Things will be hectic this season at Rhode Island Country Club. In addition to hosting the 13th annual
CVS Caremark Charity Classic, the century-old Donald Ross course in Barrington will welcome 156 of the country’s top female amateurs for the 111th playing of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.
“It’s going to be a very busy summer,” RICC President David Piccerelli confirmed in a recent phone interview.
The women played the course in 1924, 1953, and 1987, so this year’s event will be the fourth at the venerable old course. The tourney will help the club celebrate its 100th anniversary as well.
“It’s a real honor and privilege for us and the membership to be associated with the USGA Women’s Amateur Championship,” Piccerelli said. “To be able to conduct a national championship on our fine golf course is a fitting way to make our centennial year very special.”
The craziness of the coming summer will come as no surprise to Tom Hoffer. Before enlisting with RICC in November 2009, the RICC superintendent plied his trade at Hazeltine National Golf Club during the 2002 PGA Championship, Oak Hill Country Club for the same event in ’03, and Muirfield Village Golf Club for the Memorial Tournament.
“This is my second CVS and first USGA event,” Hoffer said, adding that he had worked a tournament each year since 2002. “I’m excited about that.”
Hoffer will oversee a staff of 50 — 25 of his own workers and 25 volunteers from nearby courses — to ensure the grounds are in pristine condition. Among other duties, Hoffer’s staff will keep the rough at about 3″ and double-cut and roll the greens to bump up the speed of the putting surfaces from about 9.5 on the Stimpmeter to around 11.
“It’s going to be a challenging year for us,” Hoffer assured New England Golf Monthly. With tee times beginning at 7:15 each day, he and his crew will be atop their mowers and other machinery by four in the morning and back at it after the final putt drops each day.
“We’ll put lights on the mowers and do a lot of the maintenance work in the dark,” Hoffer said. “It’s a large field the first two days so we need to be out there early and late into the evening.”
The championship will begin with stroke-play qualifying rounds on Monday and Tuesday, August 8-9. Match play will start on Wednesday, August 10, and the tourney will conclude with a 36-hole championship final on Sunday, August 14.
With such long hours, some members of the fairways and greens brigade will catch a couple hours of shut-eye camped out in tents in the course’s wooded areas. Hoffer lives about 10 minutes from RICC and will have the luxury of sleeping in his own bed.
There’s much more to it than just those few days, however. Prep work for this summer’s tourneys began last fall. After the USGA suggested that wider tee boxes would be useful, Hoffer and his staff sodded the expansion areas in September.
One of the primary demands Hoffer faces is trying to outguess Mother Nature. New England summers can be hot, cold, dry, wet, and any other combination of weather conditions a course super can imagine. With the women’s tourney toward the end of the summer, a scalding, arid season like last year’s could make Hoffer’s job that much more interesting.
“What’s tough about hosting a tournament in August is the weather,” he said. “It can be hot and dry toward the end of the summer and if the course is not in good shape through the summer, it can be difficult to manage it in August.”
Not to worry, though; Hoffer has it covered. Plenty of pumps and squeegees are on standby if the wet winter and spring continue to dump gallons of rain on the course. And crews are ready to douse the course early and often if the summer of 2011 brings back the drought of last year.
“We’re hoping for a more normal Rhode Island summer,” Hoffer said, noting that “normal” would feature 85 degrees and 15-m.p.h. southerly breezes. “But we’re preparing for the worst.”
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out on the Waggle Room, Boston Golf Examiner, National Golf Examiner, and GottaGoGolf websites. You may also follow Kay on Twitter @golfexaminer.)
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