A short time ago, I was catching up with a superintendent friend at an association event. It’s still peak season for us northern turfers, and I could see the fatigue in his eyes. We spoke about the demands of the job, the hours, and the exhausting, never-ending and unobtainable pursuit of perfection.
“I’m tired,” he confessed.
“Then do something else.”
“I don’t know what else I would do,” he shrugged.
I’ve heard the same thing from so many other superintendents over the years. Peop
Is etiquette dead?
At times, it might seem that way. An increased number of ball marks, divots, cart traffic, unraked bunkers, and golfers behaving badly in the last four years have pushed superintendents—and, at times, their sanity—to the tipping point.
Poor etiquette on the golf course is nothing new. For as long as golf has existed, there have been people who don’t abide by the rules. The infractions are just more amplified now, as superintendents take to social media for the “airin
We spend so much time focusing on turf health during the summer, it’s easy to forget that we must take care of ourselves in the process.
With much of the country experiencing record heat this summer, it’s important to keep your body hydrated and your electrolytes replenished when you’re working under the sun all day. In the United States alone, each year more than a half million people are hospitalized for dehydration. Of those, nearly 10,000 of them will never walk out of that hospital al
When the golf season really gets cranking, sometimes we lose touch with our center — the things we hold most dear, and those things that keep us balanced and grounded.
Let’s face it, the further we get into peak season, the more time we end up spending on the golf course, and away from our centers. We become off-balanced the more the course calls to us louder than our family, friends, and passions.
In this episode of Trailing Thoughts, I drives into the heart of New York City on a pict
So much of a turf manager’s job happens beneath our feet. Dry spots, insect damage, diseased and trafficked turf—we spend a lot of our day looking down. Looking for the next problem.
If we spend too much time looking for problems, we run the risk of getting mired in the negative. The job starts to feel like “work.” It begins draining us of our energy. We forget what drew us here in the first place.
We must remind ourselves to LOOK UP. Find something that takes you back to that moment
Every once in a while, a person comes along that shines a little brighter than everyone else. They might not even see it in themselves, but if you train yourself to spot talent and drive, then they become easier to spot. They’re that diamond in the rough, so to speak.
The best turf managers are able to identify those diamonds on their teams. These leaders take the time to develop them, start trusting them with more challenging assignments, and they give them the experience and tools to succ
The internet has become an ugly place over the years. Take Turf Twitter, for example. What once was a bastion of idea sharing and supporting one another has turned into a cesspool of contrarians and armchair quarterbacks.
In this episode of Trailing Thoughts, I reflect on the current state of social media as I summit Emory Peak, the highest point in Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA. Along the way I offer advice based on my own experiences on social media, encouraging positive interaction
In my previous life as a sales rep, I was visiting a private club right around this time of year. I was shocked to see the superintendent still had his greens covered, when everyone else in town had removed them in mid-March.
I had to ask. “What’s with the covers?”
“I’m not ready for the season to start,” the superintendent replied.
Normally I’m not one to be lost for words, but a long silence followed. I could see the superintendent was dead serious.
“What do you mean you’re
The bloodiest single day in American soil didn’t happen on 9/11 and it wasn’t at the bombing at Pearl Harbor. It occurred across a rolling piece of farmland in northern Maryland, known today as Antietam National Battlefield.
Perhaps the most iconic location at Antietam is Burnside’s Bridge. For more than three hours, General Ambrose Burnside repeatedly sent his men to attack a fortified position across a narrow bridge against a much smaller force. His stubbornness to reconsider his tactics
Years ago, I faced my team in the morning meeting and told them I was leaving to pursue another opportunity. I’d been preparing for this moment for days, but when it was finally time to tell them, the emotion of the moment took over.
Yes, my voice cracked. Yes, my chin quivered. Yes, a tear fell. I think what hit me the most were their faces. The shock and the sadness were reflected back at me in all directions.
Then came the sense that I was letting them down. It was this nagging, g
What makes a team a winning team?
As demonstrated by the 2023–24 Detroit Lions, building a winner begins with the complete buy-in from the team’s high performers. The team’s core shares the same work ethic, attitude and goals of the organization. While this Lions team came up a little short of their goal, they remain poised to be successful for years to come as long as they remember the core strengths that got them there.
The best teams in golf course maintenance are built like a succe
What’s the pulse of your team when they walk into the break room in the morning? Are they bright-eyed and still buzzing about last night’s big game? Or do they shuffle in like zombies and sit mostly in silence, staring down at their phones?
If your morning meetings are preceded by awkward silence, or if your staff stiffens up the moment you appear, then it might be a warning sign that you’re coming up short on building a winning team culture. People who want to be there engage in conv
Our lives, much like a river carving through a canyon, are never on a set path. If you aren’t happy with the direction your life is going, you can always change the flow of your river.
A year ago, I found myself mired in a job that I found to be morally at odds with my personal values and unfulfilling on a professional level. I traveled to Big Bend National Park in Texas, hoping to unplug from turf for a while and reflect on my career and my life path.
In Santa Elena Canyon I watched t
