"Why don't we look like the course down the street?"

One of the most difficult and dreaded questions a golf course superintendent can be asked is; “Why don’t we look like the course down the street?” As we roll our eyes and try to answer as gracefully as we can, we’re thinking to ourselves about what we really should say; "Can I get back to you in a week or two? I’ll need that much time to do the research before I can answer that question properly?” I guess people just don’t realize how different every property can be. I could sit down and write a ten-page report no problem, which still wouldn’t cover everything. Just off the top of my head, some of the most obvious reasons would be the size of their budgets and staff, how many acres of turf do they have, what type of irrigation system do they have and how old is it? How old is the equipment and what is the overall age of the golf course itself? Some of the not so obvious reasons that come to mind would be what variety of turf does each course have? What type of soils do they have? Was the course built with proper drainage? Are there different micro-climates, wind conditions, equipment age and what are the annual utility costs of each property?
It is virtually impossible to compare any two golf courses, even if they are located in the same geographical area and by some slim chance have similar sized budgets and staffs. But just for fun, lets try. Let’s see if we can find out why it’s not really fair to compare conditions at one course to another. We’ll name our imaginary courses Course “A” and Course “B”. Course “A” looks dark green, lush and is in great playing condition. Course “B”, even though it plays just as good, is somewhat off color and not very healthy looking. After doing some investigating, we find out that Course “A” is less then 10 years old, owned and operated by the County and uses recycled water to irrigate the course. Course “B” is 23 years old, privately owned and operated and gets its water through a 23-year-old on site well. Course “B” pays an annual cost of around $140,000 for water from the local Water Company and it’s 23-year old pumping station uses around $123,000 in electric per year. Course “A” on the other hand, pays an annual cost of around $90,000 for its reclaimed water through the County’s Reclaimed Water Treatment Plant. It’s 10-year old pumping station only uses around $90,000 in electric per year because their reclaimed water is pumped directly from the treatment plant and they do not have the added cost to operate a well pump like Course "B" does. Course “A” also has no equipment over 10 years old, and most of it is under 4 years old because of the equipment rotating lease they have through the County. They spend around $15,000 annually on their equipment repairs. Course “B” however, has an average equipment age of 13 years old and spends around $45,000 annually on their equipment repairs. In just those items alone, Course “A” has somewhere in the neighborhood of $113,000 a year extra to spend on there golf course then Course “B” has. That’s a substantial amount of additional money considering they started out with the same size budgets. It’s enough for example, for Course “A” to fertilizer and spray the entire golf course with iron 2 extra times per month during the season and still have plenty of money left over for other things that Course "B" wouldn't be able to do. I could go on and on, as this is just one example of the vastly different variables you can have from one property to the next, even when they have a similar budget and staff size. I hope this will help you at least partially understand why the question “Why don’t we look like the course down the street?” is such a dreaded question and so very difficult to answer.