MOVERS & SHAPERS
THE FAMILY IS Still Strong THE BETTER BILLY BUNKER TEAM CAME THROUGH A DISASTER AND WENT STRAIGHT INTO A PANDEMIC. HERE’S WHAT THEY LEARNED AND HOW GCBAA MEMBERS WERE THERE TO HELP.
BY PAT JONES
S
o, if you’ve ever idly wondered how your life could be any crazier than it is at the moment, imagine if – right before the pandemic hit – your workplace was vaporized by an F4 tornado. That is exactly what happened to the folks at Better Billy Bunker just weeks before lockdowns, TP hoarding and facemasks came to dominate our lives. Yet, the team at BBB is happy, optimistic and grateful for the support they received from fellow GCBAA members and many others around golf. I checked in with them recently to hear the story straight from Jerry Lemons, Todd Jenkins and Adam Lemons. But first, a little history… I’d be shocked if there’s anyone in the golf course business who hasn’t heard of Better Billy Bunker. It is, of course, the brainchild of Jerry Lemons, a superintendent-turned-builder-turned-architectturned-entrepreneur. Jerry got his start as a newly minted Murray State grad who was hired by his alma mater to oversee construction of the university’s new course. That’s where he met Mike Hurdzan and his plan to be a career superintendent changed. “Mike opened my eyes to the world of construction and golf course architecture,” he says. “I owe a lot to Mike for everything he’s done for me over my career.” As he transitioned to architecture, Lemons made his reputation as a “low-budget renovation king” (his words, not mine) and redesigned Old Hickory, a landmark Nashville course, and a half-dozen others around Tennessee and Kentucky. When the recession hit in 2009 the design business was in tatters and it was an awful time for architects. But plenty of folks still had infrastructure problems they needed to fix. Notably bad, labor-intensive bunkers that were a constant source of golfer complaints. “I’d already been working on trying to improve the bunker construction techniques and so I used the time around the recession to perfect it, patent it and begin thinking about how we could make a business out of it. That’s when I met Billy Fuller again in 2009. I asked him whether this concept with a binder would be a better way to build bunkers than his original Billy Bunker version with fabric and he agreed with me. We did some testing and initial work and launched as Better Billy Bunker in 2010.” And with the launch came Todd, the golf professional from Old Hickory and good friend, and his son Adam. Both headed to GIS in 2010 to help Jerry…and they’ve been a team ever since. How did that launch in 2010 – a horrible time for the golf business – work so well? Jerry: Everyone had postponed renovation work. There were so many supers with bunkers that were maintenance problems because of fabric liners in the past and they were tired of it. At the booth during that first show, we’d ask them if they had fabric liners. They’d say, yes and I’ll never do that again! People were looking for something that worked well for a longer time and was easier to maintain. We had an
20 GCBAA Earth Shaping News | Spring Edition