Williams nurtures Stone Mountain course as green platform

As temperatures pushed 100 degrees this week, Anthony L. Williams bet once again that he could hit the sweet spot needed to keep Stone Mountain Park's nearly 40 golf greens alive.

Too much water, the bentgrass will wilt and die. Too little, same result. “Got to keep it between the ditches, just like when I learned to drive on a dirt road,” he said.

At $40,000 per green, his daily stakes are about $1.6 million. Williams is guided mostly by his inner Luke Skywalker to find the exact force to tame the elements. He not only is the superintendent of Stone Mountain Park's two courses, but is a national expert on water usage -- two roles once directly opposed.

When environmentalists attacked golf courses as siphoning natural resources for a privileged few, and the cost of water and chemicals rose while the number of golfers went down, at stake was the future of golf -- a $3 billion industry in Georgia.

They countered with a message of conservation: America’s labs for best water practices should be the 18 holes in your neighborhood, and the greenskeepers want to share what they know.

Their best messenger has been Williams -- a part-Cherokee, Newton County farm boy who styles himself as the Ben Franklin of greenskeepers. When he’s not on the golf course, he is a black belt in karate, a lucky survivor of a car wreck, a textbook writer, master gardener, certified arborist and archer.

With anecdotes flowing like a mountain stream in springtime, Williams recounted how, for the past 25 years, he has sought harmony between nature, golfers and critics.

“What a beautiful photo of Stone Mountain, except for that golf course in the background,” a teacher sneered at his display at a conference for environmental educators.

His gives his favorite answer by taking off like an Indian scout on a golf cart and leaving behind his office full of plaques proving his green-ness.

Williams grew up on a farm, the great-great-great-great grandson of a Cherokee, a legacy of her wisdom of natural rhythms for planting and conservation. His drawl makes “soils” into “souls,” and for him both are connected.

“This place is a sanctuary,” Williams said. “It’s a spiritual and mental place. It’s not about what you score.”

At the practice green with a brilliant view of the Confederate carving, he plunges the $10 soil tester into the Penncross creeping bentgrass and pulls out a plug with nice long, damp roots. Despite cutting water usage from 67 million gallons in 2005 to 32 million, he still kept the course green enough for 52,000 rounds a year and his own job security.

“If you don’t see roots like this in June,” he said, “You better get your resume out.”

“Brown is the new green,” is one of golf’s new slogans, and Williams points out swaths beyond the rough where skipping both chemicals and mulch gave rise to dog fennel and pokeweed, then smaller rodents, then birds of prey and bigger wildlife.

“We have coyotes, but we don’t think of them as problem,” he said with a smile. “We have plenty of geese.”

On hole No. 5, an old quarry became an oasis for Eastern prickly pear cactus and the mountain’s famous, delicate protected flower. “We've seen wives asking husbands to bring them to the golf course to see the yellow daisies,” Williams said.

He stops on the ninth teebox, seeded with the new TifGrande hybrid Bermuda turf, which like the TifSport seed used on many of the World Cup soccer fields, was developed in Georgia. Once tested on golf courses, the lower-maintenance TifGrande will be sold to homeowners, too.

Williams stopped hard by the fence separating the 16th teebox from a Super Target. Even if the golf course was a park, Williams pointed out, “The funding to support it has to come from somewhere,” he said. “Why not golf?”

One longtime Georgia environmentalist applauded efforts made by Williams and his peers, with a caveat.

“It’s easy to make a lot of progress when you have a long way to go,” said Neill Herring, a Georgia lobbyist for 30 years and a former caddie. “They are getting back to the original Scottish courses. They’re getting away from the high maintenance, almost indoor spaces outdoors that were like living rooms. ... We are seeing a happy evolution finally, and it’s economics driving it.”

Williams, a 21-handicap golfer, will watch next week’s British Open at St. Andrews with an eye for native grasses. “American golf courses have been about moving mountains of earth, but the British put a design in place to take advantage of what occurs naturally," said Williams, a graduate in ornamental landscaping from Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College in Tifton.

Money is the real green driving less green on the golf course, agreed Greg Lyman, environmental-programs director for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.