From the desk of GCM

Dam beavers...

That's got to be what Michael Fontaine, superintendent at the Ledges Golf Club in South Hadley, Mass., must be saying of the beavers and the dams they keep building that are flooding his course.

According to this story in The Republican, Fontaine and his crew are dealing with beavers jeopardizing the final four holes at the Ledges. But it's not a cut-and-dried issue to let Fontaine and his crew go in there and blow out those damn dams. The Conservation Commission needs to get in their say, naturally.

Best wishes to Fontaine and his crew, who will get their public hearing on Nov. 9th.

Superintendent publishes first book

Give it up for Greg Shaffer, superintendent of Elcona CC in Elkhart, Ind. Greg has published his first book, titled "View from the Cart: The Story of Mulligan, a Golf Course Dog."

Here's the skinny, from the press release:

In 2000, an undernourished Black Lab was found wandering the plains of eastern Colorado.  When golf course superintendent Greg Shaffer and his wife, Dia adopted this dog through the Labrador Retriever Rescue program they hoped to hone their care giving skills as they considered parenthood. They were not expecting the returns they would receive as this abandoned dog became a part of their family and Greg’s career as a golf course superintendent. They named their new dog Mulligan to reflect his second chance at life.

View from the Cart is the inspirational story of one lost dog’s transformation from stray to golf course dog at some of the most prestigious courses in Colorado and Indiana. Greg Shaffer and Jan Shaffer, a retired teacher and children’s book author, combined their talents to write a book about Greg’s adopted Black Lab, Mulligan. Greg voice recorded stories from Mulligan’s life and Jan transcribed them to create a book about the amazing transformation that can occur when life offers up a “mulligan.”

World's longest golf course -- open for business!

Nullarbor Links in southern Australia is now open for play. Don't get too worked up about how long your round might take, because the course stretches out over 848 miles. But you'll see plenty of wombats, kangaroos, and poisonous snakes! For the BBC's story, click here.

GIS heading to Vegas in 2012

GCSAA and its partners in the Golf Industry Show announced today that the 2012 show would head to the desert city of Las Vegas. Vegas takes a spot that had been previously held by New Orleans in the traditional three-city rotation for the annual event. The last time GCSAA members visited Las Vegas for its annual education conference and trade show was in 1997.

In a related story, the Club Managers Association of America announced Wednesday that it would be leaving the Golf Industry Show following the 2010 event scheduled for San Diego, Feb. 10-11.

The complete news release from the Golf Industry Show partners follows:

Las Vegas has been selected as the site of the 2012 Golf Industry Show as announced today by show partners.

CMAA pulling out of Golf Industry Show

The Club Managers Association of America announced to its members Thursday that it would be leaving the Golf Industry Show partnership following the 2010 event set for San Diego, Feb. 10-11. The following announcement appeared on GCSAA's Web site following that announcement:

GCSAA has received notification that the CMAA is pulling out of the Golf Industry Show partnership after the 2010 event in San Diego. Several assertions were made by CMAA in its communications that do not accurately portray the sequence of events and nature of the partner discussions. We will provide greater detail as soon as possible so that you can remain confident your association is looking out for your best interests and those of the industry.

Best. Issue. EVER.

Quote from the Comic Book Store Guy in The Simpsons... referring to the November issue of Golf Digest.

Click on over to Golf Digest's front page, and scroll down a little bit, just past the Michael Jordan and Tony Romo golf swings. There you'll see many of your colleagues, heck, you might even see yourself.

Golf Digest has a prominent feature on superintendents called "Golf and the Environment: Grass-Roots Advice." The feature includes audio file interviews with 16 different superintendents, including Ken Lapp, John Zimmers and GCSAA President, Mark Kuhns. It also has a cool series of black-and-white photography of all these supers, taken at last year's GIS. (Bill Newton, GCSAA's manager of media/public relations, told me it was quite the ordeal getting all those superintendents at the right place and the right time to pull off all those photos. Seeing the end result -- nice work, Newton, it was worth the effort!)

In the introduction of the piece, author Ron Whitten says, “Superintendents long have been some of the best conservationists in the nation. They handle the toughest job in golf, providing members and customers with the same playing conditions in August that they get in April, and in recent years they've done it with fewer chemicals, less fuel, less water and even less manpower. We need to listen to these guys. There's a reason each is called a super.”

So click it, check it out. Email it to your friends. Some really nice stuff about our friendly neighborhood golf course superintendent in one of golf's biggest publications.

A legend rides off into the sunset

Many people know that for about a decade before joining GCSAA in 1998, I was a sportswriter at a variety of newspapers in and around the Kansas City area. And as a reformed newspaper man, I've retained a high-level of respect and fondness for some of the legends of the craft, both in the sports world and out. People like Mike Royko, Jim Murray, Dave Barry, Gary Smith, Dave Kindred.

People like Fuman Bisher, who for nearly 50 years graced the pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Bisher finally retired earlier this month, just a few weeks shy of his 91st birthday, writing his farewell column on the same Royal typewriter that he wrote his very first column for the Journal-Constitution back in 1950.

Although he covered many sports in his career, it was in golf where he made his biggest impact. He was a fixture at Masters, U.S. Opens and PGAs, and it was at one of those events at some point in the past decade — I think it was the Masters, but I'm not sure — where I had my one and only brief interaction with Bisher. It wasn't much — I introduced myself, told him I enjoyed his work, we chatted a few minutes about golf and superintendents, then I excused myself and let him get back to work — but I've always told myself that when I got the opportunity to meet someone I greatly respected, I was going to take it. I had the opportunity to meet Furman Bisher, so I took it.

How is a golf ball like a root canal?

I had a root canal this morning. Not the most exciting or most enjoyable experience, but it had to be done. I had never had a root canal, so when I got to the dentist's office, I asked Anita, the dental assistant, exactly what was going to happen to me and my tooth.

 
She carefully explained the process. My dentist, Dr. Miller, would drill a hole through the crown of my tooth, clean out the icky dead roots and then fill the empty root canals with gutta-percha. Hold on! Gutta-percha? I couldn't believe my ears. Anita started to tell me what gutta-percha is. I said, "Golf balls used to be made with gutta-percha." Then it was her turn to be amazed.

"Gutta-percha" comes from two Malay words: getah, which means tree sap or latex, and perca, which means rag or strip of cloth. (Gutta-percha was originally sold in strips.) According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, gutta-percha is "a rubber-like gum produced from the latex of various Southeast Asian trees (esp. genera Palaquium and Payena) of the sapodilla family and used in electric insulation, dentistry, golf balls, etc."

Toro purchases Ty-Crop

We've just learned that The Toro Co. has purchased the topdressing and material-handling businesses of Ty-Crop Manufacturing, one of golf's leading producers of equipment in those markets.

Toro does have it's own line of topdressers currently — the 1800 and 2500 — but this move greatly increases the company's presence in that market while giving the company offerings in the material-handling arena for the first time. All Ty-Crop products will be marketed under the Toro brand and sold through Toro's distribution channels, effectively ending Ty-Crop's 30 years in the golf industry.

Here's the complete official release from Toro:

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (October 14, 2009) — The Toro Company (NYSE: TTC) today announced it has acquired certain assets from TY-CROP Manufacturing Ltd., a leading manufacturer of topdressing and material handling equipment for golf course and sports field applications. 

Chavez calls golf elitist; golfers 'lazy'

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, has suddenly decided that the game of golf and golf courses make him angry.

In a story broadcast this morning on NPR, Chavez took aim at golf courses as a waste of valuable space that could be used as park land. Also, he wanted people to know that he found golfers who use golf carts "lazy."

Here's the story, thanks to NPR for the embed:

Good luck to all the superintendents in Venezuela. For all the classes GCSAA offers, I'm pretty sure "how to deal with a jerk president" isn't a GCSAA Webcast that we'll see anytime soon...