Photography Courtesy Ascension Charity Classic
At some point this weekend, after the first round has teed off and the Ascension Charity Classic is underway, Mike Null will walk back to his maintenance shop on the grounds of Norwood Hills Country Club, lean back in a chair, kick up his feet, and watch the action unfold on a 65-inch television screen. For Null, the course’s director of agronomy, it will be a well-earned break.
For the past two years, it’s been up to Null and his team of greenskeepers to prepare the course for the arrival of the sport’s most legendary players. John Daly and Davis Love III will take swings from the tee boxes that Null carefully leveled. Vijay Singh and Ernie Els will putt on the greens that Null diligently watered. And the rest of the 81-person field for the PGA Tour Champions event will try to avoid the bunkers in which Null toiled after a series of angry summer thunderstorms threatened to make his job more difficult late last month.
A lot of work has gone into ensuring that Norwood Hills Country Club is ready for its national spotlight this weekend, and Null has been the man at the center of it all. “I’m proud of the fact that everybody is going to get to see what a great golf course Norwood is,” says Null, who's been in his position at the club for 19 years. “I think we—myself and my crew—do a very good job of keeping it in top-level shape.”
The PGA seems to agree. When officials visited for an initial course inspection two years ago, Null says they only had two requests for alterations: A couple of tee boxes needed to be evened, and a couple of trees needed to be cut down. Otherwise, Norwood was already up to par.
“The specs they have for mowing heights and green speeds were things that we already do on a daily basis,” Null says. “So it wasn’t very hard to meet them when the PGA showed up a week ago to start going through things. Basically, we’ve just been fine-tuning these past two weeks to get everything ready.”
Since the stakes are higher with the PGA in town, Null has been waking up even earlier than usual to make sure he’s at work by 5:30 a.m. There are fairways to mow, greens to nurse, and a long list of tasks to assign to his team members, many of whom are volunteers. Typically, Null works with a six-man crew. But with a PGA event on the premises, he’s needed a few extra hands. So he solicited assistance through his friends at the Mississippi Valley Golf Course Superintendents Association to connect with willing helpers from around the region. Now, he has nearly two dozen volunteers tending to the grounds.
With more rain than usual falling in August, the weather gave Null and his workers plenty to do. The course recently completed a project to rebuild the bunkers to improve drainage, but torrential downpours like the ones that soaked the region in recent weeks can still cause problems for the grounds crew.
“When that happens, they have to skim out any mud that washed in, then shovel everything back into place and rake,” Null says. “It’s a pretty involved process. Nobody likes doing it. Just the past couple weeks alone, we’ve had a lot of rain. It’s really worn on the crew, but they’ve fought through it.”
The good news: This weekend’s weather is expected to be idyllic. With most of the preparation already complete, that means Null won’t have to do too much more than some mowing here or some tidying there. Two years’ worth of work is about to yield a payoff.
Null is eager to soak it in. “There’s not that many people in the world who do what I do,” he says. “There’s an even smaller percentage that gets to go through what we’re going through now. I’m excited about it. I’m even more excited to watch the event on TV right as it’s happening outside my building.”
