Poppy Hills attracts a USGA championship event, thanks to an eco-conscious focus on its golf course.

LIKE ANY SPORT, GOLF IS MEASURED BY NUMBERS. For the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, Poppy Hills Golf Course will play at a par of 71, with four par 5s, five wicked par 3s, 3,227 yards covering the front nine and 156 girls from 33 states and 12 countries in the field. The event is in its 70th edition and represents the first of two major amateur tournaments scheduled for Pebble Beach this summer.

For the staff at Poppy Hills and the Northern California Golf Association, however, it’s a different set of numbers that matter. There are 2,000 sprinkler heads, each tuned independently to moisture sensors and a weather station. Mower blades must be cranked so grass is leveled to a 100th of an inch of the ideal height. Fertilizer applications are dialed to control rate of growth along fairways and fringes. Then there are 172 volunteers to schedule, breakfast and lunch service to coordinate, vehicles to arrange, traffic patterns to consider – a workload Poppy Hills General Manager Brad Shupe says comes with “levels of intensity” rather than any routine.

To welcome USGA championship to Poppy Hills, to hone a course so it will test the world’s best girls under 19 years of age, consumed three years.

“It’s like turning an aircraft carrier,” Shupe points out. “We’re even measuring sand. We don’t want luck involved.”

Yet attracting the prestigious USGA event began with a scare. As drought hit California at the start of the decade, golf courses – which rely on a large amount of water – faced a crisis. Water for irrigation dwindled and costs to maintain courses shot up. NCGA’s Vaughn Kezirian believes if they had not taken drastic steps, Poppy Hills would not have survived.

So as drought conditions reached their peak in 2013, Poppy Hills shut down. The NCGA – which is headquartered at the course – sank $12 million into a renovation project that involved sculpting each hole with water conservation in mind. Stretches of fairway that consumed water without contributing to the game were gouged out into rough grass and packed sand waste areas, reducing irrigation needs by 25 percent. Benchmarks for fertilizer use, pesticides, fuel and more were established and recorded on graphs. Staff members began discussing carbon footprint as often as birdies, bogies and pin placement.

“We’ve embraced every bit of technology – anything that saves us water,” course Superintendent Matt Muhlenbruch says.

Although the seven courses around Pebble Beach compete for golfers and tournaments, they cooperate when it comes to doling out water. Agronomists for each course meet once a month to determine irrigation needs and allocations. NCGA invested $4 million in electronic monitoring and other upgrades specific to water use at Poppy Hills.

It’s still expensive to maintain the course; Poppy Hills spends $800,000 a year on water. But that amounts to an average of $20 per round played – a major factor in keeping the course relatively affordable as the cost of play soars beyond the means of many would-be golfers at facilities around the country. A round at Poppy Hills can be as low as $80 for NCGA members, up to $250 for the general public. At Pebble Beach Golf Links, play starts at $525.

When the course reopened, it was rewarded with “best renovation” nods from four major golf publications. Soon after the year-long rebuild staff members began to hear rumors – people in the golf community reporting that someone told them that someone else said that if Poppy Hills reached out, the USGA would take their call.

“It started because we wanted that reduced carbon footprint,” Shupe says of the renovation. “But once we got into it, it was, ‘Let’s build a championship course.’”

Yealimi Noh, a 17-year-old Concord native who qualified for the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship and has played the course, was impressed. “On 18 that tree is right there,” she says, envisioning a stand that juts into the right side of the fairway, daring golfers to stay left and risk a pair of bunkers. “The greens can be tricky. The key to the course is playing consistent.”

For the 156 competitors vying for win, which brings with it a spot in next year’s U.S. Women’s Open Championship, Poppy Hills is a challenging series of holes, the fairways framed by trees and greens protected by deep traps.

For the staff at Poppy Hills and the NCGA, the tournament is the end of a long and costly process. And – they hope – the beginning of more championships on the reclaimed course.

“The return on investment is that you get to be considered one of the best courses,” Shupe says, “to be on the world stage.”

70TH U.S. GIRLS JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP July 16-21, Poppy Hills Golf Course, 3200 Lopez Road, Pebble Beach. Free admission. usga.org/girlsjunior, poppyhillsgolf.com.