MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA - Tucked into a 750-acre park between two of Northern California's largest landmarks - San Francisco Bay and the massive Google campus - Shoreline Golf Links is as much off the beaten path as is humanly possible in the heart of Silicon Valley. But golfers are doing just fine finding this city-owned course in Mountain View without the aid of an Internet search engine. After all, 70,000 rounds a year don't lie.
Golfers can play the course for about 50 bucks on weekends and 40 during the week. That said, Shoreline has one of America's priciest addresses, where neighbors include Hewlett-Packard, AOL, LinkedIn, Apple and Stanford University.The course was designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. of nearby Palo Alto and built in 1983 on a capped landfill. Besides occasional cracks in the surface that can result in methane leaks and parts of the course sagging due to settling layers of trash beneath the surface, there are a host of chronic challenges that could be a great source of stress for any superintendent.
The city's recycled water source is so dirty that cutting it with potable barely makes it acceptable for use on the golf course; rapid blight has appeared as the disease du jour on Shoreline's ryegrass; an army of protected ground squirrels have turned the property into a veritable ant farm; and the course, at first glance, appears to have more geese than Saskatchewan. Throw in the fact that superintendent Matt Wisely still is in his first six months on the job, and it's all enough to keep even the most seasoned superintendent awake at night.
Make no mistake, Wisely is sleeping just fine these days, but if he does have the occasional sleepless night, it's not because of anything at the golf course.
"When something happens here, I ask myself if it's a matter of life or death," Wisely said. "If it's the grass, you can always get grass to grow back."
Besides, Wisely has more important things on his mind. Things that aren't grass, and things that don't "grow back."
Two years ago, when he was superintendent at El Mecero Country Club in Davis, California, Wisely noticed his hands were becoming uncomfortably warm while he worked outside on the golf course and he began suffering from blurred vision. After several visits to the doctor and multiple MRIs, Wisely eventually received a diagnosis no one wants to hear: relapsing and remitting multiple sclerosis.
"My whole life at work has changed," he said. "I don't stress about anything. I can't.
"When something goes wrong, I'm the first person to get help and call for reinforcements. I will not stress about work."
For the first year after his diagnosis, Wisely injected himself daily with Copaxone, a synthetic protein that suppresses inflammation and stimulates the myelin that protects the nerves. Nowadays, he still self-treats with Copaxone three times a week and takes one pill per week that delivers 50,000 mg (yes, 50,000) of Vitamin D.
My whole life at work has changed. I don't stress about anything. I can't."
Doctors have told him that although the symptoms only manifested recently, RRMS likely is something he has been carrying for years, and like a weed in the fairway, has been festering in hiding, waiting for the opportune moment to surface. To date, his treatment plan has kept his symptoms in check.
It has been said that a golf course superintendent cannot be successful on the job without the support of an understanding spouse. That goes double for Wisely, even when that spouse is a golf pro.
Wisely's wife, Kim Stevens, who is an LPGA teaching professional in the Silicon Valley, has been a pillar of support for her husband, both on the golf course and at home.
"When the doctor told him it was multiple sclerosis, I didn't even know what it was. I just knew it wasn't good," Stevens said.
"When I heard it, I just said 'OK, now what do we do? We're a team, let's figure this out.' "
The owner of Silicon Valley Golf Performance Center, Stephens contracts her services to several golf facilities throughout the South Bay area, including Shoreline and Summitpointe Golf Club in Milpitas. It was there at Summitpointe, in 2002, where the couple met. Wisely was the assistant superintendent and Stephens, who was conducting clinics on a roughshod practice range, needed the help of the maintenance staff, or she might be out of a job."The driving range was awful. People were tripping and falling," Stevens said. "I had to make friends with the superintendent and the assistant, because they were the ones who were going to fix it for me.
"I learned early on that to get what I needed and not get fired I needed to befriend them. From that day on, the superintendent was always the first person on the property that I wanted to meet, get to know and befriend because they are the ones who make my life easier."
The couple will celebrate their anniversary on New Year's Eve, 11 years after they were wed on Summitpointe's 16th tee.
So much for superintendents and golf pros not getting along.
"She says we have a symbiotic relationship," said Wisely. "She teaches people to tear up the golf course, and I fix them."
Fixing golf courses is one thing. Stressing over the work is another for Wisely, who still is getting to know all of Shoreline's nuances.
"I'm still learning this place," he said.
"For the first six months, I've been drinking from the firehose. Everything has hit me all at once. I'm just trying to make sure conditions are as consistent as possible."
That's easier said than done.
The city buys reclaimed water from Palo Alto that Wisely cuts it with potable before throwing it down on the course. Even then, impurities are running at about 300 ppm thanks to saltwater intrusion from the bay into Palo Alto's aging water lines.
When the doctor told him it was multiple sclerosis, I didn't even know what it was. I just knew it wasn't good. When I heard it, I just said 'OK, now what do we do? We're a team, let's figure this out.' "
To keep salts and bicarbonates moving through the system, Wisely aerates once a month with needle tines and flushes the greens.
"We're trying to get it down as much as we can," he said. "We're never going to get it to zero. We have no control over what they are sending us.
"We aerate as much as possible to keep water moving through profile, and we use a lot of gypsum and calcium, and we flush every month to keep that salt moving down. It doesn't seem to matter what we do, it's always there."
Balancing water needs in areas that are out of play is not as easy at this Touchstone Golf property as it might be elsewhere. If the surface gets too dry it can crack, allowing methane to escape into the air, so Wisely still must irrigate large swaths of land where golfers rarely tread. If he puts down too much, the trash layer underneath can break down prematurely, leading to settlement issues and collapsing greens and fairways.
"If the trash gets wet, it breaks down faster, then we get more settlement issues," Wisely said. "That can lead to more methane development and cause underground fires. We have to keep standing water to a minimum."
There are many other challenges as well. On the surface, rapid blight on the primarily Poa annua greens is the most destructive of a pallette of diseases that also includes Waitea patch and anthracnose. With about 70,000 patrons per year coming through the door, Shoreline is subject to a tremendous amount of traffic, but not all of it is from golfers. Geese, coots and ground squirrels have the run of the property, and visitors to the park walk the course, and not just on the cart paths, they walk the fairways.
Geese and hundreds of ground squirrels that populate the property have taken over in such numbers that each is oblivious to the other. But the squirrels are only part of the problem.
Protected by the state, the Western Burrowing owl is a lazy opportunist that prefers to freeload inside the ready made quarters created by the squirrels, thus making the squirrels protected as well. Wisely is permitted to trap as many as 300 squirrels per year and relocate them unharmed to remote parts of the park, but they are prolific breeders, so transferring a few hundred per year does little to put a dent in the population. The end result is a seemingly endless supply of the subterranean ne'er-do-wells.
Constrained by the state, Wisely dismisses them as part of territory. Besides, since receiving his diagnosis, he, as much as anyone, has learned the value of the axiom live and let live.
"Squirrels are all over the place, and geese are crapping all over the place. I can't lose sleep over it," Wisely said. "It makes it interesting to have a problem like rapid blight and not stress about it."
The most common form of multiple sclerosis, RRMS is a neurological disease in which neuromuscular attacks are followed by periods of inactivity or remission that can last varying amounts of time. Wisely knows he has been fortunate that his medication has kept the symptoms at bay. He also knows he's guaranteed nothing, so he stays active to promote a healthy lifestyle and to increase muscle tone in the event the disease progresses.
"He's not in a wheelchair. It's sensory, not muscular, so he's dodged a bullet there," Stevens said. "It's about staying positive and doing everything possible to stay healthy, and he knows that."