Superintendent’s curls
are straight

Superintendents who ply their craft in America’s north country often come up with innovative and interesting things to do in the long, cold off-season. Few, if any, can match Norma O’Leary when it comes to a unique wintertime activity, however.

O’Leary, CGCS at the nine-hole, city-owned Silver Bay Golf Course on Minnesota’s northern shore of Lake Superior, is one of the country’s leading women competitors in the sport of curling — you know, where four-person teams slide a 42-pound “stone” or “rock” down a 150-foot ice sheet, guiding the missile with broom sweeps.

Curling isn’t as much of an oddity as it once was. It’s grown in popularity in recent years across the Midwest’s northern tier of states. Even so, one isn’t likely to find many golf course management professionals among the curling ranks.

But as a female superintendent, O’Leary is used to being something of a rarity even if her chosen sideline isn’t any more.

“It’s really expanding, especially since the 2006 Winter Olympics (in Turin, Italy). Curling received higher television ratings than hockey. I think people became intrigued by it,” she says.

O’Leary got hooked on the game because of her husband, Mike. They were married in 1988 when they lived in Grand Marais, Minn., just below the Canadian border. Twenty years earlier, Mike was a world-class curler. He won the 1967 national title and was a member of the U.S. international team.

Mike got Norma interested in the sport in the 1990s, soon after they moved to Silver Bay about 60 miles north of Duluth.

“I started playing a lot. Now I’m kind of a fanatic,” says Norma, who has been both manager and superintendent at Silver Bay GC since it was purchased by the city from mining interests that had built it in 1959.

Mike, a retired Minnesota Highway Patrolman who now works for Norma at the golf course, doesn’t curl much any more, although he and Norma have won quite a few honors in mixed competition.

Norma, meanwhile, has advanced dramatically in the sport. A highly successful skip — the team captain who sets strategy and directs the aim of other throwers and also tosses the stone on the team’s final two attempts — she is a six-time Minnesota state women’s champion, and just recently in Utica, N.Y., her team won its second straight U.S. Club National Championship. She’s also competed in two Olympic Trials, including one a couple of months ago in Broomfield, Colo.

O’Leary practices fervently during the curling season, late October to April 1, even on the ice that often covers her golf course in winter. She’s a member of both the Duluth and Two Harbors curling clubs, representing the former at the national.

Still, her real passion is the golf course. She began working in maintenance in Chaska, Minn., as a teen and has been a superintendent since 1983. She’s a 19-year member of GCSAA.

“I love it. I love being outside early in the morning,” O’Leary says. “It’s so rewarding to take care of the turf and make improvements and see them through.”

It’s no surprise that the athletic O’Leary is also an avid and accomplished golfer. While at the Olympic Trials in late February, the 4-handicapper managed to get in a couple of rounds in the Denver area.

“There’s something about golf and something about curling that make you want to come back and do it again,” O’Leary was quoted saying by USA Today at the Trials. “They’re something you don’t want to give up because you always know you can do better.”

— Terry Ostmeyer, GCM senior staff writer

From the GCM Blog Poll: More than 40 percent of the superintendent respondents said they were not concerned about the availability of irrigation water in 2009, while 31 percent said they were mildly concerned and 28.6 percent said they were very concerned.

Oregon course site
of deer relocation

Promoting the golf course as a safe haven for wildlife is a good thing. But sometimes it’s also a good thing to reduce the number of animals that are attracted to such a lush green environment.

Barry Adams, Class A superintendent at Roseburg (Ore.)Country Club was able to do that this past January and at the same time help out the state Department of Fish & Wildlife. Roseburg, about 70 miles south of Eugene, has a deer problem, both on and off the golf course.

Adams, a 13-year GCSAA member, notes that the implementation of improved land-use planning and zoning to protect critical deer habitat resulted in the Columbia white-tailed deer being taken off the federal endangered species list about a decade ago, but now booming populations of the Columbia white-tail are reaching a dangerous point.

“We had more than 30 Columbia white-tail deer frequenting our golf course last fall, along with several black-tail deer. In fact, in the last few years we had eight white-tail fawns and five black-tail fawns born on the course,” says Adams, who adds that the animals have caused considerable tree, landscaping and turf damage.

Then, early this winter, Adams responded to a more dangerous problem caused by the deer — traffic accidents. He contacted a state wildlife biologist, Tod Lum, about a deer that had been hit by a car near the golf course. In that meeting, Lum mentioned a trapping and relocation program for Columbia white-tail his department has been conducting in recent years and added that Roseburg CC is perfectly suited for such an operation with its large numbers of the species attracted to the golf course habitat.

Adams agreed, and an out-of-play site near the first hole at Roseburg CC was chosen to set up the trap, which includes a huge overhead magnetic-release net. Adams and his staff were given the job of putting out bait — apples and cracked corn — each evening for six days. It was almost too easy.

“They’d come up like clockwork. One day I went up there about 4:30, and they were standing there waiting for me,”
Adams says.

On the sixth day, the net was erected, and the next evening the bait was put out as usual. And, like always, some deer showed up, the net was released and wildlife officers and volunteers scurried from cover to capture their prey. The catch that night included three Columbia white-tails. The animals were sedated, given some genetic tests, their ears were tagged, radio collars were applied and then they were crated up and relocated about 40 miles northwest of Roseburg.

Adams says the wildlife department hopes to eventually spread the Columbia white-tail deer population up into the Willamette Valley. He adds that Lum will be back at Roseburg CC — still home to several deer, however fewer — next winter.

“There’s a nice environmental slant to it,” Adams says of the relocation operations. “… A threatened species that calls our golf course home and reproduces here and we’re able to utilize that and relocate them to help spread and manage population growth.”

Atlanta’s Capital City Club owes the Georgia State Environmental Protection Division $150,000 in fines for violating clean water rules during the renovation of its Brookhaven course. The violation involved a lack of erosion controls while restoring a “piped” stream. The club also faces city and U.S. EPA fines.

High-tech solution for lost golf balls

Andrew Smart has always been a better student than he was a golfer. The recent graduate of the University of Waterloo in the Canadian province of Ontario has played the game for 10 years, but admits, “I slice the ball all over the place.”

Of course, necessity is the mother of invention, which is why the electrical engineering major, with some help from a group of classmates, developed a GPS-based golf ball — the Smart Ball — following Smart’s experiences during a professional internship with a company in Irvine, Calif.

“It was great golfing (in Irvine), but I lost too many balls,” Smart says. “That’s why I dreamed up the Smart Ball. I’d been kicking the idea around for a while, but in Irvine I needed it … desperately.”

Fourth-year students at Waterloo are required to develop a project related to their course of study, so the timing was right. Smart teamed up with classmates Jamie Michael, Dennis Cox and Zhao Li to develop a golf ball that would not be lost.

The prototype had a complete GPS module inside the ball, but it had a host of problems — it weighed too much, it would not run for long on a battery that could fit into the ball and some parts would not survive the impact and acceleration of a drive.

The answer was to design a new module. It’s about the size of two dimes stacked one on the other, it weighs about 5 grams and it will run for about a year on a battery that weighs less than 1 gram. The tiny unit’s signals are processed by a larger module — about the size of a small cell phone — that fits in the golfer’s pocket and connects by Bluetooth with a standard cell phone. The system uses the cell phone’s screen and processor.

Users download a map of the golf course from the internet, then hold the Smart Ball beside the module and press a button to sync the two. One module can be synched with up to a dozen balls, which can be identified by number or by the player’s name.

The GPS can measure and display the length of a shot and display the location of the ball to within 8 feet on the phone screen. If the ball is hard to spot, the system can switch to close-range mode and use signal strength to indicate the position of the ball to within an inch. The signal strength mode also can find the ball if it lands in a position from which it can’t achieve a GPS lock.

In production, Smart says, the balls would cost about $10 or $20 each and the modules about $100 each. Golfers would buy the balls, while pro shops could sell modules or rent them by the day.

Because the system works on satellite-based GPS, the same modules would work on any golf course. It can be modified to work on fixed radio beacons on a single golf course, Smart says, but that would be more complex and less accurate than the satellite-based system.

The team that developed the Smart Ball graduated from Waterloo in April. Michael and Cox already have full-time jobs, Li is beginning his postgraduate work and Smart is looking for financial backing to commercialize his invention.

— Andy Turnbull, free-lance writer

Flood control endangers Fargo CC

Aaron Porter couldn’t have imagined in his first several months as superintendent at Fargo (N.D.) Country Club how fast time flies at the 113-year-old course along the Red River. He can only hope now that the historic club survives the flight.

“I knew when I took the job that there were some flooding problems, but I didn’t think we’d see a 500-year flood in my first six months,” Porter said in a GCM blog by senior associate editor Seth Jones on March 27. “… Especially since they just had a 500-year flood here in 1997.”

Porter feared the club may have taken a death blow when the Corps of Engineers and the National Guard began building a dike across the course to save the city from being inundated when the flood level of the Red River, swollen by early spring runoff, reached record heights.

“I was told there would be minimal damage, but then the river kept rising faster. They had 24 hours to build a mile-long dike, so there was no chance they could be noninvasive,” the eight-year GCSAA member said.

Humvees, front-end loaders and dump trucks carved their way across holes five through nine. Porter said eight holes of Fargo’s 27-hole facility were devastated, including entire greens that have been plowed over. Porter said the clubhouse, which had just completed a $500,000 renovation; the maintenance facility; pro shop; and golf car storage building were threatened.

Porter lives on the FCC property and had his wife and two children evacuated to a hotel in another part of Fargo.

Helpless to deal with the golf course situation, Porter’s maintenance crew worked among the hundreds of volunteers who manned a sandbagging operation in an effort to stem the tide against the city.

Superintendent saves woman in sinking car
“Just another day at work … never a dull moment.”

That’s how Doug Higgins, Class A superintendent at Regatta Bay Golf Club in Destin, Fla., described March 31. One wonders what the nine-year GCSAA member considers an unusual day on the job.

March 31 was the day before Higgins left for a week’s vacation, generally no big deal in the larger scheme of things, but 59-year-old Linda Alek is thanking her lucky stars that Higgins didn’t leave town a day early because it’s also the day he saved her life. Alek lost control of her car and drove it off a highway access road and into a retention pond near Regatta Bay GC’s 17th hole. Higgins rushed to her rescue and pulled her from the vehicle before it had sunk with little more than a taillight showing.

“I did my good deed for the day,” Higgins told the local newspaper, The Destin Log, with a laugh that slightly cracked his nonchalant demeanor.

In an interview with GCM, Higgins said he was on the 16th green on his morning rounds when he heard tires screeching in the direction of a busy highway about 500 yards away.

“I figured there was an accident on the highway,” he said. “I headed that way and when I got to about halfway up the 17th hole looking toward the highway, I came upon her in her car in the middle of the pond.”

The car was floating while the woman was trying in vain to get out of the vehicle through the driver’s side window. Higgins said he first called 911 as a bystander off the access road appeared. Then the car started sinking nose first in the 7-foot-deep pond.

“I said, ‘Well, I better go in and get her,’” Higgins said.

When he reached the vehicle he yelled at the woman to unlock the back door because her door was too far under water.

“She was just sitting there smoking a cigarette with the water rising,” he said.

After some difficulty opening the door because of increasing water pressure, he reached in, unfastened Alek’s seat belt, pulled her over the seat and got her safely to shore. Shortly thereafter the car became about 95 percent submerged.

Alek was treated at the scene by fire and rescue personnel, but suffered no serious injuries.

Higgins, who has been at Regatta Bay GC for seven years, says a few golf cars have wound up in the property’s dozen or so ponds over the years, but only one other motor car was found, and that driver apparently got out OK on his own.

“You never know what to expect when you come in in the morning,” he said, adding that while on his vacation he received a lot of phone calls and e-mails from friends and the media reacting to his heroics.

“I guess it’s a positive news story for superintendents,” Higgins said. “But I think anybody would have done it had they come across it. I was just in the right place at the right time.”

Driving range, water filtration facility
made for each other

The rare confluence of a golf course, a massive green roof and precious drinking water will soon be there for all to see in New York’s Bronx.

A $2.1 billion water filtration plant fed by a nearby reservoir will be built beneath Mosholu Golf Course, a nine-hole track in Van Cortlandt Park, and will be covered by what is billed as the largest contiguous green roof in the U.S. What’s more, the roof will double as a 9-acre driving range and practice facility.

The roof, which will cost an estimated $95 million, will protect the drinking water from stormwater and snowmelt contamination through turf’s natural filtration. An innovative drainage system will collect the water and then route it around the entire course. The masterminds of the project are landscape architect Ken Smith and Grimshaw Architects.

Six-year GCSAA member Erik Feldman is the superintendent at Mosholu.

Bethpage Black open for all to “play” May 25

A new partnership between the USGA and an online destination called the World Golf Tour will give visitors to the official U.S. Open Web site — www.usopen.com — an opportunity to compete in a virtual U.S. Open championship from their own
computers.

The World Golf Tour offers a number of online golf games and has produced a virtual replica of the Black Course at Bethpage, host to this year’s Open. Beginning May 25, competitors will be able to virtually tee it up on the Black for a tournament that will offer the winner a trip to the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

Almost as interesting as the game itself is how the World Golf Tour created the online Bethpage. Using more than 100,000 high-definition photos taken both from the ground and the air, along with precise GPS coordinates of the actual course, the group created a virtual course that will feature actual championship tees, competition rough heights and green speeds similar to what the world’s best will encounter when they arrive in Long Island for the real thing June 18-21.

EIFG trustees elect officers, add members

Bob Wood, vice president of Nike, will serve another year as chairman of The Environmental Institute for Golf’s Board of Trustees, while Rae Evans, founder and president of the Evans Capitol Group and a former chairwoman of the LPGA Board of Directors, has been elected vice chairwoman/treasurer of the EIFG trustees.

Also, three members were added to the trustees — Steven Fisher, chairman and CEO of Plaza Construction Corp.; Bill Kubly, founder and CEO of Landscapes Unlimited; and Robert M. Randquist, CGCS, GCSAA secretary/treasurer.

In other EIFG news, the Heart of America GCSA recently donated $5,000 to The Institute for research and education.

Downing to head Signature Golf Group

Not long after he stepped down as GCSAA’s 2008 president, David S. Downing II, CGCS, has stepped up to take the helm at Signature Golf Group, a Myrtle Beach-based golf facility management company.

In an interview with GCM in April, Downing said he was in the midst of a transition to become president of the four-year-old firm, replacing one of its founders, Steve Taylor.

“Basically, I have the title and I’m moving forward, but it’ll probably take four or five months to get me up to speed with everything Steve did,” Downing said.

Taylor, who helped form Signature Golf in 2005, will become the company’s chairman of the board. He intends to complete the transition while Downing is still a member of the GCSAA Board of Directors as immediate past president.

The Signature Golf Group hired Downing in late 2005 as superintendent of one of its management properties, Rivers Edge Golf Club in Shallotte, N.C. A little more than a year and a half ago, Downing was promoted to vice president of operations and construction at Signature Golf. Last summer he became a partner in the firm.

As president of Signature Golf, the 29-year GCSAA member said he plans to continue his emphasis on building the company’s future.

“One of the things I want to try to do is grow the business,” he said. “We have a good base, now is the time to stretch our wings a little bit. My focus will be on expanding that base.”

From GCSAA’s 2008 Senior Students Survey: 58 percent reported being somewhat concerned about understanding and mastering workplace politics, while 33 percent said they were concerned about finding an assistant/lead crew position after graduation.

Energy survey participants given more time

GCSAA’s Energy Use and Environmental Practices Survey has been extended to May 19. The survey, which was launched on Feb. 23, is the fifth phase of the association’s Golf Course Environmental Profile initiative.

Superintendents, both GCSAA members and nonmembers, are being asked to supply the total amount of energy used during 2008 for the entire golf facility and may need to contact their energy service providers to obtain this data or gather the information from the person responsible for the utility bills.

GCSAA officials have noted that there are some potentially difficult sections involving facility energy use, waste and fuel consumption. If superintendents are having problems obtaining the requested energy-use data, they are asked to skip those questions and complete the rest of the survey, which mostly deals with maintenance practices.

GCSAA will award 0.25 service points for taking the survey, plus those who take the survey will be automatically entered into a drawing to win one of seven $320 gift cards (one in each agronomic region). The gift cards can be used for any GCSAA program or service, such as a membership, seminars, webcasts or conference registration.

Industry rallies behind Golf 20/20 program

Get Golf Ready, Golf 20/20’s new adult player development initiative, is off to a rousing start.

In the first two months since its inception in January, the program exceeded its 2009 goal of 700 certified participating facilities by more than 100, with another 250 facilities having applied but not yet certified.

While the host sites are geographically located throughout the country, six metropolitan areas have been designated for a higher concentration of sites this year — Boston, Chicago, Dallas,
Portland (Ore.), San Francisco and Washington, D.C., with each of those markets having a minimum of 10 certified facilities.

Also, initial industry support of Get Golf Ready is strong. A coalition of 60 organizations — including GCSAA — and individuals has committed nearly $3 million to assist participating facilities.

Irish unveil movement to preserve links golf

An Irish group of self-described passionate lovers of links golf courses has launched a unique initiative aimed at preserving, protecting and promoting seaside links layouts throughout the world.

Generally considered the oldest form of golf, there are only about 200 true links courses in the world, with more than 30 percent of those in Ireland. The Irish links, ironically, comprise just 10 percent of that country’s total golf courses, yet generate more than 90 percent of its total golf tourist income.

The Irish Links Initiative began modestly within the last year with two workshops attended by course superintendents, course managers and secretaries and green convenors from Ireland and Scotland. A Web site is currently in development.

The objectives of the Links Initiative, according to Brian Coburn, a longtime turfgrass supplier in Ireland and the driving force behind the initiative, include the education of links management, sharing of information, creating greater awareness of seaside links venues and promoting them locally, nationally and internationally.

“Taking care of these courses requires embracing unique principles, including least-interference maintenance such as minimal use of fertilizers, limited watering, firm greens and fairways and natural rough with wild fauna,” says Coburn, who is also the green convenor at world-famous Royal County Down near Newcastle in Northern Ireland.

Citing weak market conditions, Club Car recently cut its work force by 5 percent, including 40 positions at its home facility in Evans, Ga.

The Australian Golf Course Superintendents Association and the Victorian GCSA have been rallying their members to supply labor and equipment to help their colleagues at golf courses that were damaged during the siege of brushfires that struck the state of Victoria in southeast Australia earlier this year.

Western U.S. battles water crises
A wire story from Reuters tells about Southwest U.S. cities working to solve water shortages, featuring Bill Rohret, CGCS at Angel Park Golf Club in Las Vegas, who has replaced 65 acres of turf with native, desert landscape over the past five years.

Torrey Pines South Course to test LPGA stars
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports on Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, Calif., hosting the LPGA Tour’s Samsung World Championship on the South Course Sept. 17-20, featuring GCSAA Past President Jon Maddern, CGCS, deputy director/golf operations division for the city of San Diego.

PGA presidency looms for GCSAA member
An article in the Greene County Daily World features Ted Bishop, GCSAA Superintendent Member and director of golf at The Legends of Indiana Golf Course in Franklin, Ind., who was elected PGA of America secretary for 2009-10, meaning he will serve as president in 2013-14.

Superintendent/wife team breathe new life into Oregon links  
A story in the Bandon Western World features the former Bandon (Ore.) Face Rock Golf Course, which has been closed since Nov. 2007 and reopened in March as Old Bandon Golf Links, under new management — GCSAA Superintendent Member Troy Russell and his wife, Kim.

Industry executive views what ails golf
A World Golf News report about the golf industry needing to develop a proactive strategy and envisioning a better future, features GCSAA member Robert McNeil, principal architect of Northeast Golf Co., and his reflections from the 2009 Golf Industry Show.

Superintendent’s role in new Palmer course featured
Parks & Rec Business reports on Arnold Palmer’s visit for the opening of one of his golf course designs, King’s Walk Golf Course in Grand Forks, N.D., also featuring Dave Clark, GCSAA Class A superintendent, and a look at Clark’s work over the course of a year.

Gelth Granite has agreed to donate to The Environmental Institute for Golf 20 percent of its sales of granite yardage plates to golf courses with a GCSAA member.