Shoal Creek Ready For Regions Tradition

Jim Simmons has removed 3,000 trees over the last 18 months in a campaign to improve growing conditions at Shoal Creek Golf Club.

The turfgrass was competing for sunlight, air movement, water and nutrients. So losing another 25 trees in a storm last week won't change the way the course plays this week for the Champions Tour's first major of the season, the Regions Tradition. It wasn't the best timing for Simmons, who has been the golf course superintendent at Shoal Creek the last 35 years, to move cleaning up debris to the top of an advance week list of finishing touches on the Jack Nicklaus-design layout in Birmingham, Ala.

"It was such a helpless feeling watching that storm head our way Tuesday night," said Simmons about the first of the series of severe storms that ravaged much of Southeast last week. "Then at the last minute it seemed to slide just to the south of us. Straight line winds the next morning took out more than 800 trees at a course 2 miles away and we only lost 25. We were extremely lucky. The bad storms that came later that afternoon just missed us to the north and we only received a half-inch of rain. We were very fortunate."

The Tradition, which had been the Champions Tour's fourth of five majors and played in August, moved up into the Regions Charity Classic spot in the schedule this year, becoming the tour's first major of the season now. Shoal Creek, which has hosted two PGA Championships (1984, 1990) and a U.S. Amateur (1986), provides a major venue for the major championship. Simmons prepared the course for those three majors, as well as the 2008 U.S. Junior Amateur.

"The biggest difference this time is only having eight months to get ready instead of five years for the PGA Championship," said Simmons, a 39-year member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA). "My biggest concern was having this in May, because we've never had the bermudagrass green by then, or much rough. It seems like all spring we've either had record high temperatures, or cloudy and rainy, with nothing in-between, or any consistency. The fairways are June green and the rough is 2 ¼ inches tall. The greens are fast, firm and right where the tour wants them. The tour players who have been out here already have been very complimentary and our members are pleased as well."

Fairway bunkers were added in the landing areas of holes No. 2 and 6 this year, Simmons converted the bentgrass tees to a more shade-tolerant zoysiagrass this year, and some back tees built for the 2008 U.S. Junior Amateur will be used this week. Few of the trees lost in last week's storms were in-play and none will affect strategy. Simmons, who has a turf management degree from Michigan State University, manages a myriad of grass types at Shoal Creek. The zoysiagrass tees lead to bermudagrass fairways that are lined with a mixture of Kentucky bluegrass, bermudagrass and fescue rough. And the greens are bentgrass.

Simmons supervises a staff of 30 at Shoal Creek, a number which doubles this week as a group of 30 volunteers made up of nearby superintendents, assistant superintendents, turfgrass students, vendors and an extensive mentoring network of former employees, will lend Simmons and his staff a hand.