the phrase is, but it's like you know they try to.

Speaker 2: 15:25

They try to cut corners yeah. There's a lot of that that goes on now and certainly that's one of the good things about concert golf and one of the reasons I came to concert is that we look at things differently. We reinvest in the product. That is kind of our main goal, especially when it comes to agronomy, because we understand that we can't save ourselves to success. We have to continually reinvest in the product and, as a result, the club is going to grow and be successful.

Speaker 1: 15:57

If you want to think about it. You know the members it's not just paying to be there, you know it's. They're investing in the club also, like they want to know that their money isn't just going to. You know it's just not just for that day, it's, there's a bigger plan with it and they know in the long run it's going to just keep, keep getting better. How do you manage your budgets?

Speaker 2: 16:18

So again, we're starting that process right now. The clubs generate budgets based on prior years and based on the goals that we've all agreed to that we want the club to grow to. So the clubs will generate those. Then they will come to the corporate level, will evaluate those and make any adjustments we think we need to with the club. But in most cases I would say it's, it's very, it's not unusual for our budgets to go up year after year, not just because of price increases and supply chain issues, but really because, again, we're reinvesting in the property and we want those clubs to grow.

Speaker 1: 17:03

What's the difference with a concert golf agronomy compared to somebody else or something else or more independent.

Speaker 2: 17:13

I've worked for other companies in similar roles and I would say our biggest difference is some companies can tend to be micro managers. In other words, they want to tell the superintendents this is how you're going to produce the product. And we simply don't do that. We don't want any part of that. I know, when I was an active superintendent on my own, I didn't want anyone to tell me how to produce the product that I needed to, and again, it's such a personal business. There's not. There's resources we can use to produce our programs, to create a great golf product, but my product or my program is going to be different than probably every other superintendent. Everyone has a very personalized program of how to produce it. That's one of the coolest things about what we do. As long as it's successful, then we're going to be thrilled. Obviously and I challenge my superintendents to be different in that regard Don't try to do at film what we do at White Manor, because it's not going to work. That's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 18:30

And that's a big move, and that's that was the word I'm looking for. It takes trust to do that. I was going to ask how is your agronomy division structured? But it sounds like you give people a lot of freedom and as a whole, because you have all that knowledge, all that background, so you can see the writing on the walls, you can see if something's not looking right or numbers are a little bit off, like you can step in then.

Speaker 2: 19:01

Correct. Now. What we do is we give the guys tons of autonomy. We have people that actually come to concert as a new hire, which is kind of rare, or if it's an acquisition. They're kind of surprised at how much we let them go run their business. And that's what I always tell them this is your business to run. I'm here and the regional staff is here to support you, but it's your business to run. In certain markets we're going to have stressful times. That's going to change year-round. Like it's kind of transitioning now into the Florida market because we're really just going into our prime season in Florida. Now Snowbirds or what have you are coming down to Florida, so there's going to be a lot of play there and that's our peak season. So our regional guys are all over the state of Florida right now making sure that we're ready to go for the season In July and August. We're going to focus on the Northeast and those guys that are in those markets are going to be talking to our superintendents quite a bit. They're going to be visiting the clubs and using their eyes and making sure, to your point, what we are hoping we want to get we're getting.

Speaker 1: 20:22

So what happens when a concert acquires a club? What happens to that current super?

Speaker 2: 20:29

So it is always in our best interest for that superintendent to become a part of concert golf. He has been there in most cases. He or she has been there for quite a while. They know the product better than anyone else. We have very limited knowledge. We do our due diligence, but visiting a club a couple of times, you really don't know all the nuances of that operation, and these people do so. It's always in our best interest to have them stay with the club and we make every effort to do that. And I can only think of one instance that we did not. That did not work out and that was the current superintendent's decision. He was a little older and just decided I think it's time for me to ride off in the sunset, so when we went for all.

Speaker 1: 21:25

At that point at least there wasn't that awkwardness and weird situation there.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Exactly, but most of the guys are, as I said earlier, quite surprised at how non-bureaucratic our company is. We don't have layers and layers upon approvals, it's just very streamlined and simplistic.

Speaker 1: 21:46

That's awesome and that's great to hear as well, because I think, especially now, with a lot more and not just in golf but all over companies and things getting acquired and buying and selling, it's a lot of micro-management, it's a lot of just meetings, people just trying to have their foot in everything, and it's refreshing to hear that you give people that flexibility, that responsibility, that ownership.

Speaker 2: 22:13

I think in most cases, when companies get the size of ours, are much bigger and they do try to micro-manage those clubs, it's not going to work and thankfully our leadership was Susan Donovan, smart enough to understand that and make sure she's very protective of that that we don't go down that road, that we hire good people, put them in place, give them the resources to do what they need to do and we trust them to go do it.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Before we were talking. What are some myths about? Golf course? Superintendents Are there.

Speaker 2: 22:53

I think there's one that has always kind of bugged me, but I understand it. I think a lot of people, especially those outside of the business, think we don't know how to manage money and all we do is spend money and we have really no impact on how the club may or may not be successful. There's this old saying in superintendents world that if the golf course is good, the weather's great. If the golf course is bad, the superintendents an idiot. So it's never. I think that's the one thing that bugs me. Some of the best money managers in the business are golf course superintendents because we all have budgets. There's only a handful of places that don't and I mean literally a handful but we all have budgets and we all have guidelines and goals that we need to get to. These guys have to juggle all that. There's no one helping them because nobody really understands what we do. So, as far as products, they buy, labor, trying to attract labor, managing those payroll dollars it's a daily task. So they're constantly managing money.

Speaker 1: 24:18

So it is more than just saying good job on the course, break a leg, bill. More than just shaking hands and slapping asses.

Speaker 2: 24:29

That's right. I wish it were that easy. It would be a lot easier it would be, a lot easier than it is now.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Having a conversation. Head on over to ConcertGolfPartnerscom. That was your episode of Board Chats. Catch y'all on the next one. Bye-bye.