Tales from the road

GCM readers often ask me exactly what we get out of the travel our staff members do each year on behalf of the magazine and the association.

There are obvious answers to that question — the stories we write about those travels that you can find by flipping through just about any issue of GCM, the contacts we make with superintendents and industry experts, the face we put on the magazine for readers who might not otherwise ever know about the folks who put together this book each and every month.

Then there are other less-obvious benefits from getting out on the road, one which came to mind after the recent announcement of the 2008 winner of the Leo Feser Award (which you can read more about on Page 22 of this month’s Front Nine news section).

In January of 2007, I traveled to Orlando to attend the annual PGA Merchandise Show. I’d long wondered if one of the game’s signature events held much sway for superintendents, and with an unusual multiweek gap between the PGA Show and the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show, I finally had the opportunity to find out. My stories about the trip found a home on the GCM blog and as the subject of the Inside Your Game column in the March 2007 issue.

But ultimately, the most important outcome from that trip was my introduction to Tom Lavrenz, who was then the director of golf for the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Lavrenz was a PGA Show veteran who had a plate full of job duties normally associated with golf professionals. But he always considered himself a superintendent first and foremost, and was a 12-year member of GCSAA at that time.

Unfortunately, Lavrenz was battling numerous health issues that he knew would ultimately force him to resign his position. He was forthcoming about the challenges he faced, but was also steadfast in his desire to use this forced professional transition as an opportunity to share some of the knowledge he had accumulated during his years in the game.

I quickly asked if Lavrenz would have any interest in sharing some of that knowledge in the pages of GCM, sensing that his unique view of golf from the perspective of both the clubhouse and the maintenance facility would play well with our audience. He readily accepted, and a few weeks later I had his first story, an examination of how work-related stress can affect an individual’s health and professional performance.

It wasn’t a great fit for our regular monthly columns, but several editors on our staff thought it would make an excellent feature story. So Lavrenz worked closely with Seth Jones, our senior associate editor who assists GCM’s superintendent-authors through the writing and editing process, and in February 2008, “Stress: What’s really important” was published. In late October, the story was announced as the winner of the Feser, given annually to the best superintendent-written story in the magazine.

So let me offer up a hearty congratulations to Lavrenz for his award-winning work. It’s reassured me that my trip to Orlando was well worth it.