I had an opportunity today to visit with Noah Wahl of the Toro Company. While now a greensmower product manager, Noah previously worked on the Workman line of vehicles and is the force behind the coolest graphics for a utility vehicle on the property. FYI, that's a custom heat-treated hood wrap on a Workman GTX vehicle
Take a look and listen as I put him on camera to give us some insight on How Its Made.
I got a chance to chat with Hazeltine National's Golf Course Superintendent Chris Tritabaugh about Ryder Cup preparations.
Chris was kind enough to give some time for a conversation about his last preparations for the 2016 Ryder Cup. A special guy and a special episode and a special event.
The Turfgrass Zealot Project is brought to you by Klingstone, proven bunker performance for over 15 years.
The last couple days at Hazeltine have been moisture free, other than a few rain drops during evening duty on Tuesday night.
Speaking of night, a large part of golf course conditioning for morning set-up here relies on portable lights. These are on display every morning at Hazeltine National. The quality of small portable LED lighting is fantastic; tripods, headlamps, mower lights, you name it, the lights are here. At times, many green and tee areas look like mini stadiums spread across the
On Location isn't as easy as it sounds! The wind was blowing so bad at times on Monday that my tripod could barely stay upright, and even my best microphone equipped with a windscreen sounded like a jet engine. I'm not even going to mention the internet in the hotel... But we must carry on, so enjoy my first day walk-around with a music background instead.
A whole bunch of TurfNetters are here. Frank Rossi, Paul MacCormack and Mark Perry from Prince Edward Island, Pat O'Brien from Hyde Park i
Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them... Lucy Maud Montgomery
This post will be the first in a "once on a lifetime event" series. The Mindful Superintendent is on the road this week in Chaska, Minnesota, volunteering with the world class turfgrass crew from Hazeltine National Golf Club. The 2016 Ryder Cup Matches take place here this week and to say I am looking forward to it would be a gross understatement.
While reflecting on our preparation for this exciting week, antici
In this episode of The Renovation Report, host Peter McCormick chats with Bradley Klein, architecture editor of Golfweek, about Arnold Palmer and his legacy within the golf industry.
Brad had numerous interactions with Palmer dating back to 1976. He recalls some of those anecdotes, including flying in Arnie's plane, and the time they were in Palm Springs and Arnie threw him the keys to his Cadillac, telling Brad to have fun for a few days while he tended to a few things.
With this recording
The Ryder Cup is a special event for me. You might say it's kind of a family thing.
In 1967, my Dad, Wendell Ross, was a rules official at the Ryder Cup when it was held at the Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas. That was back when it wasn't even the Europeans... it was the British.
Growing up, my Dad had some of the memorabilia from that event hanging in the den at our home. As a little guy, he told me stories of how great it was to attend and officiate the tournament. I thought,
In this episode, I speak frankly with David Kuypers, CGCS, former golf course superintendent and now head of Lawn and Garden for Syngenta Canada. A Penn State alum (won't hold that against him) and instructor in the Guelph Turf Institute,
David and I discuss his career transition, Canadian pesticide regulation compared to that in the US, and the stormwater capture project he worked on while at the Cutten Club in Guelph.
Smart talk from leading thinkers and always Frankly Speaking.
Pr
When I was young, I suffered from the delusion of indestructibility, triggered by hormones and too many Roy Rogers movies. While Roy offered good advice, all I seemed to absorb involved fist fights and six-guns.
Years later, I was offered the most valuable bit of wisdom I would ever receive and those same hormones almost caused me to ignore it at a critical moment. I would have surely died had this knowledge been delivered by an ordinary man, but fortunately for me, it was spoken by a grizz
With the recent announcement of a major university conducting experiments in pest control using sonic waves, Rockbottum CC is forced to cry "FOUL"!
Once again, we are expected to sit quietly as others take credit for our forays into futurism and what has been called "golf sci-fi".
Well, not this time. We are releasing proof of our earliest sonic pest control--and not just with something harmless like nematodes, but truly fearsome beasts.
I don't know if it is me, or if there really is a hesitancy by people to adopt sustainable landscaping practices. It could be me, because I preach sustainability, and honestly my message can be fire and brimstone at times. But I also wonder if there isn't a weird kind of sustainability reluctance (sustainability overload perhaps) that turns people away from any landscape called sustainable'. In my 25 years of landscaping, sustainable has meant saving time, money and staff, resources I never had
When seeds are planted, the seedlings must be watered, nourished, and given room to grow. Just like humans, they require proper growing conditions and ongoing, loving maintenance.
When irrigation systems are new, they require a lot of training. Because they leak it takes a while to get used to the new pipes. As they age they become more unpredictable, leak more, and become much less "depend"-able.
After years of constant rolling, greens seal off and become hydrophobic. Aeration is necessary
Dr. James Rittenhouse, noted pollinator researcher, is beginning to gain national attention with his controversial bee/hornet/butterfly/hummingbird/buzzard DNA swaps.
In the following short film, Dr. Rittenhouse interacts with one of his subjects.
Ike Stephens is a legend. His YouTube videos about trucking and the trucking lifestyle are known as some of the most unique on the internet.
Join me as I get to know Ike. You may not think of Ike as a "turfhead", but the more he speaks, the more you realize that trucking and turfgrass management have a lot in common. And in a day and age where long hours and hard work aren't always understood, both trucking and turfgrass management share a certain knowledge. And that knowledge is about getti
In this Frankly Speaking audiocast, I chat with Rick Slattery, a 30+ year career superintendent who has spent the past 21 years at Locust Hill Country Club outside Rochester, NY. Rick was a 2015 GCSAA Environmental Leaders in Golf (ELGA) Award recipient in the Private Club category. Under Rick's leadership the club was also recognized by the NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation as an environmental leader.
Much of Rick's environmental focus has been on water management and in a year when w
I have covered this topic very briefly before in a larger article about cover letters, but it's worthwhile to include this as its own feature in our goal of providing excellent and easy to read career materials.
Portable Document Format (PDF) preserves document formatting and enables file sharing. When the PDF format file is viewed online or printed, it retains the content and format that you intended.
Out of all the career files I view each year, over 50% are still sent in a no
Have you ever had a protected employee (PE) you couldn't get rid of? I had several, beginning in '72 with Mickey, a lifeguard who drew a paycheck all winter, courtesy of our maintenance budget. Mickey was such a great lifeguard that he earned 20 hours a week during the off-season, appearing only to collect his check.
Dad wanted Mickey to help with tree work during the winter, but the owners insisted Mickey was a PE because he taught Sunday School and also was excellent at car washing. Eve
Emily Dobbs, Lead Researcher at Emory University's Environmental Science department, spoke to us about her work with pollinators, wildflower mixes for golf and the goal of Syngenta's Operation Pollinator.
Bermuda grass, more commonly known by the scientific Latin designation "muda", (pronounced mooda) is my favorite grass. After years of the "Walking Dead" lifestyle of BBA, (bent below Atlanta) experimenting with various fescues, poa triv, perennial ryes and zoysias, returning to muda was like a homecoming.
It was Tif Eagle that brought me back. On the advice of Milton Abel, former GCS and current CEO of Classic Golf, I chose Tif Eagle for the giant greens at Rockbottum CC and it has been g
Andy O'Haver is the assistant superintendent at Meadowbrook CC outside of Detroit. Meadowbrook is being transformed by architect Andy Staples. It's a gigantic job.
Andy took the time to talk to Dave Wilber (from his cell phone, in the field) about the role that he plays as an Assistant Super at Meadowbrook. Andy's eye opening experience comes to life in a really good way. And anyone who is going to come anywhere near a golf course renovation project should understand that the team is import
In this episode of Frankly Speaking, I chat with one of my old pals, Dr. Roch Gaussoin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Roch did some fascinating research on managing soil organic matter, and the value of sand topdressing, coring/not-coring, spiking, solid-tining, slicing/venting, and other new-age cultivation techniques.
He also has some intriguing conclusions that are bound to stimulate thought and conversations among the superintendent (and academic) community. Smart talk from lea
That's it. For this blog I am not going to take the high road. I am not going to say to myself "put yourself in their shoes". I am not going to look to understand the other perspective. I am not going to be a good soldier. This is going to be a vitriolic, hate-spewing, anger-filled, lament of many of the idiotic things I have to put up with as the head groundskeeper at a university. I am looking to vent, and vent big. So, to my fellow groundskeepers, sit back and see if you don't say "been there
This post may sound like a bit of a rant. Okay, it's a flat out rant a Wilberesque "if it did not happen in a research trial, it did not happen"-style rant, if you will.
My kids were asked by someone the other day if they were ready for school. It wasn't even August (unlike some parts of the southern US, here in the Maritimes we don't return to school until September). My youngest daughter was perplexed by the question and asked us afterwards why adults ask kids such silly questions. Unfort
