Handbook will outline Hawaii’s best practices for golf course management

Golf’s affinity for complexity hardly ends with an explanation of how swing speed and degrees of wrist action affect the first millisecond of your backswing.

Think about the folks who bring you the blades of grass and grains of sand. Ever wonder how a golf course can look so perfect, or why not?

What feeds its soul and nourishes its beauty … best? And how can that be sustained through thousands of rounds and all kinds of conditions, natural and golfer-made?

Multiply those broad questions by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, USGA and PGA Tour encouraging its members to now create and quickly implement specific “best management practices.”

Then throw in what makes Hawaii golf unique — isolated location and the weather and salt water that come with it, culture, history and sacred sites, distinctive plant and wildlife, lava.

The Hawaii Golf Course Superintendents Association hopes to have its Hawaii Handbook of Golf Course Best Management Practices in print early next year. A dozen chapters will cover everything from planning, design and construction to pollinator and wildlife protection and energy. There are two sections each based on water and pests. Cultural practices is a critical element.

“It provides a concise overview of 12 best management practices in golf course maintenance to support environmental stewardship and optimal course conditions in the state of Hawaii,” says Scott Main, chair of Hawaii’s BMP committee. “Our goal is to create and maintain courses that are ecologically functional and healthy green spaces, honoring the land, tradition, and people of Hawaii, while contributing to the local economy.”

Main is director of golf maintenance at Nanea Golf Club. Before that, he was at Mauna Kea where, in 2017, the national association honored him as its environmental leader in golf for resort courses.

The GCSAA spoke of his work with soil that contains crushed lava on a course that averages just 4.2 inches of annual rainfall. It also lauded his partnerships with the Department of Land and Natural Resources to protect nesting nene and University of Hawaii-Hilo to analyze water quality and its effect on coral reefs.

Main also worked in New York, Texas, California, Maryland, and Ohio after graduating from Ohio State with a degree in agronomy. He views himself as “a glorified dirt farmer living the dream.”

The dream at Nanea, a private club built by Charles Schwab, has been complemented lately with his work on Hawaii’s BMP handbook. He and five other Hawaii superintendents volunteered to put it together, and asked for help from experts in the “Hawaii regulatory community, University of Hawaii and sustainability field.”

The work is what they have been doing for years, but now they are putting it down concisely and precisely on paper, and creating deadlines that lead to more deadlines. This is a huge project, nationally and in Hawaii.

The GCSAA started its BMP initiative by providing base recommendations. Main says the Hawaii association will customize its handbook’s content “to address local sustainability needs, aligning with the State’s sustainable Hawaii initiative, and regulatory areas of importance.”

National advised states and courses to create performance goals in “four distinct areas” to help with self-evaluation and future improvements: Water conservation, water quality protection, pollution prevention and energy conservation.

All ultimately deal with sustainability — environmental, financial and, in Hawaii, cultural.

“BMP guidelines for nutrient, energy, biodiversity and water management are important for all golf courses in Hawaii,” Main says. “They provide a road map for superintendents and a resource for additional stakeholders, including golf professionals, general managers, owners, regulators, lawmakers, our communities, guests, members and resorts.”

The idea is not to offer technical advice, but create performance goals that can only be met with exceptional improvements and dramatic statements.

The model is “plan, do, check and act,” with implementation to include policy, objectives, action, monitoring and reporting.

In other words, growing the game from its literal roots is a complex and constant challenge, just like playing the game. Because of the impact golf has here, it is a challenge crucial to meet, and ideally surpass.