Golf: Green Hill superintendent Tim O'Brien helps friend in Brazil, while head pro Matt Moison tends to tasks in clubhouse

While Green Hill Municipal Golf Course head pro Matt Moison spent part of the winter refinishing the hardwood floor in the clubhouse, superintendent Tim O’Brien volunteered for nearly a week to help a friend build a golf course in Brazil.

“I think I won that deal,” O’Brien said.

From Feb. 8-13, O’Brien, 41, worked and stayed in Porto Belo, Brazil, with Butch Soto, the golf course construction manager at Porto Belo Golf Resort. The two had remained in touch after Soto served as a consultant for bunker renovations at Green Hill two years ago.

O’Brien, who is in his fourth season as superintendent, works for BrightView, a national landscaping company which has a contract with the city of Worcester to maintain Green Hill. Soto has worked on many projects for BrightView.

“It was fantastic working with him,” O’Brien said. “We clicked very well from the start. Then the relationship just kept building. He likes whiskey. I like whiskey. He likes cigars. I like cigars. He’s been in the industry for a very long time, and I gravitate toward that kind of experience and leadership.”

Soto, 64, of Largo, Florida, has helped build or renovate more than 90 golf courses in the U.S. and as far away as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Singapore and Malaysia. Green Hill is the only course he has worked on in New England.

Soto lives in Florida, but his wife, Mercedes, was able to spend a lot of time with him when he worked at Green Hill.

“She liked it there, and I liked it there,” he said from Brazil. “We really liked the area, I liked Tim, I liked the BrightView people, and it all went well.”

O’Brien followed Soto around in Brazil and watched how he oversaw a crew of workers who are building the front nine this year.

“It was like Bring Your Kid To Work Day for Butch,” O’Brien said.

“Tim is a very hard worker,” Soto said. “He’s a good people person from a diplomatic standpoint. He deals with a lot of different personalities with his crew.”

The resort’s front nine could open as soon as the end of this year, and work is expected to begin on the back nine next year.

O’Brien also helped spread grass clippings called sprigs on a couple of greens. He wasn’t paid anything, and he took care of his own flights, but he said the trip was well worth it. In their downtime, the owner of the irrigation company working on the course took O’Brien and Soto hiking up mountains and near a waterfall along the coast, and they swam in the water below it. They were awed.

“We saw monkeys in the trees, all that stuff, lizards, everything,” O’Brien said.

Porto Belo Golf Resort is only a one-minute walk to the nearest beach on the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a high-end course that the owners want to be PGA Tour quality and it will be the only golf course in South America with lights. According to golflink.com, there are only two 18-hole, regulation length golf courses with lights in the U.S.

Soto said it has rained so often in recent months in Brazil, he has had to remain in his apartment for up to a week and a half at a time waiting for the course to dry enough so he can run his machines on it. It’s summertime in Brazil when it’s winter in the U.S. So it was 85 degrees when Soto spoke to the T&G recently.

Soto said the weather and him taking over after the original project manager was let go slowed the construction of the course. His predecessor installed five bunkers on the driving range, and Soto had to remove them.

“This is probably one of the first times in my career,” Soto said, “where I’m doing a brand new golf construction and a remodel at the same time on the same property. It’s crazy.”

O’Brien hopes to become a better leader by observing Soto handle his crew.

“He was level headed the whole time with a steady hand,” he said. “Didn’t matter what you threw at him, he was just calm and cool.”

Soto speaks only English and relied on an interpreter at times because some of his workers spoke only Portuguese or Spanish.

Refinishing a hardwood floor may not seem as much fun as traveling to Brazil, but Moison isn’t complaining. He likes to work with his hands and not just with golf clubs in them.

“That’s the favorite part of my job,” he said. “I love doing construction work and projects.”

A company was hired five or six years ago to refurbish the floor, but Moison decided to do it this time with the help of a couple of others, including Gino Ramaldi from the clubhouse restaurant, the Grill on the Hill.

They refinished the floor in the function room, the hall outside the carpeted pro shop and around the bar in the restaurant.

For a couple of weeks in late January, they strip-sanded the floor with sanders rented from Home Depot, washed it, stained it a darker walnut color and polyurethaned it.

“Seventy-five percent of the people who walk in here don’t even notice,” he said.

Moison plans to refinish the hardwood floor at least one more time before he retires.

Moison’s father, Ken, who died last year, worked as a contractor.

“I always tell people I grew up sitting on the end of a board,” Moison said.

When his father wanted to cut a board, he would have his son sit on the end of it so it didn’t move.

A couple of years ago, Moison and his assistant, Matt Foley, built a new counter with a slate-tile top in the pro shop.

Moison has done all sorts of projects at the three homes he has owned over the years. At his first house, he renovated his attic and built a spiral staircase up to it so his children could use the space as a library. At his second home, he built a kitchen and bathroom between the house and the garage, and he converted the garage into a living room. At his current home, he installed 11,000 pavers in the driveway and built a stone patio and a stone wall.

O’Brien hopes to spend two weeks with Soto in Brazil next winter, but he’s also looking forward to improvements he has planned for Green Hill this season.

He expects to get more done by hiring a larger maintenance crew with fewer full-time workers. In the past, he had crews of 10 or 12 workers. This season, he’ll have 15-17.

About half a dozen of the workers will be Shrewsbury High basketball players. Shrewsbury High coach Adrian Machado is a Green Hill member.

The expanded crew will be counted on to take better care of the bunkers and greens.

BrightView has merged its landscaping, tree and golf course maintenance operations so O’Brien has access to the landscaping and tree departments for the first time. In March, a five-man landscaping crew took care of Green Hill’s mulch beds. The tree crew is scheduled to eventually remove and prune trees.

By June, O’Brien plans to mow all 18 holes in the morning three days a week instead of mowing nine holes six days a week to avoid bothering golfers as often.

O’Brien plans to install new cups and pins on the greens this week.

O’Brien said after years of golfers asking him to mow a path through the native area up the hill from near the 11th green to the 12th tee, he will do so this season. The path will allow walkers to take a more direct route than the winding cart path to the 12th tee. He said he’d also mow a path from the 14th green down the hill to the 15th fairway to provide a shorter route to the 15th tee.

Green Hill opened for the season on Saturday, March 2, and the next day, the course hosted 280 golfers as the temperature reached into the low 60s.

“Everybody just wanted to get out of the house,” Moison said. “I had no complaints or problems, which is always good. They all left the pro shop with a smile on their faces. Whether they finished with one is a different story.”

That was quite a turnout considering the course was open only from 8 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. and no carts were allowed on the course at the time.

By comparison, on a busy summer weekend day when the course is open from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and carts are allowed, Green Hill hosts about 300 golfers.

Submissions welcome

You can suggest story ideas for this golf column by reaching me at the email listed below. Comments are also welcome.

—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @BillDoyle15.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Golf: Green Hill superintendent Tim O'Brien lends helping hand in Brazil