GCSAA's ladies man

John Miller, CGCS, has the LPGA Tour courses more consistent than ever as GCSAA’s LPGA Tour agronomist.

Miller tests a green in the early morning hours at the Kraft Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills CC in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Photos by Seth Jones

Seth Jones

This is the only bad part of the job: the unavoidable hassles at the airports. Take off your shoes, take out your laptop, keep all liquids in a 3-ounce or smaller container in a clear 1-quart-sized zip-top bag. . . . And be ready to explain what a Lang penetrometer is to
security.

Being GCSAA’s LPGA Tour agronomist is what John Miller, CGCS, calls a “dream job.” He gets to keep an eye on 30 different courses in 17 states and five different countries, all of which play host to the greatest women golfers on the planet.

The Stimpmeter he carries on-board with him never causes any drama. It’s the Lang penetrometer, with its deadly looking soil moisture probe, that draws the ire of security. And that’s when Miller has to explain just exactly what it is he does.

The work

Miller, a third-generation superintendent, oversaw maintenance at the Golf Club at Yankee Trace in Centerville, Ohio, for 14 years before accepting the job as the LPGA Tour agronomist a year ago this month. While at Yankee Trace, Miller hosted the Nationwide Tour’s Dayton Open from 1999 to 2003.

Miller went from overseeing 27 holes in Ohio to overseeing 540 holes of tournament-ready golf. If the average LPGA Tour course measures at 6,500 yards, that adds up to about 195,000 yards of golf or about 110 miles worth of driver, 5-iron, putter, putter.

Is this really a superintendent’s dream or is it more like a nightmare?

“The interesting thing is, my focus hasn’t changed,” Miller says about consulting over so many courses across so many different climatic zones. “We’re still looking at the same things — greens, tees, fairways, rough, bunkers.”

Apples to apples, but still, the scope of overseeing so many courses can’t be ignored.

“It’s just a matter of good communication,” Miller says. “If anything happens at a course, they’ll call me, and we’ll decide if I need to make a visit, then I can be on the next plane. Or they can simply e-mail me some photos of what they’re dealing with and we can look at it that way. The communication methods have advanced so much that it makes this job possible.”

Top to bottom: LPGA veteran Jill McGill watches her second shot during a pro-am. “The better condition our courses are (in), the better the golf is going to be,” she says. Miller spends time with Lorena Ochoa, the No. 1 player on the LPGA Tour this year. “Lorena is fabulous to work with,” Miller says. Paula Creamer, No. 3 on the LPGA money list this year, spent time with Miller to disucss course setup at Rancho Mirage CC.

It’s important to Miller, GCSAA, the LPGA and all the courses that host events to be clear that this job was not created because the LPGA courses were in poor condition. No, the position was created to key in on consistency from course to course throughout the season.

“We want the greens speeds consistent from Monday of tournament week to when the players leave,” says Jane Geddes, the LPGA’s vice president of competition and a former player on the Tour with two majors and 11 total victories to her credit. “We want to get into a situation where a player can show up on Tuesday, Wednesday, and have the same conditions through Sunday — that’s ultimately what we want.”

In this inaugural year of the program, they’ve asked Miller to focus on greens and bunkers.

“We’ve wanted an agronomist on the Tour for a long time — it was the players’ mantra,” Geddes says. “When Carolyn (Bivens, LPGA Commissioner) came on board and told us that it was going to be a focus, we were all thrilled. The players have been talking about it for a long time.”

Miller typically makes at least two visits to each course on the LPGA Tour — only the tournaments in Japan, Singapore, France and South Africa do not currently fall under his jurisdiction. While he’s there he follows a checklist he’s produced. Again, consistency is his key. He wants greens speeds and bunkers to match from the beginning of the week to the end of the week and from course to course.

Miller will use a Stimpmeter, and he’ll also toss a few golf balls on greens to see how they’re reacting and how they’re stopping near designated pin placements. He’ll also watch to see how the greens take shots, looking to see how much bounce the balls get and the sounds the greens make when hit. Occasionally he’ll borrow a putter from the pro shop and putt them himself.

After everything on his list is checked off, he’ll write up a full report on the course to share with LPGA Tour officials.

“His communication skills really set him apart. I get an e-mail or two from John every week. He keeps us in the loop,” Geddes says. “When I get his reports, I’ll admit — I read them with a smile, because when you’re reading them, it’s clear how important this information is to him.”

Working with supers

Miller had one concern coming into this new position, and that was whether the host course superintendents would welcome an outsider coming in to try to assist with tournament preparations.

That concern was quickly alleviated.

“The superintendents have been phenomenal to work with,” Miller says. “A lot of them have never worked with a consulting agronomist before, and there could have been some friction. But every one of them has welcomed me with open arms.”

Mike Wooten, CGCS at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Broken Arrow, Okla., was happy to see Miller join the LPGA Tour as its resident agronomist. It gives him an advocate within the LPGA, he says, while he’s readying his course for the SemGroup Championship in early May each year.

David Johnson, Class A member at Mission Hills CC, welcomed Miller’s fresh perspective.

“(Miller) is going to be a friend of the superintendents, a liaison for us,” Wooten says. “Every golf course can have a different set of circumstances. He’s a good liaison between the tournament, the superintendents and the course. He comes here well before the tournament, and when the LPGA gets here, they can trust that he’s already covered all the bases.”

David Johnson, a 20-year Class A member and director of golf operations at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and longtime host of the LPGA’s first major of the year, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, was happy to see the fresh perspective come to his course.

“We’ve been doing this for so long, we set the standards a long time ago,” Johnson says. “You can get tunnel vision, things you might not see. He’ll come in six weeks beforehand and give us some recommendations … things he can see that we might not be doing.”

In fact, one of Miller’s recommendations even scored Johnson some points with his membership.

“Our bunkers all have new sand. He told us to take the Sand-Pro and do sharp circles with it — it makes the sand more consistent,” Johnson says. “Our members noticed the difference right away.”

Geddes says that it helps LPGA Tour officials to have someone who can speak the language of the superintendent on staff.

“We had a situation this year where on a Tuesday, players started complaining about getting mud on the ball,” Geddes says. Since this was a desert course and there had never been that complaint there before, the LPGA staff was dumbfounded. But with Miller on-site, he went “on a mission” to figure out why the players were complaining about mud. He found out that something was amiss with a section of the irrigation system.

“Instead of us standing there with the course superintendent, and him saying ‘no way,’ John was able to look into it for us,” Geddes says. “Instead of coming off as insulting to the superintendent, we were able to work together to get it fixed.”

Miller explains a finer point of turf management to Doug Brecht, vice president of rules and officials for the LPGA Tour. “His communications skills really set him apart,” says Jane Geddes, the LPGA’s vice president of competition.

LPGA know-it-all

An interesting game to play with Miller is to ask him about different courses on the LPGA Tour. Name a tournament, or a specific course, and he can tell you when he was there last and what the course was working on to better itself for the players of the LPGA.

He’ll say that the one course lost its collars and was currently resodding, while another course looks absolutely perfect right now, but the rainy season will hit between now and the tournament, and yet another course was fighting fairy ring on a few greens.

It’s enough information to make him dangerous. Thankfully, Miller is on the superintendent’s side.

“That’s why it’s good (GCSAA) selected John,” Wooten says. “He’s hosted tournaments, he knows there are limitations to what the LPGA can demand. It’s a good relationship to have.”

“We really didn’t know what to expect (with the LPGA Tour agronomist position),” Geddes says. “We thought it’d be a huge enhancement though. It’s been more than we expected — John is so professional. Just his presence, his ability to communicate with superintendents, is such a benefit to us.”

And Miller’s regular appearances on the LPGA Tour have been a boon for GCSAA’s visibility in the golf world as well. Besides getting more exposure for the association — regular advertising on LPGA Tour events was part of the deal brokered between the two groups — Miller is also getting the initials GCSAA on the lips of more LPGA Tour players and fans every week.

Miller’s already worked with such players as Paula Creamer, Laura Diaz, Meg Mallon and Karrie Webb. Working closely with Lorena Ochoa, as she hosts her own tournament for the first time this year, has earned GCSAA a free public service announcement from the world’s hottest golfer (see sidebar).

“The LPGA agronomist position provides many tangible benefits to GCSAA and its members,” GCSAA president David S. Downing II, CGCS, says. “From an outreach perspective to golfers, GCSAA is afforded public service announcement air time during LPGA telecasts on ESPN, ESPN2 and The Golf Channel. In addition, various features about GCSAA and its members will be broadcast. The association and host superintendents are recognized weekly in the LPGA news releases, on LPGA.com and on the individual tournament sites. There are other elements which together provide us a robust package to provide exposure.

“But equally important is the relationship building that occurs. The LPGA players, staff, sponsors and media have been exposed to GCSAA and have come to respect it for its expertise.”

Case in point: During the Kraft Nabisco Championship, Ochoa, who was on her way to winning the second major of her career, took time during her press conference to thank GCSAA for helping the LPGA Tour embrace more consistent conditions.

“I want to say thank you and congratulations (to GCSAA). To be able to keep the same pace of the greens the whole week, I think that’s something that we as players asked for before, and it was very nice to have the same speed on the greens,” Ochoa said to the assembled media. “Usually on a Monday, the grass (on the greens) is a little bit high and the ball holds good. Yesterday we saw the opposite. So I like that a lot so we can get used to a course, the real course.”

She wasn’t the only player at Mission Hills CC with GCSAA and John Miller on her mind. Paula Creamer and her father could be seen having a long conversation on the 18th green with Miller about course setup.

“I was introduced to (Miller) yesterday, and we talked a lot about (his job) and I think it’s a great program,” Creamer said. “I think it’s wonderful for us to have the right greens and the rough and the fairways and all that, and just the input that they take from us is very important.”

“I think (the newly created LPGA Tour staff agronomist position) is great. The better condition our courses are (in), the better the golf is going to be. It’s a very important part of golf in general,” Jill McGill, a 12-year veteran on the LPGA Tour, told GCM. “The big thing for our tour is to get the greens more consistent. So every week we’re stepping up and ideally we’re hitting the same-paced greens for the most part. I think they’re doing a good job, I think it’s going to take some time to get it exactly how we want it to be, just like with every new program — it takes a little time. (Miller) has a pretty important job.”

Traveling man

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and while many families across the nation are readying their grills for a backyard barbecue, Miller needs to get home before he can think about firing up the charcoals. Miller’s wife, Gail, and son, Brandon, a sophomore at the Ohio State University majoring in aeronautical engineering, have a big weekend planned of grilling and watching the Indy 500.

But first, he’ll need to navigate some more airport headaches, this time at LAX; the airline did not have his reservation, perhaps because he arrived the night before from an international carrier. But all is resolved, and now it’s just a matter of boarding his flight.

Miller has just finished a five-day trip that took him to China and South Korea. “I didn’t get to see much of it, but what I did see was beautiful,” Miller says.

He estimates that before he started working in this position, he maybe took six round-trip flights in a calendar year, a majority for GCSAA as he was teaching seminars.

But how many round-trip flights has he taken this year so far? Miller goes quiet trying to figure out the number while the airport cacophony swirls around him.

Miller estimates he has taken 60 trips in the last six months.

With all that travelling, he must be an expert in killing time waiting for flights. His preferred leisure activity isn’t listening to his iPod or watching a portable DVD player. No, Miller is currently peeling through a GCSAA textbook, “Managing Bermudagrass Turf” by L.B. McCarty and Grady Miller. “I like to brush up on my weakest areas,” Miller says.

If he doesn’t feel like doing homework, he can always brush up on his regular airport speech: explaining to airport security just exactly what a Lang penetrometer does.

Seth Jones is GCM’s senior associate editor.

Ochoa lends support, name to GCSAA

Even after an hour-long autograph session with fans at the grand opening of El Rio CC outside Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, Ochoa still has time for the maintenance staff afterward.

Imagine Lorena Ochoa, arguably the hottest professional golfer playing the game today, in a TV commercial where she attacks pin after pin in a series of highlights.

Then, after she spins the last shot back toward the pin, she turns to the camera, encourages golfers to fix their ball marks and thanks the members of GCSAA for keeping golf courses around the world pristine.

It won’t be imaginary for much longer.

Lorena Ochoa, two-time LPGA Tour Player of the Year and back-to-back winner of The Associated Press’ Female Athlete of the Year award, has agreed to offer her support to the members of GCSAA in a public service announcement to be filmed this season.

Call it a side benefit of having a GCSAA staffer working directly with the LPGA players — Ochoa is hosting her first tournament this year at her home course, the Guadalajara Country Club in Mexico. Because of this, John Miller, CGCS, GCSAA’s LPGA Tour agronomist, as well as Ricky Heine, CGCS and GCSAA’s immediate past president, and Heine’s bother, Bobby, a turf consultant who has been consulting on courses in Mexico for 15 years, have been working closely with Ochoa and Ochoa Sports to make sure her first tournament is a successful one.

It became clear early on that Ochoa was an ally of the superintendent, the maintenance crews and of the creation of the LPGA staff agronomist position.

A full year before his tournament, Guadalajara CC superintendent Fernando Varela (left), an 18-year superintendent member, discusses conditioning for an LPGA event with Bobby Heine and Ricky Heine. GCC will host the inaugural Lorena Ochoa Invitational this Nov. 13-16.

“I think it’s great we have the relationship (with GCSAA),” Ochoa says. “I’m willing to help in any way I can and just be supportive.”

Ochoa is well-known for stopping by maintenance facilities to express her gratitude toward the maintenance staffs.

“That’s the least I can do, is to say hi to them, and really say ‘thank you’ for their hard work because they’ve worked so hard, and they’re really good people,” Ochoa says.

At the Kraft Nabisco this year, Ochoa went out of her way to show her appreciation toward superintendent David Johnson’s crew, stopping by the maintenance facility to sign autographs, take photos and even help scramble some eggs for the crew’s mid-morning breakfast.

“Lorena is a true professional, a competitor, and a friend of GCSAA and the superintendent,” Ricky Heine says. “She and her brother, Alejandro, have treated me like a friend of the family since we met two years ago. Heavy on the humility and light on the ego is how I would describe Lorena — she is just a wonderful person.”

“Lorena is fabulous to work with… she takes a great interest in the game, and she understands the effect course maintenance has on her game,” Miller says. “She also realizes the importance the maintenance staffs have in the way the game is played everyday.”

As of this writing, Ochoa had won six tournaments on the season and was atop the LPGA Tour’s money list, seemingly destined for a third straight year of being named LPGA player of the year. Not a bad friend to have in the first year of the GCSAA LPGA Tour agronomist program.

“(LPGA players) all support this decision very much,” Ochoa says. “I think it’s our No. 1 priority, that all the courses are in great shape and in similar conditions, in terms of speed of the greens, and that everything works. I think it’s going to have a positive impact — for the fans, for us, for the level of golf.

“We’re professionals, we do this for a living,” she continues. “I want to make sure that it looks good, and that we look good when we play and we feel more comfortable. And it’s always important to have the same conditions, the same sand in the bunkers, the same speed on the greens.”

During Ochoa’s press conference at the Kraft Nabisco, the excellent condition of Mission Hills Country Club came up. Ochoa took the moment to thank GCSAA for helping the LPGA players find better, more consistent conditions on the golf course from week to week.

Indeed, GCSAA has found a friend in Lorena Ochoa.

— S.J.