Zach Reineking
Co-General Manager, Erin Hills Golf Course. Erin, WI
THE INTERVIEW
Zach Reineking has been at Erin Hills from the very start. From seeing stakes on the ground during the initial grow-in to the most recent US Women’s Open, the superintendent and now co-general manager knows every part of this grand layout. But since using the USGA GS3 ball with the DEACON management system, Zach has started to see his course in a whole new light. Prior to the US Women’s Open, Zach and Darin Bevard, Senior Director of Championship Agronomy for the USGA Green Section, talked to us about how they have used the GS3 ball and DEACON in the run up to the championship.
Q: Zach, congratulations. Next month will be 20 years at Erin Hills?
Zach: Yes, middle of June, 2005 is when I started at Erin Hills.
Q: And the course has been closed since middle of October of last year?
Zach: I think this last year it was October 20th that we had shut down the golf course. We're very fortunate: we've got a single owner that was very gracious to keep the golf course closed this spring. And that makes our life a lot easier.
Q: Darin, have you had a course that has been closed for that amount of time leading up to a championship? Ever?
Darin: I have. Erin Hills in 2017 from the US Open. That's the last time. Usually, we feel very fortunate to get the full advance week closed before an event. Erin Hills certainly goes above and beyond to make sure that the golf course we prepare is ready to be showed to the world.
Q: What was your first interaction with the GS3 ball? When did you start in the DEACON system?
Zach: We were early adopters to it. We bought it immediately when it came available and started using it two years ago. And for us, it's just a great tool to understand the firmness of greens.
By having the GS3 ball, it gave us an opportunity to understand our firmness, to understand if we were doing certain cultural practices, how did that impact the firmness of greens? If we saw a consistent increase in growth, we would then say is this a time to be top dressing?" The other advantage of it was understanding smoothness, and trueness of greens. It helped us answer questions like if we verti-cut, what is the result? How does that impact our greens? If we top dress, what is the result? So, it became a really great tool for us to communicate to our guests, to communicate, to our management team, that we're going to do this application.
Erin Hills is a daily fee facility, so we're open seven days a week. We're open every day, and our guests expect a golf course that prepares itself as a championship facility. So, it was a tool for us to be able to understand the things that we were doing to the golf course and how that impacted us.
Q: Is there one metric that means more to you than another? Firmness versus smoothness versus trueness and speed?
Zach: I think we've always been known for having true, smooth greens. I don't know if we've ever been known to have the fastest greens. We’ve always felt like our greens have been smooth and true. I think the firmest part was the one that the GS3 ball significantly helped us.
Q: And what's your routine for using the ball? Are you measuring three greens, six greens? The same greens?
Zach: On an average day during the season, it's three greens. There are times we'll do it on more than that, but for daily data collection, we do three greens. Our core setup team, when they go out, they bring that along with, they know the greens that were taking that day off of and we've been a priority with that complete that every day.
Darin: For the U.S. Women's Open, we measure all 18 greens. We measure firmness on every green, every day, and with the new speed algorithm that was just released a couple days ago, we've been doing some really good work comparing numbers with the traditional stimpmeter reading versus the GS3 reading.
Q: Zach, are you recording any maintenance activities and comparing them to your performance metrics in terms of correlating between those two things?
Zach: We'll document it if it's a mow, a double cut, or a roll. But any time we're doing a cultural practice, like a verticut or a top dress, we'll take a reading the day before, and we'll take successive ones afterwards. That provides us an opportunity to understand that maybe the greens didn't perform as well the next two days. but by the third day, they're actually better than they were prior to doing that cultural practice. It helps us justify the actions that we're taking on the golf course.
Q: What would you say to another superintendent that's considering the GS3 ball and the DEACON management system but they're just sort of on the fence.
Zach: I think it's an invaluable tool. Superintendents, we've always kind of talked about course agronomy as a kind of art and science. The more science that we can bring into it, our decision-making process becomes that much better. So, for us to be able to have analytical data day in and day out that we can compare and then we can change our practices based on that, really provide us an opportunity.
Q: Darin, the last time Erin Hills held the championship was 2017. Now that Zach has adopted the GS3 and has been collecting data for the last year or two years, has that changed your communication or your interaction for this leading into the U.S. Open this time around? Has anything changed?
Darin: Well, I think the same process is in place, but we're speaking the same language. I don't have to talk to Zach about the GS3 and its smoothness and trueness, and the firmness. There’s no transition or orientation. They know exactly what we've presented. I've worked two championships with Zach, and I know that he's got it under control. Having that understanding going into it, makes it a lot easier.
