Talk about taking the road less traveled.
Bryan Barrington's career started more than 20 years like that of many other superintendents: turf school, followed by a couple of stints as an assistant before finally becoming a head greenkeeper.
For the past five years, his career as an agronomist has been anything but ordinary.
A graduate of the University of Rhode Island turfgrass management program, the 57-year-old Barrington (right) is co-founder of Alliance Golf, a Farmington, Connecticut hospitality management company founded in 1999 with partners Josh McKim and Phil Craft. The company owns three New England golf courses and manages a fourth. Barrington not only is co-owner of the company, he also is vice president of agronomy overseeing conditions and superintendents at all four properties.
One of those courses is The Club at Oxford Greens, a daily fee in Oxford, Connecticut where Barrington was superintendent since grow-in in 2005.
Fast forward to the Covid era, when golf was still in a spiral, and the club's owners were looking to sell.
"One of the owners stayed in as an owner, and he asked me and my now partner Josh McKim if we would be interested in owning it," Barrington said. "I thought, well, if I'm going to be doing this I might as well get a piece of the action."
Before Oxford Greens, Barrington grew-in Red Tail Country Club, a Brian Silva design in Devens, Massachusetts that opened in 2002. He swore then he would never do another grow-in.
"I was getting married while doing the grow-in. I was stressing, losing weight and there were the sleepless nights," Barrington said.
"So, when it was all done, I was like, 'whoa, I'm not doing that again.' "
Against his own advice, Barrington followed with the Oxford Greens project. It was the allure of starting with a blank canvas and creating something from it that drew him back in.
We've thought every year after Covid, 'when is play going to drop?' We're not seeing the drop. Golf has been up at all of our properties.
"I told myself I wasn't going to do it again, but, you know, I loved it. I loved every part of it," he said.
"So, when another one came up, I threw my hat in and ended up doing my second one. I think it was the whole process of forest to dirt to seeding to fertilizing to grow-in and then to opening. The attraction for me was the whole scenario of seeing something come out of a blank piece of land."
Alliance Golf has since made other acquisitions.
The company also owns Silo Point Country Club (formerly Heritage Village) in Southbury, Connecticut and Red Tail, and manages Tunxis Country Club in Farmington, Connecticut. The group recently sold the private Blackhawk Country Club in Stratford, Connecticut.
It was at Blackhawk where Alliance adopted autonomous mowing technology with a fleet of Husqvarna units.
When the group purchased Blackhawk, the property was facing labor challenges and to that end needed some attention. It also needed new equipment. It was the perfect opportunity to explore new technology.
"If you buy a traditional fairway mower, you have to put a body in it. You have to find someone to sit in that seat," Barrington said. "We would have needed two mowers, and that is two bodies just sitting. Blackhawk only has 18 to 20 acres of fairway. It's not a massive amount, so that's where we dug our heels in.
"If we could get two more bodies, then great. But, we could also have them doing other things."
It made more sense financially and from a conditioning standpoint to go autonomous and have employees paying more attention to the golf course.
"Do we want someone sitting on a fairway mower every day, or do we want someone edging bunkers and weed-whacking?" he asked. "It made sense to have people dedicated to detail work."
None of Alliance's other properties have the infrastructure on the golf course to support charging stations for autonomous mowers, Barrington said. However, he thought enough of the technology that he would utilize it again if he could.
"We don't have the power to ever station throughout the golf course, which is a limiting factor," he said. "You need 110 (volt) to power the charging system. We would have to run new line throughout the golf courses, which would be a pretty big expense."
I thought, well, if I'm going to be doing this I might as well get a piece of the action.
So what is next for Alliance?
Golf in Connecticut has been strong since Covid, so the group is focused on growth.
"We've thought every year after Covid, 'when is play going to drop?' We're not seeing the drop," Barrington said. "Golf has been up at all of our properties.
"We recently sold Blackhawk, but we are pursuing another one to make up for that. We own three right now, but we'll be back at owning four golf courses and managing all five."