USGA's course maintenance teams work all night to ensure a pleasant U.S. Open experience

Leighton Schwob, the U.S. Golf Association’s U.S. Open Championship director of operations, wishes he had a little more darkness to work with.

“Too much land, not enough night,” he said of the daily — or in this case, nightly — maintenance of public areas at Oakmont Country Club.

One doesn’t have to look far for signs that tens of thousands of people are in attendance. They’ve left their mark primarily in the form of wide swaths of trampled grass, some of which was interspersed with muddy patches on Monday.

A handful of rain-free days have helped dry out the grounds, but Schwob has a team that’s always keeping an eye out for trouble spots.

“We have hundreds of our volunteer marshals, and they’re letting USGA staff know if they see any areas that need addressed,” Schwob said. “Once patrons are off the course, we basically have from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. to do some maintenance work.”

Schwob gestured to a line of unmanned heavy machinery as he steered a golf cart along the path USGA officials helped build, running behind the eastern side of the golf course.

“Those are all part of our wood chip operation,” he said. “We have a skid-steer that stays near the wood chip pile, and we have four dumpers that are constantly rotating throughout the night.”

With steady rain in late April and early May, Schwob and USGA maintenance staff took stock of which areas would need shoring up.

At the West Fan Zone, his teams built a gravel walkway that provides access to other areas of the course, and it’s surrounded by a sea of wood chips that keeps the high foot traffic area around the concession stands from getting dusty or muddy.

“We’re never going to be able to keep everything perfect,” Schwob said.

The USGA contracts with a Philadelphia company, Mottin Golf, that specializes in course landscaping and renovations.

“We’ve been working with them since 2013, and we kind of have them on standby,” Schwob said. “When we started getting all the rain, we called to let them know we’d need them. They had a crew here working all day Sunday, and then they come back to work all night under the lights we installed.”

Maintenance crews put down gravel to create access points so trucks can make deliveries from course kitchens to concession stands and other food service areas. They station small piles of wood chips and gravel in tucked-away areas across the course for spot fixes. And if they need more gravel, they have a contract with Thomas Construction in Grove City.

Thomas Construction President John Stamm said the company has shipped in excess of 20,000 tons of gravel to the country club so far. Prior to the grounds opening, Schwob said, about 20 dump trucks were constantly shuttling back and forth from the quarry to supply the crushed stone.

“At this point we’re working with them on an as-needed basis,” Schwob said Wednesday. “They’re here during the day, and we’ll show them what we think will need addressed that night.”

As the day goes on, volunteer marshals report maintenance issues and trouble spots to USGA maintenance staff.

Some of the work, like the expansion of a paved road running around the property’s perimeter, is a permanent investment on the USGA’s part.

“What’s nice is, we know we’ll be coming back here, so we can do some actual investment like building this road, building some compound areas, creating hospitality infrastructure that we can use in the future,” Schwob said.

“That’s one of the huge bonuses to Oakmont, is the site agreement means we know we’ll be back and it allows us to do some additional work and make things a little easier.”