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More than a game
Not just great golf, the GCSAA golf championship also brings friends together.
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They say what you take away from GCSAA’s annual golf, education and trade show extravaganza each February is what you make of it.
Indeed, the personal positives are there for the taking, and it’s the participants in the National Championship and Golf Classic who seem to traditionally get off on the right foot toward making the time a significant success.
Let Les Kennedy Jr., CGCS at the Blind Brook Club in Purchase, N.Y., and a staunch supporter and promoter of the GCSAA tournament over the past two decades, testify that point.
“Golf is the glue that brings everybody together,” the 27-year GCSAA member says. “I go to the golf tournament and I see friend after friend after friend that I see basically once a year. It’s like a homecoming. I could go to 50 conference and shows and I wouldn’t make the friends that I’ll make in one GCSAA golf tournament. It’s been a highlight of my career in this business.”
Or let Chad Ball, CGCS at Conway Falls Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill., put in perspective the multiple values, personal and professional, inherent in the relaxed atmosphere of tournament week.
“The best is all the people I’ve met from around the country while just playing golf and talking,” says Ball, a 26-year member. “Everyone in our business is golf course geeks; we talk turf more than anything else. It’s always interesting to find out what kind of problems different guys in different parts of the country are having. You never know where you’re going to pick up an idea. I could give up the golf and just go to network with the guys.”
The Northeasters
Kennedy and Ball represent what is typical of the camaraderie that pervades
the tournament site — groups of superintendents and other members
of GCSAA who travel together, play together and socialize together.
The group atmosphere — fostered a great deal from within GCSAA chapters around the country — has been the custom at the event, which began in 1938 and was held in hodge-podge fashion until becoming a fixture as the game’s largest traveling competition the last 38 years. In the last decade, the tournament — presented in partnership with The Toro Co. for 13 consecutive years and bolstered by GCSAA staff’s refined organizational expertise — has especially flourished.
Like others in many parts of the nation, coveys of superintendents flock to the tournament and the ensuing “convention,” as many still call it, from the golf course meccas in the Northeast to escape the last chills of a long winter. Kennedy is a member of such a group, a foursome from layouts in the tradition-rich area where New York meets with Connecticut’s distinct southwestern tip.
Kennedy went to his first tournament in 1986 in Palm Springs, Calif., with Timothy T. O’Neill, who today isGCSAA’s immediate past president and CGCS at the Country Club of Darien (Conn.). The next go-around they were joined by John Carlone, CGCS at The Meadow Brook Club in Jericho, N.Y. The fourth member of the group, John Streeter, CGCS at North Shore Country Club in Glen Head, N.Y., came on a little later. Together, they represent more than 100 years of GCSAA membership.
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Many tournament participants gather in the days before the competition to play courses in the area, often the venues of superintendents they’ve met and connected with at previous events. For Kennedy’s group, the “golf before the golf” is high on the agenda.
“It’s our annual match ... a typical guy thing to do,” says Carlone, who thrives on the action before it’s time to head back home and start prepping for spring. “I’m a somewhat serious golfer. I love to compete and play the different golf courses. I’ve been playing in Championship Flight for 20 years, and you see most of the same guys every year. Even though you’re having fun, you still want to beat their brains out.”
Kennedy and Carlone are the stuff tournament lore is made of. The Palm Springs event this coming February will be the 21st for both. Before it was eliminated from the overall tournament format, they were partners in the two-man four-ball competition for 19 consecutive years, winning the title back in 1988 in Houston. And off the course they’ve made the most of just being there.
Aside from the fun and games, Carlone says networking
is a tournament week staple.
“It’s both serious and otherwise,” the 25-year GCSAA
member says. “For instance, I’ve probably heard more about
pieces of equipment from guys who have bought it and used it and have
based some of my decisions on those conversations with fellow superintendents
at the GCSAA Championship than I have from guys around home or from my
local salesmen.”
Kennedy adds that for many, the networking is a localized affair, “But, the one thing we all have in common is the golf course and when you get together with guys at the tournament, having a beer after golf, talking about golf, the courses and the business, you learn about things in different parts of the country,” he says. “Or maybe you set up a game at each other’s courses for sometime down the line. That’s the networking for me.”
The Easy Riders
The Midwest GCSA generally has up to a handful of group forays to the
national golf tournament, including one nurtured many years ago by the
late Wayne Otto, CGCS, and one that has thrived along the way because
of its constituents’ favorite extracurricular activity — riding
motorcycles.The group’s three mainstays include Ball; Ed Fischer,
CGCS at Old Elm Club in Highland Park, Ill.; and Paul Bastron, CGCS at
Glen Flora Country Club in Waukegan, Ill. They are close-knit in both
work and enjoying their Harley-Davidsons away from the course.
“We’ve all ridden motorcycles most of our lives,” says Ball. “We work within about 15 miles of each other in the Chicago area, and any time we get an excuse to ride somewhere together we do. The tournament and conference and show has become one of those getaways.”
When the threesome got into Harleys seriously about a decade ago they also joined the Harley-Davidson Owners Group and took advantage of its “Fly ’n’ Ride” amenity that enables them to rent cycles at the Golf Industry Show site.
“It’s a great opportunity to ride in the wintertime for a few days,” says Fischer, who notes that the ride usually follows the show’s adjournment when time is ample. “We enjoy the scenery, camaraderie and have fun. In recent years, there have been a few others join us, too.”
But it’s the tournament where the bikers charge their batteries. Bastron, a 26-year GCSAA member who went to turf school at Michigan State University with Ball and another Chicagoland neighbor, Tom Lively, CGCS at Medinah Country Club, says the golf event is a chance to renew friendships with other classmates from the late 1970s and early ’80s.
“The tournament is all about camaraderie and networking and getting together with old friends,” Bastron says. “Conference and show has become so big it’s hard to find familiar faces. But at the tournament, you’ve got some time to run into people or have a beer with old friends.”
Some years ago, Bastron and Ball had a hankering to travel to Ireland and play some golf. As luck would have it, while socializing at the next GCSAA tournament they met one Michael Murphy, the head greenkeeper at Waterville Golf Links in County Kerry on the Emerald Isle.
Since then, they’ve crossed the pond three times to play their Irish friend’s course.
Fischer says he has never tired of the tournament trappings after 20 years of making the scene. “Seeing the different golf courses is always a treat for me,” he says. “But, really, I get a kick out of getting together for golf and socializing with a lot of guys from all over who also have been going to the event for years.”
Likewise, the veteran of nearly 40 years in golf course management says he hasn’t quite seen it all yet and relishes the professional networking.
“I learn so much and get different ideas from picking guys’ brains, and I hope I contribute the same. It helps make the job a little easier,” says Fischer, who adds that it’s also a good time in a relaxed setting for superintendents to check on job opportunities or to learn about available help.
The ‘A’ List
For one segment of the GCSAA membership that frequents the golf tournament,
the affiliates, networking is the name of their game every day. But, while
the golf and laid-back atmosphere are ideal conditions, the feeling among
many of the company reps is that they aren’t able to take full advantage
of the setting.
“I kind of wish they would let us play with the superintendents so we could actually do some networking,” says J. Andrew Drohen of Granville, Mass., a national sales manager for Agrium Inc. (formerly Pursell Technologies), who notes that other than the four-ball competition, the affiliates are limited to their own gross/net competition.
Furthermore, Drohen, a 10-year member of GCSAA, is a plus-2 handicap and a top amateur player around New England. He’s won the last three affiliate gross titles. Understandably, he’d like to measure his game against GCSAA’s best.
“We’re supposed to be all one big membership, but at the tournament they separate us out in the affiliate division, and we don’t have a chance to play for the title of the entire membership,” he says.
Tim Klein of Gunter, Texas, a territory manager for Syngenta Professional Products, admits that it would be nice to play with superintendents more in the tournament, but notes that there are plenty of opportunities off the course to connect.
“I tell anyone who’s interested that there’s no place where you can meet as many superintendents as the tournament,” says Klein, a 15-year GCSAA member who has played in the golf event five times and won the affiliate net crown twice. “It’s like a wedding for me ... I see so many good friends every year.”
Drohen agrees that he’s able to make the most of it away from tournament play. “It’s great to see guys you only see once or twice a year and to meet new and different people from across the country,” he says. “I also get a kick out of renewing friendships with superintendents who have been at Pursell’s Experience at FarmLinks.”
Winner won over
If anyone is impressed by the personal and professional nirvana the GCSAA
golf tournament has become through the years, it’s the reigning
national champion, Joe Anderson, who claimed the big prize in a playoff
last February in Houston, and on his first trip to the event to boot.
“There were a lot of things that I wasn’t expecting ... good things,” Anderson says. “It seemed like everyone was having such a good time. Even the conversations between me and my playing partners were about everything but golf course work.”
Anderson, a 10-year GCSAA member who has spent most of his life in east Texas around Nacogdoches, was somewhat of an accidental participant in the 2006 championship. While he has harbored a distant interest in the event in past years, if it hadn’t been just a couple of hours from home and if the championship flight hadn’t changed to a 54-hole format, he more than likely would have been a no-show once again.
A contract superintendent at both Center (Texas) Country Club, a small-town, nine-hole operation, and Piney Woods CC, an 18-hole layout 30 miles away in Nacogdoches, as well as caretaker for the sports fields in Center, it’s no surprise that expending the time and money to play in the tournament hasn’t been high on Anderson’s list of priorities.
But now, he hints that he wouldn’t miss it for the world. He will defend in Palm Springs in four months.
“It’s a chance to play golf in a nice place on some nice golf courses, but I also hope to renew the camaraderie. Everything fell into place this last year, and I hope to make an every-year deal out of it,” Anderson says, adding that the perks of being GCSAA champion play well, too.
“I got to meet a lot of really nice people I probably would never have met otherwise — Toro and GCSAA officials and sitting around backstage at the Opening Session (at the GIS in Atlanta) with Nancy Lopez and The Golf Channel’s Steve Sands just talking about everyday normal life,” he recalls. “It just was a great opportunity to become more rounded.”
The Kennedy Chronicle
Considering the comments of Anderson and others featured here, you almost
can hear Les Kennedy saying, “I told you so.” The undaunted
tour guide of this annual group hug, if you will, he has even written
a story about the tournament, its history, its brotherhood and his experiences
along the way. Titled “Twenty Years of Friendships — The GCSAA
Golf Championship,” the book is a literal promotion of the event.
“I have a love affair with the tournament; I know so many GCSAA superintendents because of the game and playing in the event,” Kennedy says. “I have made friends with board members and regular guys ... now I go to the annual meeting and I’ve become pretty active in the association. But I wouldn’t know anybody if I didn’t play in that tournament every year. There’s no other way to meet people like that.”
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