This summer I was afforded a unique opportunity. Our son Lucas (17) plays guitar in a band and they were lucky enough to land a regular outdoor gig playing jazz in downtown Charlottetown five evenings a week all summer. Only glitch with this plan was that last November Lucas developed a hernia and has been waiting on surgery ever since. This precluded him from carrying any of the gear both to and from the summer shows. Hence, I became the band’s default roadie for most of the summer, and I have
In 1959, while still a toddler, I was forcibly indoctrinated into the cult of golf. Handed a plastic 3-wood, I was taught a series of carved-in-stone golf truths that had to be committed to memory and recited like the multiplication tables. First, was Play Fast! Next, I was to always stay out of the backswing zone of big women, because they could knock your teeth out. (Learned that one the hard way.) I also learned that a plastic 3-wood was particularly suited to killing chickens.
In a
In this episode, RW and gang deal with "News Depression" and how to fix it, as well as "Skin Cancer and The GCS"... and our solution.
Rockbottum tackles questionable turf lab results and the best way to cure them, and studies an important survey that affects the golf course crew.
Also, they discuss spoiled tour players, the impact of social media on our jobs, and then go in-depth on the current golf boom and how to sustain it.
Presented by DryJect.
This week I lost my job as a result of the COVID19 pandemic. It was not directly due to the disease (no one in my family/acquaintance circle has tested positive) but because like many others, the education sector has been severely affected by the Coronavirus.
Clearly the COVID19 pandemic is still with us. Reports of the devastation take many different tragic forms and continue every day. For me, these stories were always somewhat removed. I knew they were real, and I sympathized in my mind,
And now, the latest short film from Rockbottum CC . . . and also, a quote from the greatest writer in the history of the US:
"I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a 'surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow'. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fire
In this more serious episode from Rockbottum Country Club, we share our experience in golf course renovations and resurrections. In Storytime, we tell about one of our most successful reno projects ever.
Cletus solves the coronavirus mask shortage problem; visiting "Science Boy, Ph.D." tests a new technique for killing sting 'todes, and Willy gets thrown in timeout for fighting amongst himself.
Presented by DryJect.
As superintendents, we are well acquainted with the personal vulnerability we feel when our workplaces are in need of repair. Whether it's structural decline, damage from a weather event, personnel issues, or simply wear and tear from the passage of time, we usually have two choices when it comes to facing difficulties within our operations. We can pretend they are not really a problem and continue with business as usual, or we can tackle the issues head on with clarity, moving towards a meaning
Lately, it's gotten more difficult to write humor. We start out funny and then for some reason, everything gets serious. To make things worse, Buddy's wife, Esmarelda, won't let him get within six feet of me or Ludell and that makes it hard to shoot film. But Buddy also says she won't let him within six feet of her, either.
So after writing and tossing out a number of columns, radio shows and films, we were kind of discouraged . . . until Momma suggested we go into the film vault and fin
Sustainability has always seemed to me like something an operation must work toward. Meaning sustainability requires actions or steps that must be invested in, or operational adaptations that require the addition of some step, or equipment, or something. For a long time, I pursued sustainability by adhering to this approach of altering my operation to achieve sustainability objectives. I am now coming to believe that sustainability is more about a dynamic atmosphere surrounding and pervading the
In this episode of Rockbottum Radio, RW changes things up and leads off with Storytime, telling about the time he led a protest movement to overthrow a high school cafeteria.
Then, as Anti-Golf occupies Rockbottum CC, turning it into a free "People's Park", chaos is averted as Ludell defuses the situation with a brilliant strategy that involves golf, mushrooms and common sense.
RW explains his solution for fixin' all this turmoil, in the midst of a big manhunt for Cletus, who supposedl
Racism in the golf turf industry? Say what? Yagottabekiddinme.
Of course I jest. There is no racism in golf turf.
That’s because, for all intents and purposes, there is only one race in golf turf management. In salaried positions (superintendents and assistants, and we might as well include suppliers, academics and the media as well), we are 99% white... and 99% male. Those figures are my guesstimates, but if these things are tracked somewhere — and what isn’t — I doubt I'd be more tha
A couple of years back I saw an animated short on Youtube (below) narrated by author, ABC news personality, and podcast host Dan Harris. In the video Harris likened the practice of mindfulness to being an actual superpower. Our ability to choose to respond wisely rather than be carried off by our habitual reactions is on par with x-ray vision or shooting webs from your wrists.
The interesting thing about most super heroes is that they aren’t just one-trick ponies. Even though the
In this episode of Rockbottum Radio, direct from deep in the TurfNet Zone, Willy preaches the power of positive energy in the face of the negative vibrations emanating from... well, just about everywhere these days. Multi-tasking while preaching, Willy also must deal with troublesome golfers, weakening infrastructure, another Mushroom Burger Day, and allegations of poison on the Food and Beer cart.
Boof whips up an Ipecac martini to silence an uppity golfer.
During the hallucinogenic b
Landscape restoration is a situation us Groundskeepers regularly find ourselves in. While some may hear this term and think native prairie or landfill recovery, it also applies to much of our everyday work too. Landscape restoration is about big ticket projects, but it is also about fostering the multitude of natural processes that take place in the living environments we manage every day. For the last 18 months I have been participating in two restoration projects. One is seeking to transform a
Seems like I'm stuck in a pattern here of writing about people who we've recently lost. A month ago Walter Montross, then Ken Melrose, and now Dave Heegard. The hits just keep coming.
If you're among the hundreds (if not thousands) of turf guys who swung through Farmlinks during the Pursell days in the early 2000s, no doubt you met Dave Heegard. I had been to Sylacauga twice, once prior to the golf course and lodge being built, and of course the second after. The latter visit was when I me
I was saddened yesterday to hear of the passing of Ken Melrose, past president/CEO/chairman ("executive emeritus", if there were such a thing) of the Toro Company. I write this not as a factual obituary (I'll leave that to John Reitman), eulogy or even memorial, as I did not know him beyond several casual handshakes back in the late '80s/early '90s when I was in the peripheral Toro family. It's mostly a recollection of observations made as I watched him from afar.
Ken Melrose did well for h
On The Saturday Afternoon Movie, "O Ludell, Where Art Thou?", Ludell suspects that he has been zombiefied by the ankle-deep propaganda spewed forth onto his shag carpet through mind numbing microwave wifi beams.
Late one night, he escapes his socially distant quarantine shelter at home isolation cell and seeks the safety of the screen-free mountain forests.
While roaming loose in those mountains, Ludell foolishly begins to entertain forbidden thoughts and soon finds himself the target
We first ran this film, “Force Multiplication Through Cross Training”, back in January of 2019, primarily to alert the golf industry to the possibility of another recession. We included an important strategy, taken from special ops, for creating a sustainable labor force capable of withstanding a major economic reset. Although the film encountered resistance, possibly due to “Normalcy Bias”, the Bat-Flu demonstrated how easily a recession can surface, especially in an overly complex economic s
Recently while making the rounds to check on my crew’s progress I came upon a groundskeeper who was clearly working but wasn’t making the progress necessary. This situation presented me with a dilemma. Critiquing a worker who is clearly trying but not achieving adequate results (quality, scope, pace, etc.) can be awkward. I wanted to correct this teammate without discouraging him. I gave him some tips like understand what you want accomplished when the job is done and consider the steps necessar
In this episode, Randy explains why Rockbottum Radio is more like an Old Timey radio show from 1940 than a modern podcast with serious interview segments. It's entertainment with a goofy perspective and an occasional subliminal message. The job of the golf course superintendent has gotten more serious over the years, and sometimes it helps to have a more relaxed if even twisted view of this industry. You know, with a few laughs... now more than ever.
Among the shenanigans going on at Rockbo
“There is nothing so stable as change.” — Bob Dylan
In our lives there isn’t much that’s predictable. The only thing we can count on for sure is that things change constantly. On many levels change is imperceptible. Thatch accumulation underneath a green surface, a tree growing a few inches at a time, a change in a belt notch or a hairline receding. The hum of daily life keeps these things in the background, hidden by our toils and troubles, joys and sorrows.
Once in a while we all exp
Looking back a couple of months to BCV (Before Coronavirus), the thought that 200 million Americans and more around the world would be hitting the pause button and staying at home for a month or more would have been ludicrous. Absurd. No way.
Fast forward and here we are. I’m sure I am not the only one who wakes up from another restless sleep to hope that this is just a bad dream. Of course, it is not.
The horrors of this pandemic are yet to be felt by most of us. Thankfully we work i
