Golf House Tennessee, the vision of a teaching and research facility, is now a reality.

by Rich Skyzinski

THE FUTURE of golf has arrived.

It sits, of all places, on a small parcel of windswept countryside in north-central Tennessee. From the outside it looks like any other refurbished country farmhouse. But inside, the combination of concepts, aspirations and promises make it much more than that. It is a vision that may show the way for golf in the 21st century.

Golf House Tennessee opened in mid-April, and it won't be long before the fruits of the labor are realized. Nor should it be long before the idea is copied by golf administrators in the other 49 states.

Golf House Tennessee is many things: part summer camp, part teaching facility, part turfgrass research center, part museum, part administrative headquarters. It is all good for Tennessee golf.

"If you could have told me, 'Make your wildest dream whatever you want and we'll give it to you,' this is it," beamed Dick Horton, executive director of both the Tennessee PGA and Golf Association. "For us to be able to do this has been an incredible dream come true."

Here are the components of Golf House Tennessee:

• A teaching complex for juniors, complete with a 64-bed dormitory for the Tennessee PGA's week-long summer academies, a par-3 "short" course (the Little Course at Aspen Grove), an 18-hole putting course and a practice area adjacent to the double-ended facility at The Legends Club.
• A turfgrass research center. The short course was sodded or seeded with 52 varieties of grass, including 17 types of bentgrass on the 17,000-square-foot putting course. Sophisticated, yet-unmarketed air pumping systems installed under several greens will provide researchers with the latest in green maintenance technology.
• Administrative offices for every association in the state -- Tennessee Section of the PGA, Tennessee Golf Association, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and the Tennessee Turfgrass Association, the Volunteer Chapter of the Club Managers Association of America, and the Women's Tennessee G.A.
• The Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame -- rooms and hallways showcasing memorabilia of Tennessee's greatest players.

Cupp grabbed a wedge, a half dozen balls and began to wander the property, stopping every so often to hit balls in different directions. "I lost all the balls," he continued, "but I saw all these little shots where I knocked it under trees, or around bushes, standing on slopes -- all kinds of goofy shots."

And the idea was cemented. He banked, ever so slightly, the tees on the course -- some front-to-back, a few back-to-front, some right-to-left and others left-to-right -- so the kids would learn different kinds of shots. "If they want to learn to hit wedges standing on a level piece of ground," he says, "they can do that over at the range." He looked at two tall trees and had another idea; if the tee and green are positioned just so, they'll have to practice this little 80-yard knockdown shot, under the trees. That idea is now the sixth hole.

"It's just part of the gamesmanship that goes along with a little par-3," he says. "I don't claim invention of anything, except that day I was out here I felt like a 12-year-old boy, and that was great fun."

Juniors will get the most use of the course, but superintendents from around the state should be frequent visitors as well. Besides the great number of turfgrasses in use, designers installed two underground, state-of-the-art systems to assist researchers.

Varieties of zoysia, bentgrass, bermudagrass, fescue and bluegrass have been positioned on the 15-acre site to provide testing under actual playing conditions. Nowhere in the country, in fact, are as many grasses tested and monitored in playing conditions than at the Little Course. As an added bonus, much of Tennessee is in the transition zone, making it an ideal location for testing grasses used in both northern and southern climates.

"We've got a situation where we're going to play a lot of rounds of golf with turf research," explained Billy Fuller, a consultant with Cupp Design. "The typical research situation is out in a plot somewhere, but this should be very special, to show turf research with 30,000 or 40,000 rounds a year played on it."

With everything Golf House Tennessee has going for it, what might make it all so special is the level of cooperation among those groups involved. "That's one of the incredible parts about this," says Horton. "We're not at each other's throats. If it's good for golf, we don't care who gets the credit, and everyone has that attitude. In a lot of places every association has its own agenda and no one works together. But that's not the case here, and we're hopeful this is going to set the standard for everyone else to follow."

When the land for The Legends Club was purchased in 1990, the owner of 15 acres adjacent to the property held out and refused to sell. At the time, it wasn't a big deal. The builders, Kite/Cupp Golf Enterprises, had agreed to construct office space for the Tennessee PGA, the state golf association and the Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame there in its massive clubhouse. And they did.

But those 15 acres, on which sat the centerpiece of the property -- an antebellum house built in the 1830s by Christopher McEwen, who fought with Andrew Jackson in the Indian wars -- only served to tantalize officials as they passed it daily.

Then Jack Lupton, one of golf's most generous benefactors and founder of The Honors Course, came into the picture. Before long the land was purchased by the Tennessee Golf Foundation, a 1991 merger of the state's PGA and Tennessee GA, and people began to dream of what might be.

"We just didn't have the power to get the property," Cupp says. "Jack, on the other hand, lays it out when he wants to make a deal: Here it is, there it is, make a choice.

"Dick Horton has been the key behind the whole thing, but Jack Lupton has been the driving force who has kept everyone in line. He didn't tell me how to do it, but he gave me direction. He'd say, 'Don't you think it would be a good idea if you sort of did things in a certain way?' And he got me in the right frame of mind; he did absolutely as good a job of firing the fuels of a designer as any could have been done. It was a picture-book deal."

When it came time to restore the house, it was decided to incorporate all the needs into one structure. One wing is devoted to dormitory space for the summer golf academies, another section provides office space for the golf associations, and the Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame extends over parts of the first and second floors.

"I can honestly say I feel unworthy to have been inducted into a sports hall of fame with so many great players," said Betty Probasco, who's won at least one state title in five different decades. "I'm absolutely the most appreciative person in the world. This is a dream come true.

"I have two grandchildren coming this summer, and I can't wait to tell them what they have to look forward to."

"I think it's one of the most special things that's ever happened in the world of golf," said Fuller, "and if it can be repeated from state to state, there's so many opportunities. We have the problem of golf and its exposure to the environment . . . so here's a chance to continue to prove our case. And if we don't make golf available to kids, who's going to be our future players? In my opinion, golf needs to become as available to kids as baseball and soccer and apple pie. And there's no reason it can't be."

Especially in Tennessee.

LITTLE COURSE GOES HIGH-TECH

THE LITTLE COURSE at Aspen Grove is more than meets the eye.

Underground, unseen and unheard, turfgrass researchers are using some high-tech machinery to give their greens the best care possible.

One of the systems, SubAir, is a unique blower that has been installed under the putting course and one double green. By blowing air up through the tile system and through the profile of the green, researchers are able to get better air quality to the root structure of a green, thus improving root development and the overall health of plants. By reversing the process, stagnant gasses and excess moisture can be vacuumed from the green structure.

The system is the brainchild of Augusta (Ga.) superintendent Marsh Benson, who has two SubAir systems installed, one under his test green and another under No. 13.

"I'm just like any other superintendent," he claims, "trying to grow grass the best way I can. But 75 percent or so of the problems on a green are sub-surface, and 75 percent of the treatments are on the surface. So it seemed appropriate to address the problem at the source."

After getting the word out at February's national conference of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, SubAir has received tremendous response. The first systems rolled off the production line in late May, and the company, based in Vernon, N.Y., is turning out both portable and permanent units at the rate of about 25 a month.

At $8,800 for a portable unit, or $18,000-$20,000 for a permanent system, the cost is less than a lot of machinery a maintenance crew requires. Three courses have even inquired about having SubAir installed under all 18 greens. The system can be installed without disturbing play; the only other criterion is that the green is built to USGA specifications.

"We're pleased with the results and what we're able to do with it," Benson explained, "but even now we're finding other reasons to run it. The more superintendents hear about it, the more another superintendent finds another need to run it. So the research isn't done."

The Little Course at Aspen Grove also has a subsurface liquid injection system installed under one green.

A superintendent could irrigate a green using the system, or disperse treatments, such as pesticides or fungicides. While the system could virtually eliminate the threat of harm through accidental exposure, the more practical application is that it puts the treatments where they're needed -- under the surface.

"More than 50 percent of what's being used in the industry today would be better off being applied subsurface," Benson said. "Your treatments are certainly going to be better, for example, if you put your pesticide where the insects are. But much research is needed for labeling changes before such technology can be utilized."

-- Rich Skyzinski