Off course
Golf course builder: We need drainage

Thomas Noe says he knows how to fix Fox Run Golf Course. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Alan Arthur
Staff writer

GALLUP — Gallup native Tom Noe, a project manager who has built golf courses across the United States and around the world, says Fox Run Golf Course could be a “wonderful golf course.”

“Over a five-year period, if someone would put a budget together to actually do a phased construction schedule, I think you would end up with a wonderful golf course,” Noe said.

Noe has built golf courses in such locales as China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia while working with companies such as Wadsworth Golf Construction in Buckeye, Ariz., and J. Michael Pillet Design Group in Saratoga, Calif.

“I spent seven years in Japan building golf courses as a construction superintendent,” Noe said, whose itinerary includes the construction of 32 golf courses with stops from Phoenix to Japan. “Actually taking them from zero, clearing the ground, actually shaping the golf course and finishing the golf course.”

Noe, a 1968 graduate of Gallup High School who now lives in Albuquerque, says he has golfed the Gallup course — the last time being less than a month ago — and has noticed the problems firsthand.

“When I play that course, I don’t even keep score,” Noe said, “because you have these barren areas that have been there for 20 years and nobody seems to be fixing it.”

Noe said that many golfers he has talked to are displeased with what they feel is a lack of progress on improving the golf course.

“Everybody that I know that is a golfer is pissed off because nothing is getting done,” he said. “I don’t know why. They hired a brand new superintendent (Bob Weekes). Where I am confused is that at a typical golf course, the superintendent works for the golf pro.

Whatever the golf pro wants, the superintendent makes a schedule, makes a program and timeline, and gets it all figured out. They work together.

“According to the way I understand it is that (golf pro Alex Alvarez) can’t tell Bob anything. That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.”

Weekes said in an interview with the Independent that he has never heard of a situation where the superintendent works under the golf pro and that they almost always work together toward a common goal.

“I’ve never experienced that situation,” said Weekes, who was hired in 2006 by the city of Gallup. “It’s always working together alongside each other. They’re a team. It’s based on teamwork and cooperation.”

In an e-mail response to the Independent, Alvarez stated, “The usual arrangement is that the superintendent will answer either to the general manager (in a club) or the golf professional or director of golf in a public facility where a course manager is not in the budget. It is common to find that golf professionals and superintendents at the same level, but not the other way around.”

At Piñon Hills Golf Course in Farmington, a perennial top-10 municipal golf course, a general manager is in charge but works alongside the head pro and the superintendent.

At Los Altos Golf Course in Albuquerque, the golf superintendent is in charge of the maintenance and the golf course is run by two head golf professionals and three assistant golf professionals.

According to City Manager Gerald Herrera, the city decided it needed someone to handle the maintenance of the agronomy of the course and, originally, the golf pro and the superintendent were supposed to be equal positions. But the city let the contract of Alvarez expire, apparently because of their dissatisfaction with the terms of that contract.

“We decided we wanted a change in how things were run,” Herrera said.

Herrera adds, “I think (Weekes) has done a good job with the budget he has.”

Many of the problems with the course exist because of construction of drainage ditches years ago, many of which are in the fairways.

“You don’t cut a drain ditch in the middle of where you are going to hit a golf ball,” Noe said. “Eighty percent of those ditches are hindering 80 percent of the golfers.”

He adds, “It’s just a mess.”

Noe said he has also seen irrigation problems, specifically on hole No. 7.

“There is a wet spot on that fairway that has probably been there for 20 years,” he said. “Why hasn’t anybody fixed it?”

Noe adds, “It’s too bad that they really didn’t research the drainage issue when they decided to do it because they could have done it for half the price. My understanding is they did it for a quarter of a million dollars. They probably could have done it for $100,000 and had it done better, and eliminated the ditches in the middle of the fairways.”
He said some greens seem to have fared better than others.

“The reason I say something has been done to the other greens is I’ve played that course more this year than I have at any other time, and No. 6 seems to heal ball marks better than the other greens,” he said. “I don’t know why. It is soft, it does have a drainage problem. But that can be fixed.”

Formerly known as the Gallup Municipal Golf Course, the 18-hole, 6,400-yard course opened in 1965. The first nine holes, according to Noe, were built in 1960.

“For being 45 years old, it’s an OK golf course,” Noe said. “But the money they’ve spent on trying to do quick fixes has done nothing but piss off the golfer in Gallup because the people that fix it, they’re not golfers.”

Weekes, who has continually said he has a five-year plan for improving the course, concurred with much of what Noe said about how the course was constructed and said he knows it was done poorly. He added the city is considering purchasing new land to rebuild a whole golf course and doing it correctly, though this is in the planning stages and is one of the many ideas the city is looking into.

Noe said, “I think it (the course) has multiple problems. Number one, it’s never been reconstructed in 45 years, and I think the irrigation needs to be revamped. I can definitely say the greens need to be rebuilt, 100 percent, tear them out and rebuild them.”

Noe feels that it would be ‘easy’ to rebuild the greens with a phased program over four or five years. Also, he added, it could be done without actually having to close the golf course.

“You don’t have to tear them all out and close the golf course,” he said. “Most people, when they remodel a golf course, they come up with a strategic plan. ‘How much revenue are we going to lose during this period of reconstruction.’ I’ve done five remodel jobs in my life and the course is never closed. Believe it or not, they gained revenue because people were curious to what was going on.

“They don’t mind playing a couple of temporary greens while they’re rebuilding.”

As to whether many of his solutions that have worked in California, Florida or Japan could work in Gallup, Noe says, “why not?”

He said, “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Gallup, New York, New Jersey ... it doesn’t matter. If the people want it, it can be done. And it doesn’t have to cost a million dollars.”

Staff writer Kevin Killough contributed to this story.