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From the TurfNet NewsDesk

  • John Reitman
    The list of the winners of the Open Championship at Carnoustie Golf Links reads like a who's who of golf. When the winner of next year's tournament hoists the claret jug, he'll join the likes of Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Paul Lawrie and Padraig Harrington, all of whom were crowned Champion Golfer of the Year after winning at Carnoustie.   The old school course that has been herding through thousands of players a year since 1850 is going high tech to keep pace of play moving.   Tagmarshal is a geo-tagging system that communicates each group's position on the course and allows operators to monitor and manage pace of play and enhance the golfer experience.   Time is one of several barriers that people cite as preventing them from playing more golf or playing at all. How serious of a problem is pace of play?   According to Golfweek, the average time to play 18 holes at a U.S. course is four hours.    More than 60 percent of respondents in a recent survey of more than 50,000 golfers in 100-plus countries indicated that it takes too long to play a round of golf, and 53 percent said time away from work and/or family prevents them from playing golf more often.   In an era where more courses close than open, Tagmarshal provides an opportunity to keep play moving and improve the golfer experience.    "The Tagmarshal system is only being trialed at the moment as our head PGA professional wants to see if it is a system that can add value to our operations," said Sandy Reid, superintendent at Carnoustie.   The system shows operators, either on computer, tablet or phone each group's position on the course, and assigns a color to each group in relation to time goals. Green is good, orange is slow, but delayed by the group ahead, and red signifies a group that is behind and needs attention. The system also shows the position of rangers on the course and tracks their whereabouts throughout the day to ensure they are spending their time where needed to keep play moving.   The system alerts operators when groups are falling behind and where they are on the golf course in real time. It also provides data on rounds time per month, average round times per day and average time per hole as well as a map of all activity on the golf course.   A course in Michigan said it has improved pace of play by 15 minutes in just two months. At Erin Hills, site of this year's U.S. Open, head pro Jim Lombardo says the system has helped reduce pace of play by 10 minutes.    Pushing groups through 10-15 minutes faster than before could translate into extra rounds and revenue and priceless positive PR.   "Pace of play is obviously one thing we are looking for it to help with but not necessarily because it is a big issue," Carnoustie's Reid said. "We currently have course rangers to assist with slow play but their effectiveness is perhaps not as good as one would hope.    "The thought would be that if we purchased the Tagmarshal System then we could cease with our course rangers and instead have one of our concierge team go out on course to chase on a slow group if a they hadn't reacted to warnings from the system."   Developed and headquartered in South Africa, the Tagmarshal system is being used at some of the world's top facilities, Erin Hills, Kiawah Island, East Lake, Valhalla and Ballybunion in Ireland.   Geo-fencing, set-up and training takes about three weeks.   About the size of a matchbox, tags are rechargeable, and only one player or caddie per group need carry a tracking tag, which can be attached discreetly to a golf bag. Individual golf cars also can be tagged for monitoring.  
  • We're big fans of Joe Rimelspach, Ph.D., and Todd Hicks of the Ohio State University turf pathology department.   Aside from being pretty nice guys, they also produce a regular series of video Turf Tips for the Ohio Turfgrass Foundation detailing the latest turf conditions throughout Ohio and the Midwest region.   Although it has been a relatively cool summer in Columbus and beyond, that doesn't mean golf course superintendents experiencing benign conditions are out of the woods.   "Dollar spot is raging, as usual," Hicks said.   "Without the high temperatures we normally get this time of year, it's just not getting to that dormant mode. It keeps gnawing away."   Dollar spot also is affecting roughs and bunker surrounds, said Rimelspach, whose lab at Ohio State has been flooded with emails and phone calls about stressed, dead or dying turf.   "I've never seen dollar spot so aggressive and so widespread on high-cut grass," he said.    Even diseases like brown patch are lingering through the cool summer, according to Hicks.   "A lot of that is due to the humidity thing I was talking about," he said. "Remember, when humidity gets high and the temperatures are low, disease will still appear, or stick around."   Rimelspach says although many of the problems he is seeing are related to disease, others are due to flooding in July or irrigation system failures.   Hicks recommends regular fungicide applications but backing off cultural practices during times of summer-related stress - even during a cool summer.   "The one thing you don't want to do is push too hard too fast, and do too many thing agronomically," Hicks said. "Joe's getting a lot of calls, I'm getting a lot of calls and a lot of pictures of just brown grass. A lot of it is due to grass just giving up and going away this time of year. Other things are happening because guys are doing a little too much, being a little too aggressive and the turf just not holding up and they're failing.   "Keep that foot on the gas fungicide wise as always, maybe back off what you're doing agronomically and watch what you're doing to get us into the fall and get us to sleep."  

  • Test of strength

    By John Reitman, in News,

    In many ways, Sophia Vinzenz is a lot like most children her age.   Growing up in smalltown Kearney, Nebraska, 3.5-year-old Sophia likes to go to the park and the petting zoo and play with her friends. Those are good things.   In other ways, Sophia is totally unique among her peers.   She likes going to the doctor. After all, she's seen a lot of them. That's not a good thing.   Diagnosed at 21 months of age with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cruel form of cancer that attacks the nervous system primarily in young children, Sophia has endured things no child should go through. So have her mother, Jazmin, and father, Jeremy, the superintendent of Wood River Golf Course.   While Sophia endured round after round of chemotherapy and radiation, surgery and stem cell transplants, her parents suffered through tremendous hardship, as well, most of which has centered on the unknown and wondering whether their daughter would see her second birthday.   "When the doctor told us it was cancer, the first thing we asked was how much longer did she have to live," Jazmin said. "All we knew about cancer was people dying, then the doctor said it was curable. It was a roller coaster. It was one good day, then one bad day."   Lately, there have been more good days than bad. After a year-and-a-half of treatments and driving 2.5 hours one way to get to them, Sophia, who will celebrate her fourth birthday on Oct. 28, was declared cancer free in January.   "We're in a good spot right now," said Jeremy. "There's always the chance it could come back.   "She's happy and healthy now. We'll take what we can get."   There wasn't always cause for such optimism in the Vinzenz home.   Their life of ups and downs all started with a bump that appeared on Sophia's neck in June 2015. Mom and dad dismissed it as a bug bite, or something equally benign. Sophia's doctor was a bit more concerned.   "They measured it and told us if it gets bigger to come back right away," Jazmin said.    Three weeks later, a CAT scan during a follow-up visit revealed more, and they were referred to Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha, 2.5 hours away. There, Sophia underwent another CAT scan, an ultrasound and a biopsy confirmed their worst fears.   Predictably, their emotions ran the gamut.   "At first, I blamed God, wondering why would he do this to a kid," Jazmin said.    "Later, I accepted it and realized we had to have faith that she would get better. But it was still difficult, because it's your child and you feel helpless. As parents, all we could do was hold her and tell her everything was going to be alright."   The next year-and-a-half meant a lot of visits to the doctor. A stem cell transplant sapped Sophia of any energy, and kept her virtually bedridden in Omaha for nearly a month. She had to remain in Omaha for an additional three weeks as a precautionary measure.    "She did great. She was always laughing and happy," Jeremy said."The stem cell transplant was hard on her, but through the chemo she was always happy."   At one point, her treatment and recovery plan included driving 2.5 hours each way to the children's hospital in Omaha - every day for five weeks.   That caused some undue stress at home.   Jazmin had been enrolled in classes at Central Community College in Hastings to become a dental hygienist. After Sophia's diagnosis, she had to drop out to take care of her daughter.   Meanwhile, Jeremy, who was Ryan Smith's assistant at Gibbon Valley View Golf Course when Sophia was diagnosed, had just been named the head superintendent at municipal Wood River during the winter offseason, and the long drives back and forth to Omaha eventually fell on his wife's shoulders.   "I went to the first few (visits in Omaha), but I had just started a new job and nothing was getting done on the golf course," Jeremy said.    "My wife wasn't very happy. The new job was tough on our family situation. It had been a dream of mine for 10 years to be a superintendent, so when the opportunity came up I had to take it. I don't have a college education and I only have a few years of experience. I knew this opportunity wasn't going to come up again for a while."   In January, less barely two months after her third birthday, Sophia was given a clean slate.   Fortunately, her age prevents her from remembering too much about her experience. For her parents, however, the lessons remain fresh in their minds.   "We don't take our time together for granted. We don't know how much time we have with her, or something could happen to one of us," she said. "It's definitely brought us closer."   Jeremy echoed those sentiments.   "We were good at taking things for granted. We don't do that anymore," he said. "You expect things to always go right because you try to live right and be a good person. Even if you do that, bad things can still happen."   A few good things can happen, as well.  
  • Don't look now, but players might actually be having some fun this week at the PGA Championship. After 99 years, it's about time.   In a century-old break with tradition, players were allowed to wear shorts during practice rounds, Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy hosted hosted an impromptu Q&A session for hundreds of junior players and Justin Bieber was caught on social media inside the ropes hanging out with golfers.   PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan deserves some credit for trying to make the game more appealing to a younger generation of potential players. The question is, how many of them are paying attention to even notice?   Although such things might make Old Tom Morris spin in his grave, golf needs to show that even at its highest level it is still a game that has to be fun - even for the best players in the world.   There is no denying that golf is a game of tradition. There is some good and bad that comes with that label.   The game is built on values such as sportsmanship, honesty and integrity. In fact, those are just three of the nine values The First Tee tries to impart on kids when introducing the game to them. The others are respect, confidence, judgment, perseverance, responsibility and courtesy.   Those are some positive unwritten rules that, for the most part, help players self-govern the game.   Golf also is a game in trouble, and many of its other unwritten rules are perceived as a barrier to entry by those it so desperately needs if it is to survive in the future.   As an avid golfer who also brokers deals between golf course owners and prospective buyers, Larry Hirsh spends a lot of time on the links.   The principal of Golf Property Analysts, Hirsh sees what is good about the game, and what is not so good, and he believes there are a lot of areas where the game can change if it those with a vested interest in its future want to attract new players whose only exposure to the game is what they see on TV.   "I think golf has some big, fundamental problems as it relates to the younger generation," Hirsh said. "I like to say my daughter is the poster child for why golf is struggling. She's 23 years old, she's athletic, she has a father and two brothers who play golf, and she doesn't want anything to do with it. And the reason she doesn't want anything to do with it is there are too many rules. They tell her what she can't wear. They tell her she can't use her cell phone. You can't have fun. I think a lot of millennials see that kind of stuffiness that is projected when you turn on the Masters or the U.S. Open."   The number of golfers in the game dropped from 22 million to 21 million in 2015, a steady trend that been reflected every year since 2002 when nearly 30 million people played the game. Of the million or so people who dropped out in 2015, a total of 700,000 of those losses were among players between the ages of 7 and 34, and a half-million were women. The game also is turn off for minorities.   The game, according to Stuart Lindsay of Edgehill Golf Advisors, says the game is reverting to its roots, whether anyone likes it or not.     "Until the late 1950s, early 1960s, golf was a cult sport played by rich, old white guys and some of their wives," Lindsay said. "Until then, that's what golf was since the late 1800s when the USGA was founded.   "Golf is going back to what golf has always been. There was a 40-year period where we tried to make it into something else."   It doesn't have to be that way, says Lindsay, who agrees that TV golf paints an ugly portrait of the game in more ways than one.   "The messages golf sends out aren't the right message," he said. "And people are running."   As a consultant to golf course owners around the country, Lindsay is a proponent of match play and credits it with converting him from someone who plays a dozen rounds a year to as many as 70 rounds a year.   "If I go out to play stroke play and get an 8 on the first hole, how invested am I going to be in that round?" he asked. "If I'm playing match play, I'm only 1 down and move on to the next hole.   "We're missing the boat."   "The reason we don't see match play is because it's bad TV. The PGA Tour wants to show you 70 players, instead of four."   Lindsay points to efforts like the Golf Board and Top Golf that reflect the desire for social interaction among other demographics that the golf industry wants to target. He also points to other sports competing directly with golf for participation.   His son, Jackson, grew up playing junior golf. Like so many, he eventually drifted away from the game to participate in other sports, including baseball and later bicycling.   Cycling, says Lindsay, has a lot in common with golf.   Good equipment is expensive, the clothes are ugly and there are a lot of traditional rules (of the road) that govern the sport that millenials enjoy breaking.   "Part of the enjoyment for them is seeing how many people they can piss off and running every stop sign," Lindsay said.    "My son says golf is expensive, but owns a $5,000 bike. And the irony is, they will ride in groups 30 miles out and 30 miles back. And how long does that take to complete? About four hours. What does that tell you? It tells you millenials are voting with their wallets to spend their time in other ways.   "We're beating our heads against a wall trying to attract people who aren't interested in the sport."   So, will Bieber, Rory, Rickie and shorts have an impact?   "Maybe. If any millenials are even watching," said Lindsay.   "The problem is, these groups aren't being exposed to the game in the right way and things that make people play more golf. We're killing it one day at a time."  
  • To say it has been a wet summer in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic would be an understatement.   In July alone, up to 7.75 inches of rain were recorded in the Chicago area. Pittsburgh received nearly 7 inches for the month, and parts of Ohio recorded as much as 11 inches of precipitation.   So much for fast and firm.   Alternating periods of hot and cool temperatures along with copious amounts of rain followed by periods of dry weather have made for a fertile environment for annual summer weeds, like crabgrass, according to researchers at Michigan State University.   Annual summer weeds, like crabgrass, thrive in an environment where temperatures are 80 degrees or higher. Those conditions also are when low-mowed cool-season turf is at its weakest, says Aaron Hathaway, a research assistant at Michigan State under professor Kevin Frank, Ph.D.   Although there are several pre-emergent crabgrass control tools that are effective, such as prodiamine, bensulide, dithiopyr and pendimethalin, post-emergent control is a periodic necessity.   There are several options for post-emergent crabgrass control, but two stand out, says Hathaway.   Quinclorac and fenoxaprop-ethyl are effect for post-emergent crabgrass control, and there are properties unique to each.   Quinclorac is effective in controlling crabgrass is small - in the one-to-three tiller stage - or when it is what Hathaway called gorilla-sized - four or more tillers. Likewise, it is effective when used alone at controlling some broadleaf weeds, including clover and dandelions, and it can be tank-mixed with methylchlorophenoxypropionic acid (MCPP) and 2,4-D to enhance control of other broadleaf weeds. The addition of methylated seed oil also can improve efficacy. Quinclorac also is safe for use in new cool-season turf seedlings    Fenoxaprop-ethyl also is effective at post-emergent control of crabgrass at any growth stage - new or gorilla-sized. It is more effective than quinclorac at controlling goosegrass. When used alone it does not provide control of broadleaf weeds and thus should not be tank-mixed with phenoxy herbicides. The addition of a non-ionic surfactant, however, can improve efficacy.   Other post-emergent crabgrass control options, Hathaway says, include mesotrione, topramezone.
  • When the golf course superintendent's position at Findlay Country Club in Ohio became vacant earlier this year, Brian Heydinger thought it was as good a time as any to come home. In many respects it was if Heydinger, who had worked at the club years ago, had never left.   Heydinger, a former assistant superintendent at FCC from 1998 to 2005, succeeded Dan Koops as head greenkeeper May 23 after spending the past 12 years in the same position at Stone Ridge Golf Club in Bowling Green. Almost immediately, Heydinger was confronted by a challenging situation that proved to the club's members that they had picked the right man for the job.   "The primary quality in Brian that we saw was his leadership ability," said Chad Bain, Findlay Country Club's director of golf, membership and marketing. "He led a very good team at Stone Ridge, and the team here has really responded to him."   Starting a new job in the middle of the golf season can be a challenge for any superintendent. Throw in catastrophic flooding less than two months on the job and that can be a recipe for disaster for almost anyone.   In the early morning hours of July 13, torrential rains fell throughout much of northwest Ohio, including 4.25 inches in just a few hours at FCC and 11 inches in 14 days. Flash flooding in creeks throughout the area caused problems on several nearby tracks, most of which receded throughout the day. Things were a bit different at Findlay Country Club, where the flood-prone Blanchard River cuts through the 1908 Thomas Bendelow layout.    The river crested late on July 14 at about 16.53 feet, more than 5 feet above flood stage of 11 feet and 3 feet above what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says is major flood stage of 13.5 feet. The river's depth on July 14 was the fifth highest on record in the city. In 2007, the river crested at 18.46 feet, just missing the all-time mark of 18.5 set in 1913. That 2007 flood caused more than $100 million in damage in Findlay alone.   By the time the river crested July 14 during this year's flood, most of four holes - 1, 8, 9 and 18 - were under water as was much of the rest of the city. Parts of the course that weren't flooded were covered in debris.    "Silt and debris was everywhere," Heydinger said.   As Heydinger and his crew set up to clean up debris, he received multiple offers by members who wanted to help with the clean up.   "The members take a lot of pride in the course," Heydinger said.   They also had a great deal of compassion for their new superintendent, and some perhaps were concerned that Heydinger might be second-guessing why he accepted the job. But Heydinger remained unfazed throughout the ordeal, and that impressed a lot of people at the club.   "A few people asked if we still had our new grounds superintendent," Bain said. "He handled it. He was ready. It was a tough thing to handle, but in the end it's been a good thing, because it allows the club to see what we have in Brian and what he has to offer under the most adverse conditions. You'd think anything else that comes after this should be easy."   When floodwaters had receded off the greens by the following Monday morning, Heydinger and his crew were at the ready with hoses in hand, literally removing the silt as soon as the water crept back off the playing surface.   "He was very prepared. That goes back to his leadership skills," Bain said. "He rallied the staff, and they rallied around him. He was efficient, and he made the right decisions. On that Friday, while the course was still flooded, he came to me and told me: This is what we're going to do Monday.' He knew the forecast, and he knew when the water would be down. They were out there with hoses waiting for the water to go down so that the minute it did they could wash the silt off the greens."   A former running back at the University of Findlay who later went on to earn a two-year turf management degree at Rutgers, Heydinger learned a lot about preparedness and organization from fDick Strahm, who won 183 games and four NAIA national championships in 24 seasons as the school's head football coach.   "That was a really good experience. (Strahm) was very detail oriented," Heydinger said. "He was very big on teamwork. Everyone had a responsibility and had to do what they were supposed to for the betterment of the team."   Sounds a lot like life on a golf course maintenance crew.
  • The events of June 23, 2016 will forever be part of Josh Pope's career, even if he is trying to forget much of what happened that day. What occurred during the following 12 months has defined his career.   When deadly floodwaters early last summer washed out the Old White course at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and the PGA Tour event that was to be played there, Pope played a key role in leading a revival of the 100-year-old layout and the tournament.   "People asked how I did it," said the 38-year-old Pope.   "It's the rigors of our job."   "Josh was fantastic to work with," said golf course architect Keith Foster, who was called upon to map out, on the fly, a plan to rebuild the course. "Such a talented guy and committed to our success."   Early that June morning, rain greeted The Greenbrier Resort, where Pope had been in his current position as head superintendent of the Old White course for about a year-and-a-half and was just days away from hosting a PGA Tour event. Or so he thought at the time.   As the rain fell harder and harder, Pope's initial concerns were merely how the downpour would affect the final run-up to the tournament scheduled for July 4-10.    "We just tried to get through mowing and topdressing because we were 10 days out from the tournament," Pope said. "It continued to rain off and on, and it became too wet to do anything, so by 10 a.m. we closed the course and I sent the staff home."   His outlook changed when the storm, that began as a mere nuisance turned the normally benign Howard's Creek into a raging torrent that eventually was blamed for the deaths of nearly two-dozen people.   "It kept raining and raining. I was watching the radar, and it was just band after band of rain on top of us," Pope said. "The creek kept rising and rising. I thought it was going to stop, but it didn't. It kept raining until the creek came out of its banks."   It wasn't long before the overflowing creek had swamped many parts of the golf course, including parts of U.S. 60 that cuts through the property and the tunnels running underneath it that connect the maintenance facility to the rest of The Greenbrier.    "Until then, I was just thinking about the golf course. Then I saw the 15th green went under water and I realized we we were going to be in trouble," Pope said. "When I tried to get back to the maintenance facility, I was thinking 'this is going to end well.' By then, I wasn't thinking about the golf course any more.    "I was driving down 60 trying to get to the road to the maintenance facility, and that was kind of scary," Pope said. "Cars were hydroplaning on the road. It was like a scene out of a movie. I called (assistant superintendent) Chris (Anderson) at the clubhouse and told him not to even try to get back to the shop."   He would have been stranded there if not for Kelly Shumate, director of golf course maintenance at Greenbrier's three courses, who made his way to the maintenance shop in a four-wheel-drive truck.  
    Fortunately, I never saw that, but I'm trying to forget it happened."
     
    It wasn't until the next day, when the water had receded that Pope and his crew, along with the teams from the resort's Meadows and Greenbrier courses, could get out to assess damage. It was clear right away that the PGA Tour event wasn't going to happen.   High water marks exceeded 6 feet in some areas. A marker noting the depth of a 1915 flood near the 14th green and 15th tee on the 1914 Charles Blair Macdonald design was 8 feet under water.   By the following day, it was clear it would be impossible to stage a PGA Tour event within 10 days, and that the focus needed to be on recovery.   The property's entire golf staff, including teams from the Greenbrier, Meadows and Old White  courses as well as golf shop, paired up in teams of two and walked the entire property to assess damage.   "We documented every single thing. We took pictures and we wrote everything down," Pope said. "For two days, we documented everything that had been destroyed or not damaged.   "The million-dollar question was 'Where do we start? What do we do?"   The irrigation system didn't work and there were multiple breaks scattered throughout the property. A fuel tank from an unknown residence came to rest on the course and leaked diesel into the irrigation pond.   "I don't know where that came from," Pope said. "And I didn't know what was in that water."   Half the greens on the course were covered in silt. Everything that was under water the day before now was carpeted in mud up to a foot-and-a-half thick and dead fish from a nearby hatchery upstream.   Sod on teeing areas was rolled up like discarded carpet and drainage tiles had been ripped from the ground. Emergency first responders recovered the bodies of three flood victims from the golf course, including a 14-year-old boy whose remains were found lying against the pump house.   "Fortunately, I never saw that, but I'm trying to forget it happened," Pope said.    That wasn't so easy.   "Search-and-rescue teams were out here every day for a month looking for a fourth person. They finally found her body several miles from where she lived. She had been washed away."     Pope turned to his buddy Chad Mark for advice. Now superintendent at Jack Nicklaus's Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, Mark had his own flooding issues when he was superintendent at Kirtland Country Club in the Cleveland area.   "We had three or four major floods at Kirtland, but not on the magnitude of what Josh was dealing with," Mark said.    "I don't know how much I really helped him. I told him you have to realize you're not going to solve all of your problems at once. You have to make a list and tell yourself 'this is what we're going to do tomorrow,' and start from there.   "You have to prioritize and pick away at it. Just take it a day at a time and be a great leader."   Pope also called upon his early experiences working for John Zimmers at Oakmont and the legendary Dick Bator at the International Golf Club in Massachusetts.   "We tried to achieve perfection on a daily basis. That requires a lot of diligence, patience and teamwork, which is what we needed here after the flood," Pope said.   "If I didn't have that experience, I probably wouldn't have been prepared for it. That definitely gave me the wherewithal I needed."   Because so much work was required to restore the Old White Course to playing conditions, the decision was made to fully renovate the 103-year-old layout.   It wasn't just the Old White that was flooded. There was damage at the Meadows and Greenbrier courses and the private Snead course.   "People don't realize we were rebuilding three golf courses," Pope said.   The year before, Shumate and Pope had been in touch with Foster, the course architect, for a possible bunker renovation project. They called him again last summer to help fix the broken Old White. He visited the property in early July and by July 27 work already had begun. McDonald and Sons was brought on as the contractor.   "We couldn't just stick a Band-aid on the place. We needed consistency for the Tour," Pope said. "We couldn't have some new turf and some old turf, so from the standpoint of consistency and making sure the golf courses were on par prior to the flood, the position was to redo everything.   "It was all done on the fly. There wasn't time to draw any plans," Pope said. "Keith did all the work out in the field. A normal restoration is years in the making, and clubs develop master plans. There was no plan for this."   Foster was invited to collaborate on all the courses at The Greenbrier, but with several projects already in the ground, taking on a handful of courses on the fly was too much, so everyone settled on the Old White.   "Generally there is a lot of time working through first a master plan for the vision of the work, followed by detailed plans and a bid package, if you will," Foster said. "The program at Old White did not have the luxury of time nor design planning. They asked how I thought we could accomplish the work and I offered 'Let's go old school.' "    All greens and bunkers were rebuilt with new drainage and the course regrassed with door to door with bentgrass, including V8 on the greens, L93 on the tees and T1 on the fairways.   The entire rebuild took about 11 months to complete, just in time for this year's tournament. The first rounds played on the course since the flood were the week before, on the Sunday of the Quicken Loans National played in Potomac, Maryland.   It wasn't until the tournament was over that Pope, who spent the final run-up and the week of the tournament in an RV parked at the shop, was able to relax.   "On Sunday, a humongous weight had been lifted off everyone's shoulders," Pope said. "Then we had to worry about having daily golf the next morning after being closed for a year. We had 156 players tee off on Monday morning after the tournament.   "It wasn't me that did this. It was the entire staff here at Greenbrier. None of our regular crew left. They all stuck it out. Without them, none of this would have been possible. We have a great group of people who take a lot of pride in their work."  
  • It wasn't intentional, but recent research on putting green trueness might have pulled the rug out from underneath every golfer irritated by greens aerification.   According to recent research by Doug Linde, Ph.D., of Delaware Valley University, core aerification had little if any effect on putting green trueness.    The goal of the research project, which Linde presented at the recent International Turfgrass Research Conference in New Jersey, was to establish a standard for measuring putting green trueness.   "It depends on how you define trueness," Linde said.    "Is it staying on a predictable line? Is the ball bouncing a lot? If it is, it's not true. Does the ball snake left or right if it hits something?"   The research, conducted by Linde in 2015, measured how many balls holed out when rolled off a ramp from 8 feet, how far balls that didn't hole out went left or right of the cup and the spread dispersion when they came to rest.   The results showed that more often than not putts rolled off a ramp at a speed that simulated a golfer putting went ended up in the cup.    "Even if a green is core aerated, the data shows you can make most putts," Linde said. "It's baffling that at 8 feet you should be able to make most putts on a core aerated green."   For kicks, Linde duplicated his test from 16 feet, with predictable results.    "They were a lot harder to make," he said. "But I don't think most golfers are expecting to make 16-foot putts, except maybe Jordan Spieth."   The research helps identify what makes a true putting surface, and dispels some golfer conceptions.   "That wasn't what I intended," Linde said.   "Even though research shows you can make 8-foot putts with regularity on bumpy greens, in their minds, golfers think they can't, so the superintendent still needs to make greens true,"   That's because agronomists and golfers have different ways of determining putting green trueness, said Linde, whose research included a survey of 300 golfers. Researchers and golf course superintendents are more likely to base their opinion on trueness on the propensity of a ball to find its way into the cup, golfers are more influenced by aesthetics.   "For golfers, it how a ball bounces and how the green looks," Linde said. "Even if they're are not putting, when they walk onto a golf course and see (aerification) holes, they say: 'It's not true. These greens  are bouncy and I can't make putts on them.' As a golfer, that's what I always thought, and that's what the data shows."  

  • Going to the dogs

    By John Reitman, in News,

    For as long as there have been geese gobbling grass on golf courses and  and golfers with the byproducts of their gluttony, there have been dogs attempting to chase them away.   A municipal course in Wood River, Nebraska, has taken being a dog-friendly course a step farther.   Since early July, city-owned Wood River Golf Course has implemented a practice that allows golfers to bring their well-behaved canine friends with them while they play. However, some restrictions apply.   All dogs must be accompanied by a golfer, must stay on a leash, cannot bark and are not permitted on greens or in bunkers.   "We have rules in place. We've attached dog bags to every ball washer on every hole," said superintendent Jeremy Vinzenz. "At least there is a chance for everyone to do the right thing, but you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. They're like bunker rakes. Just because we put them out there, we can't make people use them."   CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE YOUR DOG FOR THE 2018 TURFNET SUPERINTENDENT'S BEST FRIEND CALENDAR PRESENTED BY SYNGENTA   Wood River unofficially has been a dog-friendly environment for years, because one member has been bringing a miniature-sized dog to the course for years.   "It doesn't cause any problems," Vinzenz said. "He leaves it outside when he goes into the clubhouse for lunch."   The course took the next step when Spencer Schubert, a friend of Vinzenz's for years, asked if he could bring his dog to the course while he played golf.   "We're a small course in the middle of farm country, so I didn't think there would be a problem with it," Vinzenz said.   He checked with course manager Anna Hayman, who went to the city. Wood River Mayor Greg Cramer gave the program his stamp of approval, as long as rules were in place that protected the property and the rights of other golfers.   "The city gives us a lot of responsibility because they know we know what we are doing," Vinzenz said. "They put a lot in our hands if we explain how and why we want something."   The dog-friendly course now offers dog treats in the golf shop.   "This all started with a friend just asking if he could bring his dog to the golf course one day. It's really turned into something a lot more than what we expected it would be. But it is good PR and advertising for the golf course."  
  • Brookside Golf Course is much more than just 36 holes of ridiculously busy golf in the country's second-largest metropolitan area.   Located adjacent to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, Brookside doubles as a parking lot for stadium events and, this summer, was the venue for one of the Los Angeles area's largest outdoor, two-day concert events.   As many as 18 times per year, the golf course is a parking lot for about 9,000 cars for UCLA home football games, the Rose Bowl game, concerts and other outdoor events.    That's more than 150,000 cars per year parked on the fairways of a 36-hole facility that does a combined 170,000 rounds per year.    Loosely translated, that's almost one parked car per round of golf per year.   "We are an extremely busy golf course," said superintendent George Winters. "We get about 85,000 rounds on each course. This place is 90 years old. Even without parking and the Rose Bowl, managing this as a golf course would be a challenge."   What Winters and his team are able to accomplish on days when there is an event at the Rose Bowl is nothing short of amazing.   Converting the golf course into a parking lot and back again so as to impose minimal disruption to golfers translates into a lot of crazy hours for Winters and his team. The process includes stripping the golf course of everything that makes it a golf course early in the morning and coming back after each event is over to put everything back together. That means working as many as 16 hours in a 24-hour period and going home after sunrise for just a few hours of sleep. It's so taxing that the crew has a name for it.   "We call it the time machine," Winters said, "because when you're done you have no idea what time it is, or what day it is.   "We're open for golf on event days. Usually, we'll do a 7 o'clock (a.m.) shotgun, or we'll do tee times until about 9. It depends on when the event is that night. I'll have basically what is a weekend crew come in to set up the course for golf, which will be a skeleton crew. The meat of my crew comes in around 9 or 10 in the morning, and we start taking everything off the golf course: tee markers, ball washers, benches, flags, cart signs. We cover all the tee signs. All the bunker rakes come off the course. We strip the course bare, because anything and everything can be used as a projectile when you have 80,000-90,000 people running around."   Before each event, Winters' team also stakes caution tape or rope around every green and all 100-plus bunkers to keep out cars, and powers down the irrigation system.   "Taking the air out and recharging the system puts a lot of undue stress on the system. It's not something you want to do over and over again," Winters said.    "We've had 12 irrigation breaks in five days, including three mainline breaks."   At $40 per car per event, parking at Brookside is an important revenue stream for the city of Pasadena, which owns the golf course and the stadium. It's so important that the golf course, which is managed by American Golf, has 60 temporary lighting towers and a mechanic dedicated to maintaining them to ensure they are always operational.    "Generally what we'll do at the beginning of our event season, which usually begins in May, is we'll put the lights out and we leave them in the rough and out-of-play areas," Winters said.    "We'll go through 600 to 700 gallons of diesel a month just keeping those things ready for use."  
    We call it the time machine, because when you're done you have no idea what time it is, or what day it is."
     
    Once a stadium event is over and the crowds have left, a crew comes back to work, usually around midnight to 1 a.m. and works under the lights throughout the night and early morning to begin the process of turning Brookside the parking lot back into Brookside the golf course.    Temp workers brought in just for trash removal routinely fill up to six industrial dumpsters after each event. Some of the oddest leftovers among the hundreds of pounds of trash include a pile of scorched hotdogs abandoned on top of the Brookside irrigation satellite, and a tree burning from the inside out after hot coals were dumped at its base.   "Your faith in humanity gets shaken by some of stuff you see out here," Winters laughed. "It's like the clown car of trash. There's a little car, and 15 tons of trash comes out of it. You don't think it's possible, but it happens."   Whether it's daily fee golf, a concert or parking for a football game, there is something happening at Brookside almost every day. Compaction here is an issue, and Winters can't aerify as much as he'd like to relieve it because it's just so busy. Still, this pair of 1928 Charles Blair Macdonald layouts are not for hackers.   "We maintain this golf course to very high standards," said Winters, a 27-year industry veteran who turns 48 on July 29. "Our greens and tees are as good as most country clubs.   "It's like a grow-in after each event. On the flip side of what we go through, it is rewarding to get the course back as good as it was before.   "We try to aerify and we fertilize like crazy. Green is good, I don't care what shade it is. With the amount of play we get and all these events, there's hardly room to breath, much less get aerations in."   With more than 100,000 cars a year on Brookside's fairways, some long-term effects of Rose Bowl events are unavoidable, like paths beaten down onto the main routes into and out of the property. When golfers complain about compacted soil and worn turf, Winters shows them some of his favorite photos.   "They look at it and say 'What's that?' " Winters said. "When I tell them this was the golf course just seven hours ago, they can't believe it."   The mother of all events at the golf course occurred in June, when Brookside's fairways were the site of the Arroyo Seco Weekend, a two-day outdoor concert named for the concrete-channeled river that cuts through Pasadena and the golf course. It took five days before the event started and five days after it was over to install and remove the infrastructure necessary to host nearly three dozen acts and 50,000 spectators in two days.   The event coincided with temperatures that exceeded 100 degrees, all the while, Winters was unable to irrigate fairways due to constructing the concert venue. When the Arroyo Seco Weekend was over, he had to re-sod an acre of kikuyu fairway and 15,000 square feet of teeing ground.   "This was one of the smallest events we've had," Winters said. "But it was the most disruptive to the golf course because instead of behind held at the Rose Bowl, it was held on the golf course."   Arroyo Seco Weekend aside, Winters goes through 1-2 acres of kikuyu sod every year. Ideally, he would prefer to grow kikuyu exclusively because of its resiliency to traffic. That's car traffic, not foot traffic. Although most of the turf at Brookside is indeed kikuyu, there also is a lot of annual bluegrass, some rye and creeping bentgrass and, says Winters, "about 20 different strains of Bermuda."   Rather than spray out the cool-season turf, he manages for it during the spring, fall and winter.   "We have a lot of parking events in late fall up until the Rose Bowl, and we want the Poa and ryegrass alive for coverage," he said. "The (dormant) Bermuda and kikuyu would never make it under all that traffic. We'd have a lot of bare spots.   "Unless you see what we go through, you just couldn't believe it."  
  • Other than occupying a role near the bottom of the food chain, monarch butterflies don't appear to serve much purpose. Still, one would be hard-pressed to find another insect that is held in such high esteem by so many. After all, what other bug will little kids let rest on their fingers or noses?   They also are endangered primarily because of loss of habitat and milkweed, the lone food source for monarch larvae. And golf course superintendents and others in the green industry are in a unique position to help, says Dan Potter, Ph.D., entomologist at the University of Kentucky. Potter is overseeing research by master's candidate Adam Baker on developing protocols for establishing milkweed as a food source for monarch larvae.   "Monarchs are an iconic and beloved species," Potter said.    "There are thousands of citizen scientists interested in helping monarchs. Why do they do this? Monarchs really don't have any economic value, and they are not important pollinators like bees. They don't really help crops in any way. . . They are a symbol of environmental health. They're like pandas in China, or polar bears or bald eagles. What good do they do? But it's special when you see one. And we don't want to lose them."   Monarchs are found throughout much of North America, including as far north as Canada. Colonies east of the Rocky Mountains migrate annually to Mexico. Those colonies west of the Rockies typically migrate to the central coast of California.   Habitat loss in Mexico is occurring at a staggering pace due to logging interests there. Milkweed populations are being wiped out thanks to development as well a preponderance of herbicide-resistant crops.   "Farmers are planting these transgenic crops and they can then overspray the whole field with glyphosate, and that kills the milkweed," Potter said.   Even adult females, which feed on nectar-producing flowers, need milkweed as a place to lay their eggs   "They follow the milkweed as a stepping stone as they migrate to and from Mexico. The loss of milkweed is threatening their populations, as is the loss of overwintering habitat in Mexico to logging. Virtually all the monarchs go to a very small area. If the Mexican special interests log that area and take down all the trees, then there is going to be big-time problems for monarchs."  
    It gets golf courses on the right side of an environmental issue that a whole bunch of citizen scientists and gardeners feel passionately about."
     
    The objectives of Baker's research that is funded by the USGA and is entitled Operation Monarch for Golf Courses, are: > Evaluate seven species of native milkweeds for ease of establishment, growth characteristics, pest resistance, and usage by monarch larvae and bees in replicated trials. > Evaluate methodology for establishing species of native milkweed in golf course naturalized roughs. > Document effectiveness of golf course milkweed stands, with or without wildflowers, for attracting and sustaining monarchs, native bees, and honey bees. > Help to encourage and promote golf courses for monarch butterfly conservation through outreach education, webinars, conferences, trade journal articles, and media releases.   Through his research, Baker hopes to develop easy-to-follow protocols for planting, establishing and growing milkweed that provide a much-needed food source and egg-laying waystation for the butterflies.   Potter and former UK graduate student Emily Dobbs were pioneers in Operation Pollinator research and established the first plots in the United States at the A.J. Powell Turfgrass Research Center at UK and at the Marriott Griffin Gate Golf Club just a few miles away down Newtown Pike.    Potter and Baker used the same seeding protocols established in Operation Pollinator research for their milkweed establishment, with dismal results.   That included verticutting, scarifying and other ways to help establish good seed-soil contact, but few milkweed plants grew out of that. Their research is showing much better success transferring seedlings established in greenhouse conditions, Potter said.    "One of the objectives is to look at protocols for establishing milkweed in naturalized roughs, because there aren't any protocols for how to do this," Potter said. "We have learned that it isn't as easy as throwing seeds around. We've had some failures this year, but we've learned a lot from that."   The next question is which milkweeds to establish, because they're not all the same.   There are eight species of milkweed native to the Lexington area. Some are more prolific breeders than others, and all, Potter said, have varying levels of appeal to monarch caterpillars. Through his research, Baker hopes to identify which types of milkweed are best for specific locations and how best to establish them.   "Something like a butterfly milkweed might look good in your garden, but it's probably not a very good milkweed for golf course naturalized roughs because it just stays where it is. It isn't very prolific, it's a low-growing plant and it doesn't really attract that many monarchs because of its small stature," Potter said. "Something like common milkweed, it spreads by tillering. You could put in a dozen plants in naturalized rough, and three years later you might have 200 plants. It will spread on its own. That's good and bad. You don't want that in your home garden, but it would be great for filling in a naturalized area on a golf course.   "We're trying to find out which are the most attractive to monarchs and which are most suitable. We've already seen that some of these milkweeds attract way more butterflies and we end up with way more eggs on them than others. And they vary in their quality for yielding larvae, and they also are very good for bees, so they do double-duty. Some are pretty useless for bees and some are freakin' bee magnets."    Monarchs go through four generations per year, with each generation living no more than a two-three months as it progresses from egg to larva to pupa to adult. Females lay their eggs at the end of their lifecycle, which can occur just about anywhere on their route.   With four generations per year, getting a handle on monarch populations is like wrestling a cloud. It is easier, however, to get a handle on monarch habitat, which has decreased by 84 percent in the past 20 years, according to Monarch Watch, an awareness program at the University of Kansas.   That effort promotes monarch conservation awareness through a program that allows businesses, schools, civic groups and individuals can grow milkweed and be certified as a monarch-friendly waystation. To date, 17,230 waystations are registered throughout North America.   Among the registrants are entities like the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in Columbus; The Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C.; the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago; Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; Mrs. Albertson's kindergarten class in Los Angeles; and 16 golf courses spread throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina.   Golf course superintendents are in prime position, says Potter, to play a lead role in helping the monarchs in their plight.   "For all the same reasons that golf courses are involved in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary program and Operation Pollinator, this fits perfectly. It's the same motivations," Potter said. "You can take areas out of play, turn them into wildlife habitat and now you have a multifunctional golf course where instead of being an eyesore that habitat now serves a function and hopefully members and players, if they see purple martin boxes and bat boxes and see a sign that says 'wildlife habitat' then they understand what is going on.    "It gets golf courses on the right side of an environmental issue that a whole bunch of citizen scientists and gardeners feel passionately about. If every golf course in the eastern United States could put in a quarter-acre of milkweed somewhere in an out-of-play area, that could make a really big difference as far as stepping stones. It's good for their environmental image, and it could actually be good for the monarchs."  
  • Does your golf course dog belong in pictures? If so, nominate your canine friend for a place in the next TurfNet Superintendent's Best Friend Calendar, presented for 2018 by Syngenta.   Every year since 2002, the TurfNet Superintendent's Best Friend Calendar has showcased 14 golf course dogs and their contributions to golf courses around the world.   Some tips to improve your chances of winning: > Shoot at your camera's highest resolution setting (low-resolution photos will not reproduce well in print). > Images should be taken in a horizontal format; we can't use vertical photos. > Get down to the dog's level; don't shoot down at them from a standing position. > Fill the frame with the dog as much as possible while still highlighting your golf course; remember, the photo should scream "golf." > If possible, do not center your dog in the frame; left or right orientation often can result in a more dramatic photograph. > Avoid clutter and distracting backgrounds. > If your dog is on a lead or leash, remove it for the photograph. > All dogs must belong to the course or to a course employee and spend significant time there.  > Submit your best photo; multiple entries are discouraged.   A panel of judges will select the 14 dogs for the calendar, including the cover and December 2017.    To nominate your dog, use our online submission form. Be sure to include the dog's name, age and breed; photographer's name; owner's name, phone number, email address; and the name of the golf course where the owner and dog both work. Email John Reitman for more information.   Deadline for nominations is July 31.
  • The rain gauge at Shady Grove Golf Course had captured 3.75 inches during a raucous early morning thunderstorm Thursday that was as inconspicuous as a family of hungry raccoons ransacking a garbage can in the middle of the night.   By the time Shady Grove owner Scott Malloy arrived at the course Thursday morning, the gauge at the course in Findlay, Ohio might as well have read 3.75 feet.   The storm that caused flash flooding in area creeks and rendered many roads - and basements - impassable had several golf course operators in northwestern Ohio, many of whom already have been inundated with rain this summer, pleading for a mulligan as the Blanchard River blew past its 11-foot flood stage and flirted with record highs.   By dawn Thursday, the creek that bisects Shady Grove had spilled over its banks onto the golf course. When Malloy ventured out to assess the damage, what he saw was almost surreal.   The creek, which enters the course from north of U.S. 224 and meanders along Township Road 237 before eventually emptying into the Blanchard River south of State Road 568, flooded several fairways and formed an impromptu island green on No. 13.    "There were fish swimming past me on the golf course," Malloy said.   The flooding creek slowly receded throughout the day. By Friday, the course was open for walkers only, but the practice range will remain closed until it dries enough that balls don't plug and Malloy can mow it.   "Putt-putt's open," Malloy said with a chuckle on Thursday. "The good thing is I've had plenty of time to do paperwork. Payroll is already done for this week. Today was data-entry day."   Golf course operators typically welcome rain because it gives their irrigation system, and thus their bottom line, a breather. Shady Grove is among several courses in the area that have reached a point of diminishing returns with Mother Nature. Red Hawk Run and Findlay Country Club also experienced major flooding this week. A phone call Friday to Birch Run in North Baltimore yielded a voice mail message indicating the course was closed due to flooding.   So far this year, a total of 27.57 inches of precipitation have fallen in Findlay, including 6.19 inches in the first 14 days of July, according to the National Weather Service. Those figures, according to NWS, are well ahead of the respective historic averages of 18.5 inches for the first seven months of the year and 3.54 inches for all of July.   Minor flooding is a common occurrence at Findlay Country Club. But what happened this week was anything but minor.   According to Brian Heydinger, the club's new director of grounds, the club has taken on 11 inches of rain in the past 14 days, including 4.25 inches on Thursday alone. The course already was closed on Wednesday when the rising Blanchard River floodwaters had made the bridge on No. 18 impassable.   By Thursday, parts of Nos. 1, 8, 9 and 18 were under water, including the greens on 1, 8 and 18.   Although 14 holes at the course will be open for play while repairs are under way, the club has had to postpone an outing scheduled for Monday, and its club championship slated for this weekend has been delayed a week, said Chad Bain, the club's director of golf, membership and marketing.   Rescheduling play has been a regular occurrence this year, Bain said. The men's opening day was rescheduled twice and an outing that was to take place July 10 also was delayed.   "It's been a tough year," Bain said. "Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've had to reschedule something this year. In fact, it's been a year of schedule changes."  
    If the water is moving, (bentgrass) can probably tolerate three-four days (of flooding)."
     
    Debris cleanup will begin once floodwaters have receded, and Heydinger and his staff will aerate the affected areas Tuesday to promote air exchange in the soil profile. The Findlay Area Golf Association, which had events rained out Wednesday and Friday, is set to play its season-ending championship Wednesday at FCC, and Bain hopes it will go on as scheduled.   According to the National Weather Service forecast on Friday morning, the Blanchard was expected to crest at 16.4 feet late Friday and drop below the major flood stage level of 13.5 feet about 2 a.m. Sunday. It is not expected to drop below the 11-foot flood stage until Sunday night, according to the NWS. The river's record-high crest was 18.50 feet in 1913, which was slightly ahead of the mark of 18.47 feet that caused catastrophic flooding in August 2007.   The bentgrass greens at FCC should be able to withstand moving floodwater for a few days, says Zane Raudenbush, Ph.D., professor of turfgrass science at Ohio State Universitys Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster.   "If the water is moving, (bentgrass) can probably tolerate three-four days (of flooding), but they need to be prepared to get all the silt off the greens immediately with flat shovels," Raudenbush said via text. "If the water is stagnant and shallow, then it could potentially bake the greens in a few hours."   Red Hawk Run experienced what Anthony Brock, the club's manager, described as "severe flooding" Thursday on Nos. 4, 5, 12, 13 and 15 when the creek that runs through the property spilled over. By Friday, the water had receded and superintendent Ben Taylor and his crew had the course cleaned up and ready for play. Cart paths only, of course.   "Yesterday, the water was over the bridges," Brock said. "Today, if everyone stays on the cart paths, we should be OK, and we'll be open for play all weekend. We don't like to close if we don't have to.    "When people have free time and want to play golf, we do whatever we can to open up as soon as possible."
  • Giving customers a country club experience on a municipal golf budget requires a true team effort. For proof, just look at Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Kentucky.   One of five courses in the city's robust portfolio, Kearney Hill has a brief history, but a deep legacy. Built in 1989 by Pete and P.B. Dye on 200 rolling acres in central Kentucky's bluegrass region, Kearney Hill is one of only nine courses throughout the state to be certified by Audubon International.    PGA Tour player Tim Clark won the 1997 US Amateur Public Links championship at Kearney Hill in 1997, and Mina Harigae, now playing the LPGA Tour, won the women's Publinks there 10 years later.   Ranked in the top 10 on the Golfweek list of best courses in Kentucky, it was home to the PGA Champions Tour's now-defunct Bank One Classic from 1990 to 1997, where past winners include names like Isao Aoki and Gary Player. Jim Dent's 62 in the 1992 event stood as the course record for nearly a decade.    Even though the pro circuit is gone, the course is a hit with locals - as well as those passing through town - to the tune of about 25,000 rounds per year, which is pretty good considering it is well off the beaten path in rural northern Fayette County. The views throughout the property are nothing like what anyone would associate with a $30-per-round golf course. Kearney Hill pro Justin Mullanix said much of Kearney Hill's renown is due to the work of superintendent Kent Dornbrock.  
    If you've been around this business enough, you know it's a thankless job. People think anyone can grow grass and that irrigation is just screwing a head onto a piece of pipe. There's a lot more to it than that. We're not just mowing the front lawn."
     
    "I would put this place up against a lot of country clubs that have much larger budgets than we do. A lot of that is on Kent. He shops for the best deals on chemicals and he uses his labor wisely," Mullanix said. "This is a special place.   "Thirty percent of our play comes from out of state, mostly from people in Canada, Michigan and Ohio. Some of that is people passing through on their way to Florida, but we've also gotten big in some golf packages. Kearney has become a stop for people from out of state."   The course is proof that city government and public golf not only can coexist, but can thrive. At the core of Kearney Hill's success is a team atmosphere created by Mullanix and Dornbrock.   "The big thing for us here is Kent and I are in each other's face every day, and I don't mean that in a bad way. We talk every day about what needs to be done, not only on his end, but my end as well," Mullanix said. "My assistant and I, we all go out and fix divots if we can. I'll even get on a mower: Whatever it takes to get customers coming back. To keep them coming back means doing all we can do, and that takes all of us. If I have to go to the maintenance shop and help, or if Kent has to come up here and answer phones when we are shorthanded, whatever it takes, that's what we do."   A former golf pro at a private Lexington-area club, Dornbrock, 54, realized more than two decades ago that he was more suited to work outside on the golf course rather than in the golf shop. So, at age 30, he went back to college at Eastern Kentucky University, where he studied turf management.   Part of providing that country club experience is a minimalist approach to turf management by Dornbrock, a 14-year veteran of city golf in Lexington, including the past five as superintendent at Kearney Hill. That philosophy fits in with the surrounding rural and rustic landscape. The property includes 60 acres of native area and what is believed to be a centuries-old family cemetery.   "We're trying to do the best we can to do the right things and take care of the planet and leave this place a little better each day," said superintendent Kent Dornbrock. "We don't inherit the planet from our parents; we borrow it from our children.    "I'm lucky that I have a bunch of guys working on the golf course who care as much as I do."   Wildlife, including geese, skunks and raccoons that are considered a nuisance elsewhere, are viewed as part of the landscape here.   "They're part of nature's plan," Dornbrock said. "Everything has a purpose."   Although he keeps spraying to a minimum, his greatest challenges are dollar spot and ants on the original Penncross greens, some tasks can be rather intense, like mowing the mounds and swales that have become a Dye trademark. That job falls mostly onto the shoulders of Rick Chapley, a retiree who has been operating an eight-wheel Ventrac for years.   "That's what it takes to mow them in a consistent way," Dornbrock said. "You can't just get a regular mower to do that. I've been on that thing, and even I don't like driving it where it needs to go.   "If you've been around this business enough, you know it's a thankless job. People think anyone can grow grass and that irrigation is just screwing a head onto a piece of pipe. There's a lot more to it than that. We're not just mowing the front lawn."   At Kearney Hill, everyone in the golf shop understands that.   "This is my second home. I care about this place, and I try to instill that in our employees as well," Mullanix said. "If you work here, you should be proud of it.    "If we can help Kent and his crew by doing things like putting down mulch around the clubhouse, we're going to do it. That way, they can concentrate on the golf course, because that is the product that is getting people here. It's a pretty good product. I have a biased opinion, but I think I'm correct."  
  • Paige Boyle has one of the best Twitter handles ever. Her ID @BoyledWorms isn't just humorous and clever, it also provides a glimpse into her graduate research at the University of Arkansas.
      Boyle, under the direction of Mike Richardson, Ph.D., is in the second year of a study that she hoped would yield information for golf course superintendents looking to minimize worm castings on golf course. But so far, preliminary data have provided more of glimpse into what Boyle believes are differences in adaptability and behavior between earthworm species.   Her hypothesis is simple.   "The goal of my research is to see if topdressing is a viable control option for earthworms, since they are a such a pest on golf course turfs and there are no pesticides labeled for use to control them," Boyle said.    "We were hoping to see if different rates of sand topdressing can help control earthworm activity, specifically surface casting. The idea behind it is the more sand you put out the more the earthworms would not want to be in that system because the sand is abrasive and they are soft-bodied organisms."   Boyle earned a bachelor's degree at Arkansas in environmental soil and water sciences. Her study on earthworms and topdressing combines her undergraduate work in soils with her graduate focus on turfgrass management.   Her study that includes 16 Patriot Bermudagrass plots at the university's research farm, includes two topdressing treatments - one-quarter inch once annually and one-quarter inch four times per year. Both treatments are applied to sand-based and native soil rootzones. She also is collecting worm samples from four golf courses in Arkansas and Oklahoma.   She had hoped to prove that the increasing presence of topdressing sand would irritate the soft-bodied worms and send them in search of a more friendly, less sandy environment.   "When I go to the golf courses to collect samples, the superintendents are so frustrated by earthworms," she said.    "I thought topdressing would move them farther down into the soil or move them off onto the collar."   With less than a half-year left in her study, the preliminary results have not been what she expected.   "Actually we're seeing the opposite results so far," Boyle said. "With the heavy topdressing, we're experiencing more worm casting -- counter to what we are expecting initially.   
    "With the heavy topdressing, we're experiencing more worm casting -- counter to what we are expecting initially..."
      "In the soil rootzone, there is less casting activity than in sand root zone regardless of topdressing treatment. It's been an interesting project, just not what we were expecting."   Although her final data might yield different findings, Boyle has a few theories on why her study is showing different results than what she expected.   There are more than 2,700 earthworm species known worldwide, according to the University of Illinois. Only a handful of those are found in the United States, and many of them are nonnative species brought here from other countries.   Those theories include varying population densities from one species to another depending on local soil conditions, varying levels of adaptability to sand abrasion between species or even a need for the earthworms to consume more organic matter to get full in a sandy environment, thus resulting in more castings.   She is collecting worm samples in hopes of studying their DNA to help round out her study and shed more light onto the behavior of worms. That includes boiling them and storing them in ethanol to preserve the integrity of their DNA. It also is what led to her Twitter handle.   "A lot of the ones that people are used to seeing, the big, dark red ones are actually European and Asian earthworm species," she said. "We think, but we don't know yet, is what we have are native earthworms and maybe they are more adapted to the temperatures we have here, or soil conditions. And maybe they are persisting in the system better than nonnatives. That's just a theory. We have to run the DNA."  
  • A longtime volunteer at the PGA Tours John Deere Classic died Friday from injuries sustained during preparations for the tournament at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Illinois.   Charles Austin, 68, was killed in an accident that occurred involving a utility vehicle, according to police reports. He had volunteered for the event for the past 27 years.   According to the Quad-City Times, Austin was driving a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle when the accident occurred.   "It is our belief that he was under the impression that the vehicle was in reverse when in fact it was in forward or drive," Rock Island County Coroner Brian Gustafson told the Times. "When he hit the gas it lurched and went up under a parked refrigerated semitrailer."   Austin was pronounced dead at 12:50 p.m.    Silvis police were called to the maintenance area at 11:46 a.m. on July 7, according to reports.   According to police reports, officers arrived at the scene and helped volunteers try t revive Austin. An investigation is ongoing and an autopsy is scheduled for Monday.   "Chuck was a very special member of our volunteer force," said tournament director Clair Peterson. "On behalf of Chuck's 1,750 fellow volunteers, title sponsor John Deere, the tournament staff, the players, and the PGA Tour, I want to express our deepest sympathies to Chucks wife, Ann, and all of his loved ones."   Austin was a math teacher for 33 years in Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois, where he coached high school golf for 16 years. He was survived by a wife, two adult children and several grandchildren.

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