DMGCC, Golf Course Grounds Department

Golf Course Maintenance Musings

What is a “musing”? It is your thoughts or comments on something you have been thinking about carefully and for a long time.

For me the musings lately are about the last 50 years. I am just finishing my 50^th year in the golf course maintenance business. I love this industry and feel I still have something left in the tank to go a year or two more. However, on the end of the 50^th I decided to write a few things I have been thinking about. Changes in the business or how some items go full circle.

What do I mean by full circle? I will give you a good example. Fairway pattern mowing. When I got into this business in “73” we all mowed our fairways with 5 or 7 gang mowers pulled by a tractor. You tried very hard to mow a straight edge and you mowed down one side of the fairway and back up the other giving you a light pattern on one side and a darker pattern on the other. In the 80’s we saw people mowing some fairways with triplex greensmowers and then the equipment companies all jumped on the bandwagon with light weight fairway mowers. We started to see contour edges on fairways and stripe cuts. Now we are once again seeing the “tuxedo cut” back on fairways like it is a new item, I hate to tell these young people something, but it was being done back when Joe Roseman first hooked up a 3-gang Coldwell mower to a horse and mowed some fairways back in 1910 at Des Moines Golf. 

 

 

Topdressing of greens – I must chuckle at this one. We used to pull a wagon behind a tractor to a greens edge and spread topdressing as light as we could with a scoop shovel. We even mixed our own topdressing by hand through a dirt shredder. Then the Meter Matic came out and we shoveled it from the trailer to the walk behind unit and did it as light as we could or heavy as needed to fill holes. In today’s world the topdresser can be adjust to width, amount and speed of sand coming out. We fill them with wagons with conveyors to get it done faster, but what are doing now?  Spreading the sand with a fertilizer spreader shoveled from a utility cart. Almost full circle.

There are so many advances over the years from moisture meters, fully autonomous mowers, all the other mowers and equipment we use to the different methods of poking a hole to computers to irrigation heads that can be programed to run with your phone to growth retardants to GPS sprayers. All of these are great advances and have helped us all to be better at what we do if our clubs can afford the latest and greatest.

There are some things that very sadly have not changed. A ball mark and a divot in 1973 looks the same then as they do today. Not repaired! There are probably more of them because I think the average golfer has gotten better over the years because of the equipment, the ball and accuracy of being able to know where the exact pin location is. Golf was a game invented to come to the land and play the game as you find it. Rub of the green. Take it as you get it. Today’s golfer has forgotten that. The expectations are so much higher for today’s golf courses and there is very little thought for the people preparing these golf course as to how they are going to meet these expectations. Sometimes I hear my colleagues say they have no idea how they are going to meet these demands because of low budgets, no labor force or the people in charge have no idea what it takes to give them the conditions like the club down the street.Hopefully some of that can change in the future.

Bunkers back then were raked by hand because we didn’t have a sand pro, what are we doing today? Raking them by hand. Bunkers are a hazard, and we spend way too much time taking care of them or making them perfect when in fact they should be penal. I was fortunate to work the Open Championship at St. Andrews this past season. Those bunkers were perfect because they were hazards. They didn’t worry about how much sand was in them or what color it was or how the ball came out of them. They just wanted them raked a certain way and they were penal. Perfect.

A couple of things that have not changed. Golf is still the greatest game no matter where it is played. It can be enjoyed by all ages, at any skill level and the course can be as imperfect as you like. I really have enjoyed the people that I have met along the way and the ones that I am going to meet that all enjoy this game. For some of us it is a way of life, for some it is just a game. Wherever you fall it is still the greatest game to be invented.

One final note. In 1973 Frank Gasparro designed the Eisenhower Silver Dollar. Ike was a golfer and even had a tree in Georgia named after him. One of those silver dollars fell into a young kid’s pocket courtesy of his grandfather. I have carried it every day of my golf course career. I have flipped it many times trying to make a decision or to take a buck off of an assistant golf pro. I have rubbed it for good luck. I lost it once and a good friend who was working with me at the time found it on the golf course and returned it. I am superstitious about it, I never leave home with out it. It is almost worn out after 50 years in the golf business, but you can still make out the top of Ike’s Head, so we have a few more left to go. 

 

 

Thanks for reading my musings. All of us who take care of golf courses love what we do, we have a unique drive and a different passion for the game. The one thing we can all agree on is that golf is a great game. Have a great day and enjoy this wonderful game wherever you play it and play it as you find it.