Check out our Top 3 Skeletal Golf Tips of the Year!
#1: Dustin Riley of Oconomowoc Golf Club in Wisconsin, is this year’s big winner. Dustin wins the Rockbottum “Iron Skillet”* for his amazing tip on reframing tees to fit your spray rig. (See TurfNet Forum) Instead of just topdressing heavy or capping and leveling a tee designed and built by somebody with no GCS experience, Dustin explains how to reframe the tee to the specs needed to match your spray rig. This is brilliant SGT thinki
The email from GCSAA said that it would take 8 minutes to do my Member Needs Assessment. Mine took 22.
Because I am slow and because I am wordy. I also took the time to use my Twitter feed and tweet about doing it and to encourage others. And I emailed three influential supers in my world and asked them to weigh in. So let's call it an even half hour. At my current billable office rate, that runs the abacus to about $100.
A year ago, I wasn't a GCSAA member. I had taken a break for j
Setting out on foot for our first shift at Royal Melbourne was an experience that kept me up most of the night. Anxiety and anticipation are now going to be a thing of the past, replaced with pure excitement.
Richard Forsyth welcomed us before the morning assignments and the volunteer orientation. The maintenance facility at Royal Melbourne is extremely functional, and revolutionary as far as I was concerned. Everything has a space and a purpose.
It’s probably difficult for a permanent
On Sunday morning Anthony Mills (@thelakessuper), superintendent of The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney, hosted me and my friend Ian and joined us for a round at his wonderful facility. Anthony and I immediately connected and we start talking about what it’s like to manage a club that has 55-60K annual rounds as The Lakes does. When I told him that we average 1,100/year at Kanawha, he scoffs, chuckles, and is generally mystified.
Our round was an avenue for a 4-hour dialogue between two professio
Back in 2014-15 I wrote for TurfNet’s Greenkeeping: The Next Generation as an intern at Mount Juliet in Ireland and The Hills in New Zealand. I admit I was nervous at first to write a blog that anyone could see and read, but by the end I was having a blast sharing my experiences and thoughts. When Jon Kiger asked me to blog at The Presidents Cup, along with Paul Van Buren, I jumped on board.
Prior to 2014 I had completed internships at Westchester Country Club and Vineyard Golf Club. After
Wow. I can’t believe I’m sitting down to write my first blog post (ever by the way) about a trip that I have been planning in my mind for the last few years. I am embarking on a trip that will involve so many aspects of the important things I hold dear to my heart, it is utterly overwhelming how excited I am. Here are few snippets of what I’m looking forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks.
First off, I’m the golf course superintendent at perhaps one of the most unique golf faciliti
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
In this short film from our "Boots & Ruck" division, we explain how you can take a mental break by practicing "Forest Bathing".
*Note: If you absolutely cannot remain clothed to Forest Bathe, we suggest you at least keep your boots on.
It should go without saying that accomplishing work is why our teams have jobs. It should also go without saying that while at work we should all be working. In this post some of the atmospheric factors that may encourage more work will be discussed. I say some because improving the desire to work is not cookie cutter. Every team is unique and comes with their own dynamics, motivations and deterrents for work. And, even when everything seems to be coming together, it is challenging to maintain t
I can sit here and say that it isn't my fault. It is. But for the sake of my own argument, let me suss it out.
I didn't want to get pet hair all over my nice clean pants. So I hung them in a different spot so they would be ready to pack. It made sense to me at the time. But after a few decades of packing and being on the road, you develop habits. And hanging those pants where I did was out of my usual checklist. I should have known.
So I went on to think about the outfits I wanted to p
All superintendents have to-do lists. It doesn’t matter how one manages them — smartphone, tablet, app or even manually on a piece of paper — they guide our days and can shape us as much as they shape our courses.
Many of us live and die by these lists. The blueprint they provide us is essential to what we accomplish on any given day, week, month, or over the course of the season. But what is your relationship to that list? Is it a positive source of clarity and organization? Do you pause a
Whether of intention or happenstance, Wendy O'Brien has used many of the time-tested, tried-and-true strategies to propel her turf management career from casual summer job in North West England through the Ohio Program to a course manager position in Latvia... with various stops, twists and turns along the way. Oh, and volunteering at The Masters 18 times as well.
Follow your heart. Listen to your gut. Step outside the comfort zone. Meet people, learn from all. Establish relationships. Find
We can’t turn the page on our visit to County Clare without a shoutout to Jerry Matthews for his fine performance at Doonbeg. Holes 7 through 11 are Pars 3-5-3-5-3 and anyone scoring par or better on that stretch – dubbed Shanahan’s Corner – gets a commemorative bag tag sent to them. Jerry did just that! (Writer’s note: my caddie had seen enough by the sixth hole that this promotion wasn’t mentioned to me as a possibility…)
Monday included a relatively short ride up the coast to Moun
Sunday morning we had our first full Irish breakfast at the Lahinch Coast Hotel and boarded our bus to view the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs are a stunning expanse of rock jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. The Visitor Center offered a full explanation of the Cliffs as well as some shopping and dining opportunities. It was a lovely clear day to see this impressive site.
The Cliffs of Moher (above), where Richard Matthews, Butch Sheffield and Scott Schukraft took a break.
In this episode of Rockbottum Radio, RW seeks to avoid offensive discourse by installing a special Podcast Offensive Warning Device (POWD), which emits a BS alert when anything potentially offensive is emitted.
The screen-free gang at Rockbottum CC receives the worst-ever Social Credit Score, forcing Momma to retain a Social Engineering Expert -- Horton Pantslow -- to bring Rockbottum CC into the modern era. A mandatory staff meeting after lunch ensues.
The first lesson of Horton's sem
A few members of the trip group arrived on Friday on the heels of Hurricane Lorenzo. While the hurricane did not amount to what was projected, it did bring its share of rain and wind from the southwest up through Dublin.
Three of us (myself, John Brauer and Mike Rowe) opted to play Corballis Golf Club, which is very close to The Island Golf Club in Donabate, near Dublin. The rain was steady for nine of the 12 holes we played.
John Brauer and Mike Rowe during a rainy preview
While working as branch manager for a large landscape contracting company one of the maxims I heard was “re-work kills us”. I agree with this completely, but also know there are other production related issues that kill (diminish) my team’s ability to successfully complete our work. For this blog post I am not focusing on equipment failures, budgetary shortfalls, non-professional meddling, or even the weather. I want to start a discussion around how my team stops itself. For some actions, or la
Now that the US Government has admitted UFOs are real, (See The Youtube, F-18 gun camera) I feel safe in pursuing the link between UFOs and golf. The photo below, taken two years ago on a golf course in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by Rockbottum Dave, is unretouched. Dave was doing his Irrigation Tech thing, when he accidentally captured a shot of a UFO. (Is it “a” UFO or “an” UFO?) We featured this photo in a short film, but viewers assumed it was just more of our filmic trickery and ignored it.
I walked into the Lobby of the Embassy Suites with my heart racing. I was meeting with Ron Whitten, the author of a bunch of great golf books and all the architecture stuff for Golf Digest. Ron had asked me to meet him and tell the deepest personal story I have. And while I have told bits and pieces of it here on TurfNet, this is another level of exposure. And I wanted to run. Away. Far.
"You are a fucking disaster, Wilber", my head screamed. Loudly.
Three hours later, I emerged from R
Rather than a conscious decision to pursue a career in turf management, for Natasha Repinskaja it was luck that landed her from her native Estonia onto the hallowed turf of the Home of Golf: St Andrews Links. One can almost hear the collective sigh of the golf world: “If only I could be so lucky…”
“It wasn't my decision. It basically was luck,” she said in a Skype interview recently.
After finishing secondary schooling in Estonia, in 2006 Natasha applied for a visa to work out of the
