Building @GrandTetonClub | Superintendent & Turfgrass Technology Consultant | Masters of Science in Agronomy from Mississippi State ‘14. @turf2050

Tetonia, ID
Joined January 2014
Where you choose to live shapes who your family becomes. The landscape they grow up inside. The values they absorb from the people around them. The relationship with the natural world that becomes part of their identity. Grand Teton Club was designed around this idea. grandtetonclub.com
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Replying to @ckoennecker
Gary is also getting trained to manage the robots. Service scheduling, mapping, troubleshooting. Gary is not going anywhere, fools think the opposite
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Gary doesnt get replaced. Gary is going run a 3 staff crew and start leading small projects for course improvements. All those projects that are ‘wait til fall’.. Gary is on it. Doom and gloom is bs. Guys like Gary are being wasted by sitting on a mower
What Gary brings to the industry can’t be duplicated. But Gary is being replaced. Blame autonomous mowers. From the publisher’s pen: What happens without Gary? golfcourseindustry.com/news/…
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Replying to @BPHTurf
Hasn’t affected any of my Gary’s other than improve their job duties.
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To believe autonomous mowers require no supervision and no maintenance is a superbly ignorant assumption. Gary isn't getting replaced, not at any of the courses I'm aware of. Robotic mowers are a tool. You still have to be able to operate without them.
What Gary brings to the industry can’t be duplicated. But Gary is being replaced. Blame autonomous mowers. From the publisher’s pen: What happens without Gary? golfcourseindustry.com/news/…
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Benton Hodges retweeted
October is the valley at its most golden. The aspens blaze along the foothills. The mornings arrive clear and cold. The first snow settles on the high peaks while the valley floor holds onto fall a little longer. The summer visitors have gone home, and the season narrows to the people who know this place best. On the course, six holes of the New American Links-Style Course are established and maturing, and the land is being readied for winter. Seeding resumes in spring. For many Families, autumn is when a distant idea becomes a real question: what would it mean to build a life shaped by this landscape, and by the people creating something lasting within it? It was never only about a home. It is about more good years, a landscape that restores, and the chance to build something lasting with people who value the same things. Begin the conversation at grandtetonclub.com
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Benton Hodges retweeted
13,775 feet. The highest peak in the range. At dusk, when the alpenglow turns the granite pink and the valley goes quiet, the Grand Teton is simply one of the most beautiful things on Earth. Alpenglow is the glow that lingers on the Grand Teton just after sunset, when the peaks catch the last light of the day, turning rose, then copper, then deep purple against a darkening sky. It lasts only a few minutes. For those few minutes on a clear evening, the Grand Teton looks lit from within, and Families at Grand Teton Club watch it from their own porch. For those minutes, nothing else exists. This is what you choose when you become a Family here. grandtetonclub.com
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Pretty incredible impacts of the timing of autonomous mowing on dollar spot development. On the peak disease date of Aug 12, 2026 there was a 96% reduction in DS when mowed at midnight compared to 9 AM and a 91% reduction when mowed at 3 AM. The pics below tell the story
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Meet GreenKeeper Q: a robotic ball that measures greens performance. Green speed in feet, on any slope. New canopy firmness metric. Green trueness & pin fairness testing as Q moves across the surface. Controlled by GreenKeeper App. Cue up something new. greenkeeperapp.com/q
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Another 95' of 4" French drain added to our wettest fairway! Even tested out prototype 1 of our drainage stone dispersal unit! Revision 2 will be better! @CobbleHillsGolf
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Links Golf got its name from the "linksland," the sandy ground between beach and farmland in Scotland, too rough to farm but perfect for a game shaped by wind and firm turf. We don't have an ocean out here, but our routing links the region's mountainous terrain into the agricultural land along the rim of the Teton River, catching that same wind and exposure of the original links courses. Linksland, Idaho style.
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If you're going to start using autonomous mowers at your course, they will need a good home 👇

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Benton Hodges retweeted
Links golf got its name from the "linksland"—the sandy ground between beach and farmland in Scotland, too rough to farm but perfect for a game shaped by wind and firm turf. We don't have an ocean out here, but our routing links the region's mountainous terrain into the ag land along the rim of the Teton River, catching that same wind and exposure of the original links courses. Linksland - Idaho style. @GrandTetonClub
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Benton Hodges retweeted
Today is Thank your Equipment Manager day. Without that guy, you’re just growing green stuff. Grow it, and let him show it. Like Yin and Yang, two opposite minds, who if you respect it, makes your job easier.
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Benton Hodges retweeted
September 2026 Course Construction Update Building a golf course means working with the land and the weather, not against them. When wet weather arrived early this August, our team made the deliberate decision to conclude seeding once holes 10 through 12 and 16 through 18 were complete. Those six holes are now taking their next step toward maturity, and toward preview play in 2027. Before the snow flies, the crew is using every remaining day to finish irrigation and shaping across the property, so the remaining twelve holes are ready to seed the moment temperatures allow next spring, keeping the full eighteen on course.
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Things don’t happen by accident. You have to make it happen by what you do every day. Proud of my team.
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A multi-university study (Penn State, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan State, UMass, and VT) investigating the effect of dew removal via autonomous mowing on dollar spot is demonstrating promising results for fungicide budgeting. I believe these photos speak for themselves! #NC1208
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Links golf and resort golf are not variations on the same theme. They are entirely different games, different philosophy, different skills, different relationship with the land. At Grand Teton Club, we chose links. Here is why. Resort golf is designed to impress on first sight, manicured, controlled, and organized around spectacle. Every shot is aerial. Every lie is perfect. The course tells you what to do. Links golf is the opposite: natural terrain, firm and fast surfaces, wind as a permanent variable, and the ground game as a full dimension of strategy. The course invites you to figure it out. The great links courses. St. Andrews, Ballybunion, Turnberry, derive their genius from the land itself. No two rounds are the same. No wind condition produces the same shots. At Grand Teton Club, links-style golf means the course gets better the more you know it, exactly as the best courses in the world always have. Not resort golf. New American Links. A course your family will spend decades learning. grandtetonclub.com
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Links-Style Golf at Grand Teton Club: The Ground Game In links-style golf, the shot does not end when the ball lands. On firm, fast ground, the contours become part of the strategy, carrying a low-running ball toward the flag or turning it away. Links-style golf rewards more than power. It rewards imagination, patience, and the ability to see how the ball will move after it lands. At Grand Teton Club, Craig Haltom’s New American Links-Style course is taking shape beneath the Teton Range, built by Oliphant Golf. The routing follows the site’s natural basins, ridgelines, rolls, and dips, using the existing landforms to create width, strategy, and multiple lines of play. Wide playing corridors. Firm, fast surfaces. Open approaches that invite the ball to run onto the green. Strategic bunkering and contoured greens that ask players to consider not only where a shot lands, but how it gets there. Read the slope correctly, and the ground can carry the ball toward the flag. Choose the wrong line, and the same contour can turn it away. That uncertainty is what makes the ground game so compelling. The walking-first design keeps players connected to every rise and fall in the landscape, with the Teton Range framing every hole. Secure a Family homesite and be among the first to play it. grandtetonclub.com
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Benton Hodges retweeted
“we cannot sell them on passion and then pay them in stress.” This is a brilliant line. Sums up the whole shift that is required in our industry.
Tim Moraghan believes retirement isn't just about when to leave. It's about what we leave behind. golfcourseindustry.com/artic…
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