Teaching turf maintenance at the Caribbean’s Cabot Saint Lucia
Cabot Saint Lucia has quickly become a special place in the Caribbean. I was fortunate to be there at the very beginning with a challenging but successful grow-in at Point Hardy Golf Club during 2022-23. The golf course has 1.5 miles of coastline, with nine holes navigating along the water and inlets, and the remaining nine holes arranged through the island terrain and over rocky outcrops. The golf course was designed by architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and recently was ranked 76th of the Top 100 Courses of the World by Golf Magazine.
I have been fortunate to maintain turf on golf courses with amazing tropical island views in the Caribbean. I enjoy mentoring the next generation of golf course superintendents and greenkeepers, which I learned early in my career working for George Thompson, CGCS, at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst. At Cabot Saint Lucia, we’ve developed a sort of “winter internship” or “winter work experience” program for turf students and also for those early in their careers that want to learn how to manage turf on a tropical island.
Housing is provided in the main business area of Rodney Bay where restaurants, shops and the beach are just a few minutes walk. The interns seem to enjoy Friday evenings when the local town converts the main street into an outdoor food and music festival.
Meet the interns
The 2024-25 winter season in St. Lucia consists of typical tropical weather for the Caribbean with plenty of sunshine and air temperatures in the 80s during the day and 70s at night. This season’s team represents an impressive list of international golf course experience and skills: two Canadians, one from the Netherlands, three from England, one from Venezuela and one from the United States.
Anna Riopelle is from Ontario, Canada. She holds two Bachelor of Science degrees in recreation and in management from Dalhousie University, located in Halifax, Canada. Anna plays and coaches hockey, and her interest in sports has led her to extensive golf course experience in Canada.
Another fellow Canadian, Bradley Sperling, has a degree in horticulture and turf management from Olds College (Olds, Canada). He works on golf courses in Alberta, Canada, and has PGA Tour tournament experience in Mexico, California (Riviera Country Club) and Florida (TPC Sawgrass).
Tom Hampshire is from Wokingham, England. He is currently pursuing turf management studies at the University of Guelph (Guelph, Canada). He has both landscape and golf course management experience in Canada and England.
Antonie Jorne Haagoort is from the Netherlands. He’s worked on golf courses in Belgium and Australia.
Thomas Webster is from England. He earned a horticulture degree from Myerscough College (Preston, England) and has worked on golf courses in England, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Austria.
Max Fuhri is also from England. He completed an apprenticeship in sports turf management from Easton and Otley College (Norfolk, England), and has worked on golf courses in England, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
Andrew Augeri is from New Hampshire, very close to the Massachusetts border. He began his turfgrass management studies at Penn State University (Berks Campus in Reading), and now continues at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). Andrew started working in the clubhouse but quickly became interested in the turfgrass management side of the business. He asked the golf course superintendent if he needed help, and now he’s focused on a career in turfgrass management. He has worked on golf courses in Massachusetts for the past three years, but his advisor at Penn State, Mike Fidanza, Ph.D., suggested he gain some experience on warm-season turf.
Another intern, Ernesto Martinez, is a student enrolled in Penn State’s two-year certificate program. I first met him when I spoke at a Penn State Turf Club meeting. He is from Venezuela and, last summer, he worked at Real Club Valderrama in Sotogrande, Spain.
Meet the assistants
Edoardo Fauro is from Sardinia, Italy. He studied sports turf management at Elmwood College (Cupar, Scotland). He has worked on several golf courses in England, and has tournament experience at the Ryder Cup in 2023, held at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club (Rome, Italy) and the 149th Open Championship held at Royal Saint George’s Golf Club (Sandwich, England).
Brian Mabuza is from Eswatini (formerly called Swaziland). He worked at the Union League Golf Club at Torresdale (Philadelphia) and is currently enrolled in Penn State’s World Campus pursuing a Master of Professional Studies in turfgrass management.
Jerry Mulvihill is the golf course superintendent at Lofoten Links, located above the Arctic Circle in Gimsøysand, Norway. Prolonged winter snow cover has been a great excuse for Jerry to contribute much-needed seasonal support here in St. Lucia.
Class is in session
Fidanza visited Andrew and the other interns and spent the day doing a “walk and talk,” examining various putting greens, soil profiles, some back-and-forth questions and answers and discussing how to manage the seeded Pure Dynasty seashore paspalum.
A component of Andrew’s time in St. Lucia was to monitor soil moisture, soil salinity and soil pH on all putting greens as part of a preliminary study on environmental monitoring, guided by Fidanza and Rick Brandenburg, Ph.D., North Carolina State University. Andrew also measured the pH and salinity of our irrigation water (Table 1). We have an on-site reverse-osmosis facility to desalinate the ocean water, which is then stored in a pond.
“The idea of having students work and participate in experimental learning over the winter, where most students would not be working at their local course, and (having) the ability to go somewhere to keep their turf management skills sharp and learn a new way of managing turfgrass, is fantastic,” Andrew told me
With greens, keep it simple
We asked Di Giorgio how he keeps his greens true and his demeanor cool.
Point Hardy Golf Club recently hosted its first member-member to rave reviews. Two of the members are PGA Tour players and commented on the pureness of the greens, adding that they thought the course could host a PGA Tour event.
And that’s saying something, because the greens are not USGA spec by any means; they’re built on sand that was crushed here on the island and trucked to the site. We use the USGA’s GS3 golf ball to measure smoothness and trueness. It’s one thing to hear people say the greens are true, but it’s another thing to get a reading and see it proven in the numbers.
When it comes to maintaining the greens here, we keep it simple. We do light, frequent verticutting. We dust the greens every week or two with bagged sand from Florida. We use basic fertilizer and some plant growth regulators as needed. I tell the interns that the key to keeping a non-USGA based rootzone pristine is to not get too fancy. Keep it simple, do what we do best: agronomics.
It takes a team to do it. You can have a plan on paper, but sometimes you have to throw the book out and do what you know how to do best: water, fertilizer, sunlight. Sometimes it’s not that complicated.
The advice I give to the interns is to network with people who are in similar circumstances. It’s hard to tell your spouse, your partner or your friends who aren’t in turfgrass about this job. They think we’re playing golf all day. Calling my friends who are close by or far away and just telling them what’s going on has always calmed me down.
Damon Di Giorgio is the director of agronomy at Point Hardy Golf Club, Cabot Saint Lucia, located in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Contact him via email at Damon.DiGiorgio@cabot.com.
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