The Man, the Myth, the Mower

For tennis, it’s grass or clay. For hockey, ice or street. But for golf, only acres of verdant precision-snipped grass will do.

For the Nissan Open PGA Tour tournament taking place this week at the Riviera Country Club, the man behind the prime-time turf is Paul Ramina, the club’s golf course superintendent. Armed with a degree in turf-grass management from the University of Maryland’s Institute of Applied Agriculture, Ramina joined Riviera 2 1/2 years ago to begin the high-stakes job of watching grass grow.

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Overseeing a golf course isn’t anything like mowing Dad’s lawn every Saturday, is it?

No. We’ve got 140 acres to take care of. Which means a fleet of 30 mowers, a year-round grounds crew of up to 35, with an additional 30 to 40 volunteers--mostly other folks in the industry and family members--working the week of the tournament.

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And for you?

It’s a lot of hours. A normal day starts at 5 a.m. And even when I’m not here, I’m on call. The grass doesn’t take a holiday. If there’s sun exposure or an irrigation pipe bursts, I’m here. We’re always at the mercy of Mother Nature.

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When do you start prepping the golf course for an event like this?

We keep the course in top shape all year. You have to look at it as an organism, like you or me. It gets sick. It gets hungry. With all the traffic, it gets stressed. So we’re always soil testing, fertilizing, aerating and trimming the trees so the grass gets enough sunlight.

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Sounds like a pretty good life for a blade of grass.

Yes, but the grass always has to be in top condition, even when it’ s winter and the grass--we have a warm turf variety called Kikuyu--likes to relax. There’s a lot of expectation. If the turf is looking a little yellow in winter, which it does to throw nutritional reserves into its roots, people will come up to me, very concerned: “Why is the grass not green?”

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What do you do?

Potassium, slow-release nitrogen. You don’t want to pump it up too much because that makes the grass go out of whack.

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Like grass on steroids.

Right.

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You have two degrees--one in turf management, the other in communications. Do you talk to your grass?

Aw--

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Come on, you can tell us.

My friends are going to read this. I can’t say. Well, maybe just a little.

What would surprise people about what you do?

The hours, probably. And that this is all very scientific. On the sixth hole, we’ve installed grow lights because it just doesn’t get enough sun. And some portions of the course have a heating system that keeps the soil at 55 degrees so microbes aren’t affected by the cold.

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After working all day keeping Riviera’s course gorgeous, what does your front lawn look like?

I live in an apartment.