Since 2014, Chris Flynn has served as Director of Grounds at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge, one of golf’s most recognizable family-run properties. Growing up around the game, both his father and grandfather worked as golf course superintendents, and Flynn spent much of his childhood on New York golf courses learning the business firsthand.
He was also raised around major golf events, including the Buick Classic at Westchester Country Club, where he first learned about tournament preparation.
Along with that upbringing, Flynn studied plant science, recreation management, environmental science and construction management before building experience at several high-profile clubs and tournaments, including TPC Sawgrass and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
After years in the industry, Flynn learned that a prerequisite meeting before being hired at Bay Hill Club & Lodge would take place inside Arnold Palmer’s home. Arriving on a Saturday to meet Palmer for the first time, he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I walked in the house into the living room and literally his entire family was all there, his daughter, all of his grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was a family gathering. Mr. Palmer was sitting on the couch with his newest great grandchild, who was his first time meeting the baby, and he had the baby in his lap. They sat me down next to him on the couch, and that's how we had our conversation.”
Palmer’s younger daughter, Amy Saunders, who now owns and operates Bay Hill, was also there that day. Flynn said Palmer was every bit the family man he was portrayed to be and admires how Saunders and her husband, Roy, have continued that atmosphere while living on the site year-round and remaining heavily involved in operations at both Bay Hill and Latrobe Country Club in Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born and raised. “That’s how they do things. It’s a family business and it’s special,” he said.
Built in the early 1960s, Bay Hill spans more than 400 acres, including golf, lodging and a marina with 100 member boats leading into the Butler Chain of Lakes. Palmer purchased the property after falling in love with the course and helped establish Bay Hill as a PGA TOUR stop through the Citrus Open, now known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Today, Flynn manages a 40-person grounds team with many employees having worked at Bay Hill for decades. “We have a great team, and it’s just a great place to work in such a family-oriented atmosphere. In some ways, we are really a mom-and-pop operation. It’s the most opposite you could get from a corporate-type atmosphere or stuffy private country club.”
Work Behind Tournament Conditions
Most golf fans know Bay Hill through one week each March when the PGA TOUR arrives for the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Television coverage focuses on firm greens, demanding rough and one of the more recognizable tournament setups in professional golf. What viewers rarely see is the constant preparation required to maintain those conditions across the club’s 27 holes, which goes on throughout the year.
Preparations for tournament season begin long before grandstands arrive.
The team performs aggressive verticutting once annually in June, then dials back moisture in October ahead of overseeding in mid-November. From then through March, the course shifts fully into tournament preparation mode.
PGA TOUR players are highly aware of turfgrass differences and how playing conditions change depending on grass type. “Even with rough, if you have a really tall bermuda versus tall ryegrass, that’s a whole different ballgame.”
That attention to detail helped shape Bay Hill’s 2016 no-till conversion to Celebration® Bermudagrass on tees, fairways, approaches and collars. After consulting with PGA TOUR agronomists, Celebration quickly emerged as the preferred choice, a variety now used at more than 8 PGA TOUR stops.
“It was really a short process in landing on Celebration,” Flynn explained. “Taking everything into account — the wear tolerance and transition — Celebration was kind of a no-brainer for us and it has met every expectation. It’s been a homerun for us.”
Despite tournament pressure and constant play, the course rarely requires large-scale resodding after the event. Most repairs come from vehicle traffic associated with tournament infrastructure rather than spectator wear. He credits part of that durability to Celebration Bermudagrass along with dependable support from Sod Solutions Professionals, a company that assists Bay Hill with sourcing and delivering consistent, high-quality sod products within narrow maintenance and repair windows.
“We’ve gotten tremendous service. With sod, you’re utilizing something that you’re so dependent on and from a timeliness standpoint, you’re doing projects, you need it and things happen last minute. That’s huge having somebody there that can support you.”
Inside the Ropes at Bay Hill
In 2025, during filming for Celebration on Tour a video series highlighting Celebration Bermudagrass at PGA TOUR stops, Flynn drove through Bay Hill discussing maintenance and tournament strategy.
Summer months shift his crew’s focus toward renovation projects across Bay Hill, and as he stopped at the 11th hole, Flynn pointed out where they removed a front greenside bunker due to its proximity to a tree. “We decided to remove it, and it probably makes the hole play easier. But 11 is a very difficult hole,” Flynn said with a laugh. “For handicappers, it makes them very happy. Not many golfers complain about one less bunker on the golf course.”
At the par-four 15th, he described it as a “sweeper hole,” one that ranks among the most difficult holes because tee shots struggle to hold the fairway. “This is a hole they should go down a club. But they take out the driver because the whole landing area slopes away. They can’t keep their ball in the fairway and getting to the green becomes a problem,” Flynn shared.
Bay Hill’s closing stretch remains one of the more recognizable finishes on the PGA TOUR schedule, with the extremely short par-five 16th followed by the narrow par-three 17th stretching beyond 200 yards.
Members often play many of the same pin locations used during the Arnold Palmer Invitational, although TOUR officials rotate placements from year to year. The only recurring exception is the 18th green, where the pin is traditionally on the far right. The finishing hole demands precision off the tee toward one of the narrowest landing areas on the course.
This spring, Flynn and Bay Hill were featured in the Celebration on Tour video series, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the preparation, maintenance and people responsible for PGA TOUR stops using Celebration Bermudagrass. Nearly a decade after Bay Hill’s conversion, the variety continues to perform well under heavy member play and Florida stress.
For Flynn, the job is not about preparing for a single week each March. It’s about creating consistent conditions year-round while continuing the culture and environment Palmer established decades ago.
This article was written by Cecilia Johnson.
