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About this blog

Randy and the gang at Rockbottum Country Club pontificate on Rockbottum wisdom and skeletal golf, among other madness.

Entries in this blog

The Old Bat

Over the years, we have received many complaints regarding the level of violence in our films.  Lately, however, during a spate of serious journalism, we lost sight of what is important and failed to reach our previous high standards.  In order to correct this oversight, we offer this short film.  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

3

A New Bio-Weapon in The Rhizoc Wars?

Rhizoctonia used to eat most of my spray budget and keep me from ever taking a summer vacation.     That's why I took a Rockbottum CC film crew and spent several days documenting Mark Hoban's latest experiment.      
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

4

Curing The Penal Minded

As a young golfer/indentured walk-mower driver in the Sixties, I grew up on big, wide, roughless golf courses.  In those days, the expansive meadows of golf were fun to navigate and the game was much more relaxed than today's neurotic version.   Certainly maintaining the course was more fun, as golfers were yet to be contaminated by a constant weekly cathode-ray barrage of perfect greens, bleached sand and lush fairways mowed in argyle sock patterns.  The modern golfer, faced with wild inconsi
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

6

Invisible TD Sand

Yesterday, Rockbottum's top covert film unit returned from Rivermont CC with footage of Mark Hoban, MGS, (Mad Golf Scientist) using his Invisible Soil-Feeding TD sand.   The film you are about to see is one of several updates of ongoing research testing taking place under Mark's control.  Next week we intend to reveal where he's getting this stuff . . . unless he comes up with some serious compensation.    
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

The Environmental Stewardship Toolkit

Have you ever wondered how to go about setting up an environmental stewardship program?  Anthony Williams, CGCS of Stone Mountain GC, wrote a comprehensive book on the subject and a Rockbottum film crew went down to check it out.  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Rumblings of Unrest?

The Mystic Order of Greenkeepers is currently locked in a bitter, divisive conflict with . . . ourselves.  We can't decide whether to maintain our traditional entrance requirement or just charge an application fee.   The traditional criteria for MOG membership required either the accidental release of blood in an irrigation hole or an electric shock capable of inducing the white light tunnel effect with Old Tom beckoning at the far end.   We resolved the problem by using the conflict resolut
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Unconventional Tactics

If you've been paying attention to my columns and short films for the last 15 years, it has probably become apparent that I am not of the conventional mindset.  There's a reason for that.   I spent my formative pre-teen/teen years on a US Army Special Forces base, deep in the Bavarian Alps.  Known as Bad Tolz, it was 10th Special Forces Group Hdqtrs and had once been Himmler's SS Officer's Training School.   Years later, after too much walk-mow-cup-changing, I enlisted in SF and somehow mana
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Top Greenkeeper Award!

Our normal practice at the Rock is to wait until all the ordinary awards have been handed out and then bestow ours upon the winners.   Without further delay, we present The Mystic Order of Greenkeepers Biggest Award of The Whole Year.       
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

6

The Day Our CEO Learned Customer Service

Once upon a time, back in '86, our struggling golf course was absorbed by a mighty Japanese course management operation.  They were inebriated with financial success and very quick to deny purchase orders of any kind, but especially the irrigation or insecticide kind.   Now it was about this time that the fearsome Fire Ant, (pronounced Far Aint) overran golf courses in the ATL area, especially courses with their shields down.  These little insectoid Visigoths and their mounds were everywhere a
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Rockbottum Banished From GIS?

Learn the shocking truth behind the biggest scandal to hit Rockbottum since Ludell got caught stealing goats!   Well, actually, it's not really that shocking and there's not much truth involved.  It's just that I've been practicing Yahoo-style click-bait headlines and I couldn't figure out how to fit Kim Kardashian into the headline.  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

6

May--The Dead Zone Month For Rockbottum

For some odd reason, some of our best films go unnoticed if we release them in the month of May.   We have racked our collective brain, yet still can't figure this out.  Buddy suggested we ask TurfNet Members to help us solve this mystery.   We have decided to re-release our Three Best Films of May, while we wait for your analysis.  Feel free to email or PM if you would rather not have your judgement publicly impugned.   Up First, "Golf Course Patrol", from May 2013.  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

The Resurgence of the GCS/Pro/GM?

Back in the 60s, Dad left the US Army and tried the pro golf tour, but burdened with a family, he soon found himself the patriarch of a migrant golf family in an updated version of "The Greens of Wrath".   In those days, the smaller golf operations relied upon what was then called The Pro/Super.  (Looking back, the title should have been The GCS/Pro, but the inevitable nickname "SuperPro" would have just sounded . . . wrong.)   Dad was an expert Pro/Super, very capable of the simultaneous cl
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

2

Oddball Logic

Oddball Logic (OL) has been a problem for me since age 8, when I was unjustly incarcerated in Mrs. Mordor's 3rd Grade Institute for Army Brats born without social skills, color perception, table manners and dancing ability.  Even with all those advantages, I still struggled, for Mrs. Mordors revealed that I was burdened with OL.   The OL sufferer is doomed to a limited future, typically in US Foreign Policy or as an Offensive Coordinator in the NFL, or worse--a network TV programmer.  While OL
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

The Magic Stink-Eye

Are you fed up with surly, disrespectful golfers?  Had enough of those irritating lawyers, bureaucrats, social workers and UN peacekeepers interfering with your disciplinary methods?   If the answer is yes, the The Magic Stink-Eye might be just the thing for you!  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Don't Say It

This is a warning for everyone in golf.  There is a Forbidden Phrase out there and you must not say it.  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

10

Chainsaw Maintenance-The Rockbottum Way

While en route to the covert location of the Mystic Order of Greenkeeper's Secret Lodge, we had to do some tree work.   It looked like the perfect time to reveal a few more secrets . . . so in this short film, we show you how to get a razor sharp chainsaw without going through all those Hector procedures.    
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

3

Jeb Bush says "Golf is Dying"

Jeb, golf ain't dying.  We're in a period of "contraction", back to where golf would have been without the fiscal steroid injections.  Peter McCormick uses the investor-speak term "correction", a time when value pulls back to more realistic levels.  Golf was healthy and resilient in the 1970s, before the infusion of hype and starry-eyed non-golf investors; now we're in a long, slow correction.   By 2005, golf was as puffed up and helpless as a modern day factory chicken-house resident, unable
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

6

Rockbottum Success Secret #55

When I first entered the golf dimension, things were different.  We existed at the "Pro/Super" level and life, although hectic, was relatively cheerful.  Golf course maintenance and the clubhouse got along very well, with few altercations and overt acts of retaliation.  This was mainly because Dad was both of those entities and he rarely got into fights with his own self, although I managed to perfect that technique later.   I know what you're thinking:  It should have been Supt/Pro rather tha
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

2

Organic Green Whisperer Remix

Before we premiere our new season at Rockbottum CC, we would like to offer our re-mastered short film, "The Organic Green Whisperer".   2015 will see Rockbottum place even more emphasis on organic research, methods of irrigation reduction and image enhancement.  (Not the enhancement that clogs your spam filter)  
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

2

Rockbottum's Gift To Superintendents

That Fat Little Elf knows exactly what to leave under the tree at Rockbottum:  A NEW SLINGSHOT AND CHAINSAW ACCESSORIES!   He knows our goal of heavily reduced irrigation, minimal inputs and more rugged grooming standards would not be possible without an aggressive tree pacification program.  In fact, our entire career has been built on turning around troubled courses by introducing sunlight to weak, shady turf.   That's why, as our gift to you, we are re-releasing "Our Very Best Tip Ever",
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

0

Certifiably Sustainable

Two terms, Sustainability and Certified, have grown outside mere definitions and somehow transmogrified into entirely different concepts.  Here at The Rock, Sustainability means, "How long can we keep this up before we go bankrupt or Momma finds out?"   Certified, in our narrow vocabulary, means words on a seed/sod label . . . or what we call Rockbottum admin types shortly after they return from one of those Customer Service pep rallies.   We thought we might better explain these two terms i
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

2

The Unbalanced Superintendent

Are you unbalanced?  Many superintendents I have met are slightly misaligned, due to an almost evangelical devotion to career.   Some are unaware of how many hours they spend at the course and require some kind of trauma to get back on the family track.  This can include the children failing to recognize their father and mistakenly calling the UPS guy "Daddy".     For me, it was Claire identifying me as an "intruder" for the police.  (She had apparently changed the locks sometime during the
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

1

Rockbottum Rules

Rockbottum Country Club has enjoyed tremendous success, because Rockbottum Rules.   We follow a flexible approach built on years of experience gained as a family of superintendents, pro golfers and bad golf course architecture fixers.     For instance, Rule #1:  We offer weekday walker fees of $10 for 18 holes.  At this price range we don't hear any complaints and we rarely have anyone take us up on the price because most golfers are far too lazy to walk.   Rule #2:  We offer a form of Neo
Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson

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