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Grow with KARE: Getting ready for the Ryder Cup

Think of Hazeltine National Golf Club like a 300 acre garden. And in a little more than four months, hundreds of thousands of people will be tromping through it. In this week's Grow with Kare, Bobby and Laura find out what they're doing to prepare.

Think of Hazeltine National Golf Club like a 300 acre garden. And in a little more than four months, hundreds of thousands of people will be tromping through it. In this week's Grow with Kare, Bobby and Laura find out what they're doing to prepare.

Chris Tritabaugh, Hazeltine's Superintendent, is in charge of getting Hazeltine ready for the 2016 Ryder Cup. That's no small task.

"I started here the first of January 2013, and I think to some extent, from the time I started, we've been preparing for it on one level or another," says Tritabaugh. "So it's a big horticultural system, I guess, you know trees, plants, perennials, turf, just about anything you can imagine we've got out here."

Although fine details will be given a higher priority for the championship, preparation is really more about maintenance.

"Generally, Hazeltine is a course that has a good reputation for major championships and the members who are here expect that when they come out every day that the the course is going to be great. So we really maintain at a high level and what we do for September and for the Ryder Cup won't be too different from that," explains Tritabaugh.

But what is different is the extras that go with the tournament and building those starts June 1st.

"The infrastructure construction that will take place surrounding the event, and to support the event is massive. I think it's almost 2 million square feet of tented village and chalets that they'll build out here."

Plus all those people need a place to park! And for that Tritabaugh relies on farmland just adjacent to the course that Hazeltine owns just for this purpose. Most years you will see corn or soybeans growing. but this isn't most years.

"Leading up to a championship, and we did this last spring, the field gets planted with a mixture of grass and alfalfa. That is planted in order to build a base for parking. Alfalfa has a great root system, the grass a great root system, and then it can just be cut during the championship year and then have cars parked on it in September. Some events, what they'll do is they'll throw seed out in the rough, in the areas outside the rope where the spectators are going to be, throw it out prior to and just let the natural food traffic beat it into the ground. What I think is going to happen, we have seen construction traffic from a previous fall come back really well in the spring. So you see these beaten down areas where the tractors have driven and you think "my goodness, we're going to have to restore that in the fall," and then the natural re-growth of the turf in the spring, everything just gets going, it just comes right back and you really hardly even notice it. I suspect, that provided normal end of September, early October weather, when things aren't too wet and hopefully mostly dry, that a lot of that foot traffic will just sort of regenerate itself in the spring, as it normally would. Turf is pretty tough, and I think tougher than anybody gives it credit for, and if you let it do what it wants to do, a lot of times it will give you what you're looking for."

So we are so excited for what's to come here over the next few months. And we're going to show you , step by step what they are doing to get ready for the Ryder Cup. Stay tuned!

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