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Consolidation headlines
Jacobsen news
It took 12 months of planning, a 12-person team, three days and 72 truckloads to move a manufacturing and parts distribution plant five miles, but it was worth it. That’s what anyone at Jacobsen, a Textron company, will tell you.
The move, which consolidated four Jacobsen facilities into two and was finalized a month and a half ahead of schedule earlier this year, was deemed a success especially because customer service and fill rates went uninterrupted during the process. Jacobsen officials boasted that and many other achievements recently during a media day when industry press took a tour of its new facility in Charlotte, N.C.
In addition to the consolidation, a lengthy pick study to maximize efficiency of its parts fulfillment system yielded the company a 97 percent fill rate, according to Joe Cunningham, vice president of marketing.
The company also reopened Jacobsen University, a hands-on classroom for equipment training that Jacobsen makes available to turfgrass students, customers and dealers. In the long term, the company hopes the training program will connect high school youth to turfgrass management schools and community colleges, says Craig Cousino, the company’s business education manager.
Competitors’ equipment sits side-by-side with Jacobsen vehicles so the university students can compare. The program offers work spaces and stations where students can troubleshoot electrical and hydraulic problems and see how an efficient shop could be designed, among other features.
But those are just the immediate, tangible ways Jacobsen has worked to improve its business.
Company president Dan Wilkinson notes that at the beginning of 2006, the firm began expanding its product-testing capabilities with accelerated methods and global testing on 85 courses
in multiple seasons and on multiple grasses in nine different
countries.
“(Global testing) takes a while, but it’s worth it,” Wilkinson says. “If we can get something fixed up front, it’s a lot cheaper than doing it in the field.”
Over the past several years, Jacobsen has invested in its product support systems and changed its overall support system to meet customer needs, Cunningham adds. The company now employs a product support manager for every territory. Phone support, online technical manuals and online technical DVDs are additional newly improved services to customer support.
On a broad scale, Jacobsen has applied the Six Sigma discipline to its business units, working to reduce cost and variation and eliminate waste from all its operations. All the improvements have been made with the intentions of achieving a larger, common goal.
“Jacobsen’s mission is to be the premier supplier of turf equipment and vehicles,” Wilkinson says. “We don’t want to be as good as Toro or as good as John Deere, we want to be the best.”
– Darcy DeVictor, GCM associate editor
The GCSA of Northern California recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. Also feted at the event was GCSANC Life Member Cliff Wagoner, CGCS Retired, for his more than a half century of service to the chapter. Wagoner is a 52-year member of GCSAA.
Cliffs loom tall with environmental center
Golf’s potential to generate environmental solutions will go under the microscope in a novel new partnership between a South Carolina developer and Clemson University. The Cliffs Center for Environmental Golf Research will investigate means to make the game leaner and greener in its use of resources and chemicals.
Principals in the endeavor say the lessons learned likely will benefit all turfgrass industries, including home lawn care, in the U.S. and internationally.
The facility will occupy 5.6 acres at The Cliffs at Mountain Park, a new Gary Player golf and residential community in upstate South Carolina. The Cliffs will invest $100,000 to build the new center and contribute an additional $250,000 over three years to establish research programs.
The facility will include 40,000 square feet of turf-test plots and two par-3 holes that will be maintained organically. Graduate and undergraduate students from Clemson’s turfgrass program will study at the facility, which will be co-managed by Clemson professors and The Cliffs.
In announcing the partnership, The Cliffs founder and president, Jim Anthony, spoke of threats to global health and a duty baby boomers have to conserve and protect natural resources. “This may be the last generation to have an opportunity to turn it around,” he said. “We could not be more excited than we are to announce this partnership.”
Daniel Brazinski, GCSAA Class A superintendent and vice president of golf course maintenance for The Cliffs, told about 100 people at the announcement that research findings at the new center “could very well change the landscape for golf course operations of the future.”
The 17-year GCSAA member said the goal was to have the new center function as an open laboratory to increase awareness and understanding of golf’s proactive efforts to enhance environmental stewardship.
“The beauty of the work that will take place at our center is that positive impact findings can be incorporated into the maintenance and management of The Cliffs golf courses in days rather than years,” Brazinski said. “In five years, I’d like this center’s findings to prove that, with a team of highly trained professionals, a golf course can be managed in a way that actually serves to enhance the environment.”
This past summer, The Cliffs also announced that Tiger Woods’ first golf course design in the U.S. would be the company’s eighth golf course in the Carolinas, at The Cliffs at High Carolina.
The Cliffs Center has already garnered considerable industry support with the following companies pledging cooperation and support: Syngenta, Bayer Environmental Science, The Toro Co., Genesis Golf, Agri-Business, Corbin Turf, Golf Agronomics, Turf Mountain Sod, Profile Products, Harrell’s Fertilizers, New Life Turf, Nature Safe, Precision Labs, The Andersons, Ninemire Group and Scott’s Seed.
—Trent Bouts, free-lance writer for golf and golf course management issues in the Carolinas
Major golf events on tap in the coming year at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego will have no fewer than two former GCSAA presidents lending their expertise to putting the South Course in shape for the PGA Tour’s Buick Invitational in January and the U.S. Open in June. Mark Woodward, CGCS, golf operations manager for the city of San Diego and GCSAA president in 2004, recently hired Jon Maddern, CGCS, president in 2003, as his assistant. Maddern had been the experience manager at FarmLinks in Sylacauga, Ala.
Golf course profile project enters Phase 4
GCSAA next month will launch the fourth phase of its innovative Golf Course Environmental Profile Project. The national survey will focus on pesticide use on golf courses.
The survey is part of a multiyear task undertaken by GCSAA and funded by its philanthropic organization, The Environmental Institute for Golf, and The Toro Foundation. It’s intended to document the environmental profile of courses and also the environmental stewardship of superintendents.
Thus far, three phases of the project have been completed — surveys on the physical profile of golf facilities, water use and nutrient (fertilizer) use. The results of the initial phase, the Property Profile, are featured in this issue of GCM, beginning on Page 64. Those results were also published this month in the journal Applied Turfgrass Science.
The survey on pesticide use will seek input on product use and integrated pest management programs. The survey ends in March.
The project, the first of its kind in the industry, is specifically designed to gather information that will allow superintendents and other facility personnel to become better managers, help them operate more efficiently and assist GCSAA in developing more valuable programs and services.
GCM leaps into world of digitized archives
The digitization of nearly 75 years of Golf Course Management magazine is now available to GCSAA members through Michigan State University’s industry-leading Turfgrass Information Center.
As part of an agreement between GCSAA and the TIC, all GCSAA members now have access to an online digitized database of GCM and its predecessors going back to 1933 and up to the month prior to the current month. All members can access the archive through www.gcsaa.org.
The digitization of GCM involved more than 70,000 pages of material in almost 700 printed issues and manually splitting nearly 30,000 PDFs. The project makes available a little less than 10,500 turfgrass-related citations.
Pete Cookingham, project manager of TIC, cited the work of key people involved in the project, including Mike Schury within TIC and Elizabeth Bollinger of the Michigan State University Libraries Digital & Multimedia Center for coordinating the actual digitization, along with several students from both TIC and the library department who helped with the work.
“Special acknowledgments are due to GCSAA for its cooperative support and permissions, as well as rounding up solid runs of content to be digitized; the USGA Green Section for its continued special support of the efforts and The Toro Foundation for its support of processing older (Turfgrass Information File) records themselves,” Cookingham says.
Cliff Haka, director of libraries at the university, notes that it is unusual for a niche profession such as turf management to have this amount of information now available.
“GCM is an outstanding addition to the full-text offerings within TGIF, providing useful and relevant information for superintendents, researchers, students and others,” Haka says. “The digitization makes a much more usable tool for any of our subscribers. It takes out the step of having to physically find a particular issue of GCM, assuming they even had access to that issue.”
Lefties are coming up in the world of golf. The National Golf Foundation’s latest consumer survey notes that 7.4 percent of adult golfers play left-handed, a considerable increase statistically from 20 years ago when the NGF found that 5.6 percent of golfers were southpaws.
Assistant superintendents advance skills at event
More than 80 assistant superintendents from across North America attended the recent Green Start Academy in North Carolina. Introduced in 2006 and hosted by John Deere Golf & Turf and Bayer Environmental Science, the two-day educational and networking event provides training in best management practices and innovative products as well as career development from industry experts and peer networking.
Participants from across the U.S. and Canada were chosen to attend after being nominated by their superintendents and submitting essays, which were reviewed by a panel of experts that included Green Start Academy presenters Ken Mangum, CGCS at the Atlanta Athletic Club; Robert O. Farren Jr., CGCS, golf course manager at Pinehurst Resort; and Bruce Williams, CGCS at Los Angeles Country Club. Dave Oatis, director of the USGA Northeast Region; Dave Fearis, GCSAA’s director of membership; Grady Miller, Ph.D., from North Carolina State University; and Nick Hamon, director of development and technical services for Bayer, also gave presentations and led group discussions at Bayer’s research facility in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
The assistant superintendents also toured the Deere manufacturing plant in Fuquay-Varina, N.C.
“In today’s society, it’s very easy to lose focus and become consumed with things such as money and wages; I was in that position just before I left for the Green Start Academy,” said Jay Watson, assistant superintendent at Edson Golf Club in Edson, Alberta, Canada. “Listening to Bruce Williams and all the other great people that I was lucky enough to meet really helped me to remember why I got into this industry in the first place.”
Added Michael Smith, assistant superintendent at Three Crowns Golf Club in Casper, Wyo., “The speakers we had were some of the best in the business. Meeting and talking with the Bayer scientists was really fascinating, and I brought home a significant amount of useful information.”
Courses joining women-friendly list
Forty golf courses across the country have earned official designation as “women-friendly” facilities from the Executive Women’s Golf Association.
To merit the special designation, a facility needs to participate in the EWGA Golf Club Network and also meet certain criteria rated on playability of the course and customer experience. Facilities pay a nominal annual fee and offer special rates for play, practice or instruction as a benefit to EWGA members. In return, the facilities are listed in the EWGA print and online directories, reaching the association’s nearly 20,000 members. Special consideration as host sites for EWGA events and tournaments also is included.
Additional criteria include having at least two sets of tees rated for women, clean restrooms available at least every six holes and equal services for men and women. For more information, see the EWGA website at www.ewga.com and click on Golf Club Network.
A 2006 survey of EWGA members conducted by the PGA of America found that 62 percent are avid golfers playing more than 25 rounds per year, and members spend an average of $3,278 on golf activities and merchandise and another $2,294 on golf-related travel.
Toro goes all the way with PRP; Ariens, SePro in too
The Toro Co. is celebrating its 80 years of partnership with GCSAA in style, becoming the first company to participate in the association’s new Partner Recognition Program, and at its highest level, Platinum, to boot.
The Partner Recognition Program provides year-round exposure in such entities as the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show, GCM, media communications and www.gcsaa.org and is based on a prescribed level of investment — Platinum, Gold and Silver — as a means to achieve marketing objectives by offering industry partners strategic, diverse and ongoing communication with members.
Meanwhile, Ariens Co., a leading manufacturer of outdoor power equipment for both consumer and commercial use, became the second company to join the ranks — at the Silver level — followed shortly by SePro Corp., a technical service provider to customers in the aquatics, greenhouse/nursery and professional turf/landscape specialty markets — also at the Silver level.
“We are proud to welcome Toro, Ariens and SePro as the first clients to commit to the Partner Recognition Program,” GCSAA CEO Steve Mona, CAE, said in an association release. “These resources are invested for the benefit of GCSAA’s stakeholders — member superintendents, their facilities and the golf course management profession.”
Michael Happe, managing director of Toro’s commercial equipment business, added in a company release that “GCSAA is a vital organization to the golf industry and an incredible resource to our customers. With teamwork, trust and respect, both Toro and GCSAA continue to look for innovative ways to add value through education, research and networking.”
Dan Ariens, president of his family’s company, lauded the contributions of superintendents to the golf industry as a whole. “We appreciate the role of GCSAA in providing the educational resources needed to keep up with fast-paced trends in the field,” he said.
“SePro is proud to partner with GCSAA and invest in marketing program and support activities that will benefit GCSAA membership,” said Roger Storey, vice president of SePro’s turf and ornamental business unit.
Superintendent drowns off Puerto Rican coast
Mark T. Hughes, CGCS at Monroe Golf Club in Pittsford, N.Y., died Oct. 26 in a drowning accident near San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 49. Hughes and his wife, Lisa, were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary and were swimming just off the Atlantic shore when both became trapped in a strong undercurrent. He was able to save his wife by lifting her up onto some rocks, but was then sucked back under the current. Efforts to revive him later failed.
Hughes was a member of GCSAA for 16 years and was active in the association, serving on its Education Committee the past two years. He was a current chapter delegate for the Finger Lakes GCSA and was also a member of the Greater Pittsburgh GCSA. He had been superintendent at Monroe GC since 2004.
A native of Pennsylvania, Hughes began his profession in 1981 as an assistant superintendent at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa. After spending several years teaching horticulture and agriculture at Blairsville (Pa.) College, he returned to the golf course. He was an assistant at Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club and later superintendent at Allegheny Country Club in Sewickley, Pa. From 2000 to 2004, Hughes was a course superintendent at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., under director of grounds Mark Kuhns, CGCS and GCSAA secretary/treasurer. One of Hughes’ sons, Justin, is pursuing a career in golf course management and is interning at Baltusrol.
Survivors include his wife, Lisa, and their two sons, Justin and Erik; two brothers, Gerald Hughes and David Hughes; and a sister, Lila Gularski. Memorials may be made to the First Presbyterian Church, Church Street, Pittsford, NY 14534, or the Mark T. Hughes Memorial Fund, PNC Bank, Attn: Mark Cody, P.O. Box 44, Whitehouse, NJ 08888.
Chapter to help boost historic cemetery
The Heart of America Golf Course Superintendents Association is playing an instrumental role in the beautification efforts at one of the historic treasures in Kansas City, Mo. — the 135-year-old Elmwood Cemetery, renowned as the final resting place for many of the city’s famous and infamous along with more than 36,000 others.
Despite being on the National Register of Historic Places, Elmwood receives no public funding, and being virtually full means it also receives scant income. Cared for by volunteers, maintenance costs today exceed revenue. The Heart of America GCSA is teaming up this month with several local tree companies and others to restore and spruce up the cemetery, which is located in the heart of the city and is the burial site for many of Kansas City’s founders and other notables.
One of the leaders of the project, which was postponed because of bad weather from Oct. 13 to Dec. 6, is Tim Nielsen, an eight-year member of GCSAA and superintendent at Drumm Farm Golf Club in Independence, Mo.
“We (Heart of America GCSA) felt our expertise and resources could be used in a very positive way in the community,” Nielsen says. “ ... A project of this kind also helps our members connect with Kansas City’s history. Typically in our profession we are so busy maintaining our own golf courses it becomes difficult to take on projects like this. But by doing this after the summer season we are able to put forth a great effort for a very worthy cause.”
Among those buried at Elmwood are President Benjamin Harrison’s brother, John Scott Harrison; President Harry Truman’s great-grandmother, Nancy Tyler Holmes; and also Kansas City’s most famous and notorious madam, Annie Chambers. It’s also the resting place for more than 2,000 veterans, including 800 from the Civil War, and several members of Quantrill’s Raiders.
More than 90 public golf administrators from the Colorado Front Range and the community of Vail held their annual get-together recently to discuss issues of common interest to public golf, ranging from marketing trends to greens rolling to senior discounts to frost delay policies. The meeting has been organized for more than 15 years by Dennis Lyon, CGCS, manager of golf in Aurora, Colo., and president of GCSAA in 1989.
In the news...
Rattlesnake rumor a costly hoax
An article in the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph tells about an Internet hoax in which a picture of a man holding up a large, dead rattlesnake was circulated in an e-mail that claims the snake was killed on the eighth hole at Oakview Golf Course in Macon, which has negatively affected business at the course. It features John Wicks, GCSAA superintendent.
Water conservation par for the course
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the Georgia GCSA receiving a commendation from the governor at a recent water symposium for the group’s above-and-beyond cooperation with the state’s water restrictions and its proactive measures with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to create best management plans, including water conservation, that 91 percent of the member facilities have pledged to observe. It features GGCSA President Richard Staughton, CGCS at Towne Lake Hills Golf Club in Woodstock, Ga.; Mark Esoda, CGCS at Atlanta Country Club; Ken Mangum, CGCS, director of golf course and grounds at Atlanta Athletic Club; and Wade Thomas, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Idle Hour Club in Macon, Ga.
Zebra mussels plague golf course
A story in the Kansas City Star reports on the costly damages caused by zebra mussels to the Winfield (Kan.) Country Club irrigation system, featuring Steve Hollembeak, CGCS.
Sallie Mae mogul doing it his way
The Baltimore Sun features the chairman of the Sallie Mae student loan conglomerate, Albert Lord, and the former longtime superintendent at the Inverness Club in Ohio, Thomas F. Walker, a 28-year GCSAA member — a pair of kindred souls who are building a golf sanctuary in a place called Anne Arundel in Maryland.
Training program winners to join majors prep
The Toro Co. announced recently that the three 2008 winners of the Toro Championship Tournament Training Program for GCSAA student and assistant superintendent members will experience first-hand major championship course preparation.
The company will send an assistant superintendent and a student member to the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego in June and two months later will send another assistant superintendent to the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Applications for the program are available on www.gcsaa.org, and all applications, including essays, must be returned to GCSAA by Feb. 10.
GCSAA rewards scholars
GCSAA has awarded scholarship money to 16 college students as part of its Scholars Program administered by the association’s philanthropic organization, The Environmental Institute for Golf.
The first place winner, David Golembeski, receives a $6,000 scholarship and is honored as the Mendenhall Award Winner. The second place winner in the competition, William Overly, receives a $5,000 award and is designated as the recipient of the MacCurrach Award, which is funded by the PGA Tour.
Golembeski, a New Milford, Conn., native, is a senior majoring in turfgrass and soil science at the University of Connecticut, and Overly, who hails from Louisburg, Kan., is a senior majoring in golf course management at Kansas State University. They will receive an all-expense-paid trip to the 2008 GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show Jan. 28-Feb. 2 in Orlando.
Shane Brockhoff (Iowa State), Carole Townsend (Lake City Community College), Chris Parsons (Michigan State), Ian Gallagher (Ohio State), Meghyn Stalcup (Tarleton State), Gregory Caldwell (Virginia Tech), Christopher Skvir (Rutgers), Tyler Wenger (Michigan State), Jonathan Chase Webb (Florida) and Nathaniel Watkin (Lake City Community College) each were awarded stipends ranging from $1,250 to $2,500.
Richard Gillispie (Maryland) and Jon Cancel (California State Polytechnic-Pomona) won $500 each as Merit winners, and Luis M. Casado and Roque Buendia-Perez, international students at Michigan State, were both awarded $2,000 Ambassador Scholarships by GCSAA as well.
The GCSAA Scholars Program is funded by the Robert Trent Jones Endowment and was developed to recognize outstanding students planning careers in golf course management. Winners were selected in a competition judged by GCSAA’s Scholarship Committee that looks at academic achievement, potential to become a leading professional, employment history, extracurricular activities and the recommendations of a superintendent with whom the student has worked and a current academic adviser.
Mona again among most powerful
Golf Inc.’s 2007 edition of the “Most Powerful People in Golf” has a distinct GCSAA flavor in its mix of the top 35 leaders of the game.
GCSAA’s CEO, Steve Mona, CAE, is one of several people on the annual list published in the magazine’s October issue who has close ties with the association. Others include Old Tom Morris Award winners Arnold Palmer, Tim Finchem, Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman, plus four men who serve on GCSAA’s Environmental Institute for Golf along with Norman — advisory council members Dana Garmany, Bill Kubly and Bob Wood and the chairman of The Institute’s board of trustees, David Pillsbury.
Mona, who has been CEO of GCSAA for 14 years and will soon take over as CEO of the World Golf Foundation, was selected for his impact on the business of golf. Besides his role with GCSAA, Mona is a member of The First Tee advisory committee, the World Golf Hall of Fame advisory board, the National Golf Foundation’s board of directors, the LPGA Commissioner’s advisory council and the National Golf Course Owners Association’s advisory committee.
Bayer C&S winners announced
The newest five winners of a free trip to the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show courtesy of a grant from Bayer Environmental Science and administered by GCSAA’s philanthropic organization, The Environmental Institute for Golf, were announced recently.
The program, in its fifth year, assists superintendents with their professional development through participation in the annual conference and show. The competition was open to superintendents who did not attend the past two shows.
Heading to Orlando for the 2008 event are Eric Morrison, Class A superintendent at Shennecossett GC in Groton, Conn.; William Irving, Class A superintendent at Kearney (Neb.) CC; Steven Fisher, superintendent at Pine Grove CC in Camillus, N.Y.; Tom Forsythe, Class A superintendent for the city of Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada; and Christopher Moyer, Class A superintendent at Findlay (Ohio) CC.
The winners will receive airfare, hotel accommodations for six nights, full-pack conference registration, two educational seminars and a $200 expense stipend.
“Bayer recognizes the importance of professional development to stay current in the field,” Mike Daly, the company’s golf market manager, said in a GCSAA release. “We are pleased to continue our relationship with The Institute in this program.”
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