Q&A: Neil Hutchinson, Superintendent at the Evans at Canal Shores

Neil Hutchinson

Superintendent - The Evans at Canal Shores

‍Location: Evanston, Illinois
Years Spent as Superintendent: One
Greens and Approaches: 007 Bentgrass
Fairways and Adjacent Rough: Bluegrass, Ryegrass, Poa Annua
Soil Profile: Clay
Acreage: 80 acres

Can you describe the site that the golf course sits on?

Evanston is the first northern suburb of Chicago — we are in a heavily populated urban environment. We’re located a couple blocks from the lake. Located within the property you have the CTA Purple Line, the Metra line, and the Bahai Temple up at [holes] six, seven, and eight. There’s one in every continent and they picked Evanston, Illinois, for some reason (laughs). There’s dog walkers, there’s deer, there’s coyotes, there’s kind of a little bit of everything and it’s just cool that it’s a public place. It’s accessible for everybody. 

But it’s a unique place to play. You’re off a little bit you’re in the canal, you’re a little bit to the right or left you’re in somebody’s backyard. 

Can you describe your soil profile?

The soil profile is pretty much clay –= not the greatest soil to grow grass on. We’ve got pockets of high organic matter areas and other pockets where Brad, our previous superintendent, had gotten soil tests done and the guy who did our soil samples said it was the worst soil that he had ever seen so, that’s what we’re growing grass on (laughs). 

What’s your goal with maintenance for the golf course?

The goal with our maintenance is really to make it consistent. We’re not trying to mow crazy low, we’re not trying to dry things out too dry because it’s hard to get water reincorporated back into this clay, so once it’s dry, it’s dry — until we get to a point where the soil is amended better. 

Can you describe some of the challenges you face here? 

A lot of our challenges are just making sure we can get out before golf starts, and we want to be doing it in a pretty quiet way because there are people sitting right next to a green that we’re going to be mowing for about 20 minutes. The other thing too is we’ve been getting a lot of play, so making sure that we’re fixing ball marks in the morning and making sure we’re filling divots. 

You guys did a big golf course renovation project led by Todd Quitno. What has the new infrastructure allowed you to do from the maintenance side?

The irrigation system is a brand-new Toro Infinity System, which is a wireless system. There used to be a lot of irrigation issues — it’s tough to be everywhere out here when there are people everywhere. 

We have dissipating structures into the canal for drainage, which helps. We have drains in the greens. We’re able to move a decent amount of water off of the property. 

Also, we used to have trees everywhere — on Nos. 6, 7, and 8, you couldn’t even see the Bahai Temple. They did a lot with the buckthorn removal just to get some airflow and some sunlight in which is really allowing us to grow the grass that we’re growing right now. They decided blue and ryegrass fairways, which really helps. Bentgrass would have been really fussy on these – like number 10 is tree-lined, there’s not a lot of air movement, that would have been smoked (laughs). 

Could you describe some of the flora and fauna around the golf course?

We’re trying to incorporate native trees and shrubs back into the environment. The canal was pretty much all buckthorn — an invasive species — we’ve got a lot of thistle out here that’s also an invasive species to Illinois. There’s kind of a buffer point between where we have the golf course and the canal. And it’s going to be ever-changing. When they did construction on No. 16, the green fell right into the canal because the soil was so unstable. So, we’re trying to re-incorporate some native grass types, some native shrub types back into the canal to keep this place stable. We have places where there are native wildflowers, oaks, and locust trees and cottonwoods. Just trying to re-incorporate some of those that have been taken over by the invasive buckthorn. 

What gets you up in the morning to come to work? 

Just putting out a good product for the community and the kids. I would have loved this if I was a kid getting to play on this, so just making sure the next generation keeps playing golf. It should be accessible for them to get into it and we’re going to be the place where they’re going to learn how to play. 

I think we have a lot of good things going on here with the caddie program, with the golf practice. Even on our staff now, we have two high school kids, so just trying to keep them involved and let them know that there is a career in this. Just trying to give them opportunities. We’re trying to get them to be stewards of the game as well. 

Thank you to our friends at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America for their support of this series.

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