It's Sunday morning, 6:00 AM, Father's Day.
Even though the last round of the US Open will tee off at Shinnecock shortly, I'm not going to carry on about the brown greens that were broadcast around the world yesterday. I do feel sorry for Jon Jennings and his staff who have busted their humps for two years only to have it go to shit at the last minute... at the USGA's behest, I'm fairly sure. I guess they didn't learn anything from the wind-whipped forest fire on the greens there in 2004.
I am still haunted by some aspects of my college years -- yes, even 35 years later -- but maybe not by those things that might first come to mind.
I have occasional recurrent dreams (that border on nightmares) about going into exams completely unprepared. Weird, for sure, but so it is. There's no worse feeling than when you open up a test booklet and get that hard lump in your throat, thinking, "Oh, sh*t -- I'm screwed."
Ecology and Calculus for the Life Sciences were the two major culprits.
A few years back my wife and I attended the annual dinner meeting of the Passamaquoddy Yacht Club, of which we were new members. Sounds kind of snooty, doesn't it? Ahhh, names often belie the true nature of things.
The Passamaquoddy Yacht Club is half sailing organization and half social club. Its locale is a triangle of ports (Eastport and Lubec, Maine, and Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, where our summer place is located) near the entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay, off the Bay of Fu
After writing a monthly column in our now-retired print newsletter (TurfNet Monthly, for those not around then) for 17 or 18 years, I sort of ran out of things of import to say on a regular basis. No sense contributing to more milquetoast, editorial drivel or fill-up-space pontification... there's plenty of that elsewhere.
Occasionally something starts the gears whirring and prompts me to sit down and write. Yesterday was one of those occasions.
I finally caught up by phone with an ol
I don't get inspired by life events too much anymore to pick up the pen and scribe a column for the "Cheap Seats" but I can't let my Monday past go without comment. It was a day (morning, actually) of irritation, resignation, conflicting feelings, awe, pride and wonderment. It was my day in court.
The story starts about six weeks ago when I received an envelope in the mail from the United States District Court, District of Vermont, with JUROR SUMMONS showing through the window. Ah, shit,
I'm not a huge fan of Twitter -- I prefer my conversations to be a touch deeper than 140 characters will allow -- but I follow turf-related tweets and do find certain things of value. Amidst all the extrania, I love the photos. Golf course sunrises, maintenance practices du jour, summer crew shenanigans, golfer foibles... they're all good.
Somebody out there in the Twitterverse had the foresight to register the Twitter handle @superproblems and aggregate tweets from superintendents all arou
To many of us, the term unplugged commands visions of MTV and rock bands doing acoustic sets with adoring fans gathered around.
But of late the definition leans more toward disconnecting oneself from the "collective electronic consciousness", so aptly stated by Urban Dictionary. An alternate definition is "to be seperated (sic) from the borg-like creation of being constantly connected through digital communication tools".
As I sit here on a Friday night anticipating our long-awaited es
Holidays are all about traditions, so it's appropriate that I sit here this Thanksgiving morning contemplating and writing. It's what I do, for some reason, like splitting wood on New Year's Day.
(Reading this after Thanksgiving? You may want to skip to here.)
This is an odd Thanksgiving for us, with no bird destined for the oven, no casseroles or side dishes in the making. Daughter A is rotating off with Hubby's family (at her chagrin, I'm sure), but a tradeoff for Christmas. My mothe
No, not the 15 Minutes of Fame. I'm talking about the 15 minutes that create discipline in a young employee, camaraderie in a crew, a few moments of bonding with the staff for a superintendent or other supervisor.
It's the 15 minutes before work starts at the beginning of the day.
The time around the coffeepot when the games last night get reviewed, balls get busted, shit gets shot. A few moments of relaxation and anticipation before the horn sounds and the mower parade heads out.
It's no secret that the rate of change today outpaces any other in history. What used to be measured in centuries now often comes down to a matter of years or even months.
I read a lot of novels. Turns out most are police or legal procedurals, with an occasional classic thrown in for contrast. My wife buys the new books for the local library (it's a small Vermont country store-type library, in a room off the Town Hall - to give you a sense of scale), so I get first crack at the new ones com
I was clicking through some archived editions of TurfNet Monthly (on hiatus now) and came across a column I wrote back in 1997. It seems that Nat Binns, then superintendent at Schuylkill Country Club in Orwigsburg, PA, had phoned me and offered a tidbit from a copy of the SCC newsletter he had found, dated April, 1967. It was an excerpt from a Paul Harvey broadcast from November, 1966. See below:
The Year the Grass Died
Any proud homeowner looks with admiration and envy at the lawn-scap
Another nugget from the archives...
A discussion took place in the TurfNet.com Forum this past month about interns and their university-imbibed book knowledge but lack of any semblance of practical work ethic. Many have their sights set on the Superintendents Desk but with little or no understanding of the work. Yes, sometimes manual labor required to get there.
Isn't this the age-old gripe of one generation about the next? Those young kids don't know what work is. They have everythin
I heard yesterday about Toro's impending purchase of Venture Products just like most everyone did, via social media. Venture Products manufactures the increasingly popular and versatile Ventrac line of all-terrain prime movers and attachments.
My initial knee-jerk reaction was, "Perfect! Score one for Toro..." and of course for the Steiner family, owners of Venture Products. Toro will be a good steward of the brand, "Toro-ize" it to their standards, develop new attachments and take the line
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
One of my favorite metaphors in life is "adjustment of the rudder", making small but continual changes to keep one on course to reach a desired destination or goal rather than miss wide of the mark. Normally — and I hesitate to use that word as it’s rapidly becoming meaningless — small tweaks in a good management plan have usually been sufficient. But there are occasions when a hard pull on the tiller — a pivot in today's business-speak — is required to avoid impending disaster, particularly whe
A long-time TurfNet member got 'the news' from his club last week. (I almost started off that sentence with "another" rather than "a", hopefully not a harbinger of a trend.)
He had served that club for 33 years, the last 30 as superintendent.
No recent mistakes, turf loss, malfeasance or other gruel for the axman. Quite the contrary, in fact, with a multitude of projects (including a multi-year renovation) successfully completed. He had just been awarded a larger than usual performance
I'm admittedly a little late with my year-end backward glance and look-forward prognostications. But so it is these days... so much to do, seemingly so little time.
2014 is a milestone year, of sorts. TurfNet turns 20 on February 1 and I turn 60 on July 4. I'm not sure which is more monumental. Probably the former, given the odds.
As I have said many times, one of my first goals as a newbie entrepreneur slicing through the uncharted waters of a paid information service/networking plat
From the TurfNet Archives, Jan 2001:
Some people get really hung up on image, whether personal or professional. If you have teenage kids, you know what I mean. I am generally secure enough to avoid that, but do admit to having one image to uphold. You can't be the TurfNet guy and have a lousy lawn.
While all of our neighbors hire out their lawn maintenance, I stubbornly resist. Not only is it good exercise, but it's good for the mind. I do much of my best thinking while mowing the la
Laying the framework for this story requires a bit of background, so bear with me...
About three weeks ago Team TurfNet was headed for Niagara Falls, Ontario, for our 20th appearance at the Golf Course Hockey Challenge. For those unfamiliar, the GCHC is a 2-day event every January that pits 12 teams of superintendents, assistants and suppliers against one another in (usually) good-natured but serious men's-league caliber hockey. With three common threads among players -- playing hockey, wor
I had the pleasure of speaking to the 2022 graduating class of the Rutgers Golf Turf Professional Management School back in March.
I somewhat invited myself, I guess, since Robert Moinichen, class president, had contacted me over the winter in search of a speaker and asked who the most recent Superintendent of the Year was. Well, we don't do Superintendent of the Year anymore, I had to tell him, but if you're really stuck I'd be happy to do it myself. As a Rutgers alumnus with deep roots in
Used to be I wouldn't give a second thought to extended warranties on consumer products. Just a way for retailers to pad their profit margins, I'd tell myself as I smirked and shook my head when offered them at the checkout counter.
I'm rethinking that in light of what I'm experiencing as a new low in consumer product quality.
I have railed on this before but I'm gonna do it again. The newest inhabitant of the boneyard alongside my garage is the electric pressure washer I bought from No
The question of whether to 'repair or replace' rises to the surface as any product ages, be it a household item like a washing machine or dishwasher, a vehicle, or a piece of turf equipment.
In our increasingly disposable culture the answer is most often 'replace'. Products manufactured overseas in countries with economies very different than ours keep the cost of replacement artificially low. Rates for service technicians ranging from $50 to over $100/hour further sway the decision toward
I like to go places, see things and meet people. I just hate the process of getting there and back.
How much do I hate it, notably airline travel? Let me count the ways... I hate time inefficiency. I hate waiting around. I hate delays, mechanical or weather or otherwise. I REALLY hate missed connections and cancelled flights.
I hate a whole day to get somewhere, another whole day to get back, and then another day to recover from the process.
I hate being herded like cattle. It's i
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
Good to see the USGA's "While We're Young" campaign on picking up the pace of play. Kind of ironic that it was announced mid-US Open with it's 5+hour rounds... but the spots were well done and will hopefully be embraced by the golfing masses.
It was particularly refreshing to see a major PR campaign from an organization like the USGA focused on something that has the potential for an immediate and lasting benefit to all golfers, across all skill levels and choice of golf course. Too often
