From Tee Off to Face Off

When snow and ice covers Interlachen CC in the Twin Cities, the maintenance team shifts focus from golf to hockey.

By Joseph Oberle

In the dead of a Minnesota winter, a blanket of snow covers the 18th green at Interlachen Country Club, where Bobby Jones sank a 40-foot putt on the severely sloped and undulating green to capture the 1930 U.S. Open. Nearby, a chilly wind blows a wisp of snow across the frozen pond, where in the same tournament, Jones reportedly skipped an approach shot to the ninth green off a lily pad to help him continue his quest for the Grand Slam.

The hushed scene offers the perfect setting for these golf ghosts to silently rise ... were it not for the banging of a hockey puck off the boards across the Interlachen parking lot.

For eight years now, the grounds at Interlachen have passed on hibernating all winter waiting for the spring thaw. Instead, the club’s maintenance staff members have become experts at maintaining three sheets of ice on the clay tennis courts at the storied country club.

One rink, complete with hockey boards and nets, is filled every day with hockey players or broomball aficionados. Two more rinks are designed for pleasure skating, including an area for curling — a sport gaining wide popularity in the state. And it all started with general manager George Carroll, who has a real passion for the state’s No. 1 winter sport.

“George wanted to bolster the winter activities at the club,” says Brian Boll, the assistant superintendent at Interlachen who supervises maintenance of the rinks under the direction of Interlachen’s Class A superintendent Matt Rostal. “He’s pretty passionate about hockey, and one of his ideas was to install ice skating and hockey rinks on the clay tennis courts at the club in hopes of having more member involvement during the winter months.”

Crews begin assembling the boards that surround the ice rinks at Interlachen in November, after the ground has frozen. To avoid damaging the tennis courts, the supports for the boards are constructed above ground. Photos by Joseph Oberle. Photo courtesy of Interlachen CC

So Rostal’s golf course maintenance crew was tapped to trade in summer golf hats for stocking caps and become rink managers. They researched how hockey boards were constructed at other local outdoor rinks, acquired some knowledge on ice-making practices where they could, then converted the tennis building into a hockey lodge. They were off and running.

“The grounds crew took part in it from the start as far as doing the daily maintenance of the hockey rinks,” says Boll. “Generally, it is a little bit slower time during the winter months, and we’re just going through various pieces of equipment and doing a little work on the course, but we do have some additional time that we can dedicate to the rinks.”

Getting started

The first concern was figuring out how to put up the hockey boards without damaging the clay surface of the tennis courts. “The tennis courts are pretty costly, and we didn’t want to do anything where we would possibly need those to be replaced,” Boll, a 10-year GCSAA member, says.

So they constructed the boards’ supports above ground, driving nothing into the tennis court surface. The crew waits until November, when the golf season is over and the ground freezes, to begin constructing the boards, which are made out of 2-inch by 12-inch boards supported by 2-inch by
6-inch braces.

The club obtained a permit from the city to use a nearby fire hydrant to make the ice. But while Boll says that it seems like his crew is dragging a water hose around 12 months of the year now, there is more to that process than simply turning
a nozzle.

“We had to learn the fundamentals of putting down the best sheet of ice possible,” Boll says. “We learned that large amounts of water don’t make for the best ice. So when we flood the surfaces, we want to put several thin coats down to produce a better ice surface. If you put a large amount down it tends to get a little bumpy, and the skating conditions aren’t as good.”

The next challenge was how to maintain the ice surface once it was created. To that end, Carroll traveled to Canada and bought a 1950s model Zamboni, the ice-resurfacing machines common to ice rinks across the nation. The Interlachen maintenance crew fixed it up, made it functional and now uses it to resurface the ice throughout the season for special events such as hockey clinics or when a well-known hockey player stops by. It is not used every day because parts for such an old machine are hard to find, but the Zamboni does get taken out of the shed and, according to Boll, it is nothing like riding a fairway mower.

“There isn’t much that relates to mowing equipment as far as driving a Zamboni is concerned,” Boll says. “The Zamboni’s a pretty large piece of equipment that makes you almost feel like a hippopotamus on ice skates with this big piece of machinery slipping around a little bit. Both pieces of equipment take some time and training to get a handle on them.”

The extra attention and care that is given to both the creation and the maintenance of the ice surfaces at Interlachen are noticed by members, Boll says. After all, a good skating surface is extremely important to hockey-mad Minnesotans.

“It’s funny because the membership is as interested in the hockey rink ice surface as we are,” Boll says. “They are always looking for good ice conditions. And we always kid amongst ourselves about how it relates to their concern for the speed and conditions of our golf greens. Our dedication is on the golf course and the greens — that’s the most important aspect that they are looking for — however, we do field some comments about the quality of the ice surface, as well.”

Golf course maintenance workers in this part of the world generally spend their winter months on machine maintenance, trimming trees, painting accessories, continuing their education and even finding their way down south to warmer climates. But at Interlachen, the ice rink maintenance has added some extra duties to the winter schedule.

“I think they (the maintenance staff) enjoy it,” says Rostal, an 11-year GCSAA member. “They know they are going to be doing something. The rinks give them a chance to get outside. You get a little stir crazy in the same building with the same seven guys all winter long. But that’s the way it is, so an opportunity to get outside and do something … they enjoy that.”

“There are many opportunities throughout the year like this, such as putting up holiday decorations, where I think to myself, ‘They never taught this in turfgrass management,’” Boll says. “But it’s all part of being a private club. I like to call it job enrichment. It’s fun to do.”

An aerial photo of the ice rinks. The rink in the foreground is used primarily for hockey, while the two rinks in the background are used primarily for figure skating and curling. Photo courtesy of Interlachen CC

A day on the ice

The maintenance crew gets plenty of time outside the shop once the temperatures allow them to start flooding the rink. At the beginning of the process, the crew will spend six hours a day building up the ice, with some graveyard shifts required to put down a good base.

Once the rinks are up, a couple of crew members will spend three to four hours a day preparing the ice for the day of skating. If there was skating on the day before, they must first clean up the skate shavings, handling the job with a sweeper, a motorized broom attached to the front of a Groundsmaster.

The crew members sweep all the skate shavings to the side, where they are shoveled up and tossed over the boards, before any new water can be put down. Once the ice is clear, the hose reel is hauled out, and resurfacing begins. Despite the crew’s best efforts, over time there is an accumulation of snow and ice that forms some ridges at the base of the boards. Last season, the club purchased an ice edger to smooth out those rough surfaces around the edges of the rinks to match the rest of the ice.

“If there is any snow fall, that increases the amount of time that is spent on the rinks by quite a bit,” Boll says. “First, we make sure all the roads and parking lots are cleaned off and then we clean all the snow off the rinks. Generally, we use a Bobcat or a skid loader to lift the snow up and over the boards or push it to the sides. We also have a pretty large snowblower that mounts to the front of a Groundsmaster and we are able to blow some of the snow up and over the boards. Then we sweep it again to make sure it is a totally clean surface to put water down.”

The crew tried putting down line templates in the ice for hockey but found that they attracted the heat of the sun in midwinter, and melting caused uneven and rough patches on the ice. The curling portion of the rink is in the shade, so the lines required for curling are not affected.

The rinks certainly add to the crew’s workload, and Rostal made sure that the club officials knew that. So the club hired one full-time member to the maintenance crew to help handle ice duties.

“Once we get started, we devote a lot of time over at the rinks,” Rostal says. “I made sure the club knew, from a superintendent’s standpoint, that some of our golf maintenance duties would suffer in the winter if I didn’t have some extra help. So I do have a little bit larger staff, and it helps us on the golf course in the summer because you have that other qualified full-time staff member on staff.”

And for the staff members, many of whom are Minnesotans and claim to live in the “state of hockey,” it is a labor of love.

“I think the guys take a little bit of pride in it,” Rostal says. “They are excited to get the hockey rink open and to see people out there skating. They might be grumbling a little bit when the temps are below zero and we are out there watering, but all in all it’s been a real big positive for the club and our department.”

The ‘Club of Hockey’

The rinks have been a real boon for Interlachen. The tennis house that was converted into the hockey lodge becomes a center of activity during the winter months. Hot chocolate, pizza and other concessions are sold there, and the rinks are reserved for members’ gatherings.

Members often bring a group of skaters, hockey or broomball players along for a day of activity, and the club charges a small fee to guests using the facility. That revenue, plus the concessions and money taken in from local businesses buying signage on the hockey boards (“adding a professional look,” says Boll), helps offset the cost of maintaining the rinks. But even more beneficial to the club is the additional members the rinks have attracted.

“The rinks have been very well received by the membership,” Boll says. “It’s also proved to be a pretty useful tool for recruiting new membership, especially to the pool and fitness category. Those with fitness memberships have access to the pool and fitness room, and a part of that membership includes the hockey rink and skating lodge.”

The rinks see quite a bit of use when the conditions are good and the winter weather cooperates. Particularly during the evenings or when school is out, they will have 20-40 skaters on the various rinks. The weekends are also very busy.

“It is a great fit here in Edina, which is such a big hockey city,” Rostal says. “And I’d be very disappointed if it wasn’t used, but it is very well accepted.”

The club actively promotes the rinks by offering more than just available ice for pick-up hockey games. From hockey clinics to skating lessons; Spaghetti Night every Wednesday to the occasional “Cocktails, Cigars and Curling Night;” and children’s birthday/skating parties to large corporate holiday events that utilize the clubhouse meeting and dining facilities, the ice at Interlachen is buzzing with activity all winter long.

And while there have not yet been any curlers, pucksters or broomballers rising to greatness comparable to the legendary feats taking place on the grass during the summer, the Interlachen superintendents have helped the storied golf club carve out a small wintertime identity as the “Club of Hockey.”

“A lot of people probably think that this all might be a lot of extra work for golf course superintendents,” Boll says. “However, the end result is providing an experience for our membership, and that’s kind of the big ideal. We just want to provide another opportunity to enjoy this club.”

Joseph Oberle is a free-lance writer in Findley, Minn., and was the author of “A legend leaves his mark,” published in the September 2006 issue of GCM.