John Lieser's St. Cloud Times Golf Column, July 2, 2015

     For three Apollo sophomore golfers, June 10 was a memorable day. Logan Weis, Tyler Coleman, and Jake Fujan had the profound pleasure of playing historic Hazeltine National Golf Club for the first time. This challenging course, located in Chaska, will host the 41st Ryder Cup on September 30-October 2, 2016. That opportunity to play was arranged by course superintendent and former Albany resident, Chris Tritabaugh.      Chris Tritabaugh’s family moved to Albany in 1992, when his dad accepted the superintendent of school’s position. The teenage Tritabaugh hung around the local layout and luckily, Tom Kasner, Albany’s consummate course superintendent, had a worker quit the grounds crew and he was hired as a “go-fer”; that four-year summer stint began his seminal love of growing grass.
     Upon graduation, Tritabaugh started college at the University of Minnesota in 1996, and after enrolling in Landscape Architecture, he had an epiphany and realized that horticulture was more to his liking and set a goal of getting a degree in turf grass management.
     After his college graduation in 2001, he was hired by St. Cloud CC superintendent Dan Hanson. Tritabaugh added, “Dan was tough taskmaster but terrifically knowledgeable. I learned a lot from him and still think fondly of my one year tutelage under him.”
     From 2002-2006, his mentorship continued as he worked at Town & Country Club in St. Paul under course superintendent, Bill Larson. That assistant position also was fortuitous, as there he met his future wife, Lindsay.
     His next logical leap was in 2006, at age 28, he was hired as course superintendent by Northland CC in Duluth. As to his stay at Northland, Tritabaugh elaborated, “We made numerous changes in my six years there. We removed many trees, and most importantly, we brought a unique maintenance meld that emphasized firm/fast over lush/green (Witness Chambers Bay in this year’s US Open). Moreover, my two daughters, Olive (7), and Penelope (4) were born in my wife’s hometown of Duluth. Nostalgically, Northland will always be one of my favorite courses in Minnesota.”
     After six years at Northland, the chance to become course superintendent at prestigious Hazeltine was too good to pass up. His superb track record of producing firm/fast conditions at Northland impressed the Hazeltine hierarchy, and he was hired to replace former St. Cloud native Jim Nicol.
     That firm/fast expertise will be visible world-wide next year as thousands of Europeans will deplane into the Twin Cities to watch, and more than 500,000,000 will view the Ryder Cup on global television.
     To prepare for this mega event, Hazeltine started planning when the last putt by winner Y.E. Yang was holed in the 2009 PGA Championship. First, the old clubhouse was razed and a new $10 million one was raised. The next summer the putting surfaces were rebuilt with A-4 bent grass and the fairways were seeded with Extreme 7 bent grass. In September, Tritabaugh’s staff will fine tune the set up and orchestrate a dry run in the club’s year-end event.
     Davis Love, III, the Ryder Cup captain, will be at the club this month to formulate his vision of how the course will be set up. Tritabaugh does not envision many sweeping changes, but to enhance spectator viewing, the final five holes on each nine will be reversed. If one knows Hazeltine’s routing here is the order of play for the 2016 Ryder Cup: 1, 2, 3, 4, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 10, 11, 12, 13, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
     With the Ryder Cup more than a year away, Tritabaugh is attentively looking forward to next year’s event. As the adage goes, “All good things come in threes.” Next year in Minnesota the opulent Vikings $1.2 billion US Bank stadium will open, the raucous Ryder Cup will rumble into the gopher state, and personally for Tritabaugh, he and his wife will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, one day before the Ryder Cup tees off.

GOLF NOTES:

     If any reader is pondering going to the Ryder Cup in person, one must go to the following website to register: www.RyderCup.com. From now until September 30, 2015, one can register to possibly purchase tickets through the Random Selection Process (RSP). More than 130,000 people have already signed up and if one is randomly selected, five ticket options are available. If selected for the weekly grounds only option, the cost is $560. For the practice rounds the fee is $35 per day, and the tournament proper----Friday through Sunday, the cost is $135 per day. Results of the RSP of all registered individuals will be announced in mid-October 2015. Galleries will be limited to approximately 40,000 patrons per day.