Water Cooler Filler-Upper

The labor time of course travel, filling and servicing of 12 golf course water coolers was cut in half, from four hours to two hours, by mounting two Grainger 55-gallon polyethylene sanitized drums ($120.60/each), two Grainger 2-inch PVC drum faucets ($17.23/each) on top of two Grainger drum racks ($134.53 each) held in place with one Husky/Home Depot 15-foot by 1-inch ratchet strap ($4.75) placed in a John Deere UTV. The coolers are filled out on the course instead of being transported back and forth to the maintenance building/clubhouse. A third sanitized bin contains ice acquired at the clubhouse. Clean and sanitized spare water coolers are changed out on a regular basis. This vehicle also performs occasional checks of the clubhouse pathways, a 62-slip marina, Har-Tru tennis court preparations and restroom cleanup, where all of the supplies can be stored inside the UTV bed. Tyler Bloom, superintendent, Colin Kratz, seasonal staff member (in photo), and assistant superintendents Adam Narivanchik and Andrew Thornton, who conceived this idea, implemented the system at Sparrows Point (Md.) Country Club.

Tidy Greens & Tees

Whipping poles are a thing of the past as this Stihl Handheld Blower ($79.99 to $109.99) quickly and easily removes grass clippings, dew and leaves prior to and after mowing the tees and greens. All of the greens and tees triplex mowers are equipped with them using an L-shaped bracket acquired from Home Depot ($10 at most) mounted with a nut and bolt through a 3/8-inch or ½-inch diameter hole. The tee mowers have a divot bottle attached with a soil/seed mix for filling in divots on the tees. The tee mowers also have 1½-inch diameter PVC “T’s” that are used for the proper tee marker alignment. The greens mowers have ball mark repair tools on the mower’s keychain and a “Gash-B-Gone” to fill old ball marks with greens sand. Tyler Bloom, superintendent at Sparrows Point Country Club in Baltimore, has devised another great idea.

A national open, especially one contested in a country with a proportionally low number of worldwide televised golf showcases, presents reoccurring moments for celebration.

On a Monday that methodically shifted from frigid – even by June in Ontario standards – to fantastic, the Hamilton Golf & Country Club turf team and volunteers mingle around the maintenance facility. The first of two pro-ams scheduled for RBC Canadian Open week becomes a slog, delaying the start of an evening maintenance shift.

Nobody seems bothered six-hour rounds are prolonging the day. Perhaps, after starting work 13 hours earlier in 37-degree weather, evening temperatures approaching 70 degrees yield cheer. Or, more likely, sharing a major moment with a friend, mentor, cousin, neighbor, parent, child or sibling must be savored regardless of unexplainable waits.

So, instead of moping, a half-dozen youthful females and males gather around a picnic table and play a version of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” recorded in 1994. As they sing and dance, a co-worker who started fixing turf equipment before the song was released discusses his personal evolution and how the 2019 Canadian Open contrasts other televised tournaments at Hamilton. The first professional tournament of Wayne Shaw’s career, the 1996 du Maurier Seniors, included an infamous personal moment: somebody stole his truck.

Shaw borrowed his sister-in-law’s truck and made it to the course. The truck was later found and Shaw, the club’s mechanic, tells the story nonchalantly after the music stops. The festive banter moves to a paved area outside the maintenance facility Shaw has called his office since 1986. Once assistant superintendent Tracy Fowler, a colleague with a similarly lengthy tenure, sounds a horn signifying the start of the evening shift, Shaw roams an enchanting course, checking the operational quality of an equipment fleet that has morphed over the last 33 years. “You look around here,” he says. “You see how much stuff we have. We have 10 tractors. We had two when I started here.”

“Americans have a sense of pride in America. Canadians have that same sense of pride. Allowing the world to see anything in this country means something to us.” – Clayton Campbell

The Canadian Open also has morphed. Harry Colt designed 27 holes when the club relocated to Ancaster, a stately community seven miles from the city of Hamilton’s industrial center. The South and West nines support tournament play. Later in the week, the singing and dancing reaches the first hole of the East nine, site of a Friday night concert slightly bigger than maintenance facility singalongs: a performance by popular country duo Florida Georgia Line.

Golf Canada officials reported around 120,000 fans entered the Hamilton grounds June 3-9 and beer sales increased 65 percent over the 2018 tournament at Glen Abbey Golf Club in suburban Toronto. The golf headliner, Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy, smashed the field to capture his 16th PGA Tour title. The tournament marked the 100th anniversary of the first of six Canadian Opens at Hamilton and the final major event contested on the current version of the course. An aggressive 27-hole project led by Colt savant Martin Ebert commences later this year.

A Monday evening spent observing the scene and meeting the people responsible for maintaining Hamilton negates any hyperbole when people of the host country refer to the Canadian Open as a “major.” Canadians are golf enthusiasts. Nearly one in six plays golf, according to a 2017 report released by Golf Canada, The PGA of Canada and National Golf Foundation. Canada’s participation rate is double the rate of its southern neighbor.

Canada has 2,298 golf facilities, according to the same report, with nearly a third of the supply (682 courses) located in Ontario. “We are one of the bigger hubs of golf courses,” says Hamilton superintendent Rhod Trainor, who will retire this year after a successful 30-year-run at the admired club. “We compare ourselves to Chicago and some of those American hotbeds.”

Despite the golf fervor and abundance of quality facilities, only one Canadian course receives the annual honor of hosting a PGA Tour tournament. By comparison, the 2018-19 PGA Tour schedule includes 37 American venues. Golf Canada rotates Canadian Open sites, although Glen Abbey hosted the tournament 30 times from 1977 to 2018. Trainor attended his first Canadian Open in the 1990s at Glen Abbey, where his best friend Dean Baker served as superintendent. “Canada has the Toronto Blue Jays and they might as well be the Canadian Blue Jays,” says Trainor, referring to the country’s lone Major League Baseball franchise. “This is the only PGA Tour tournament in Canada. Whether you live in Ontario or British Columbia or Nova Scotia, this is the one you’re most interested in.”

Bonds within the Hamilton crew and Canadian turf community run deep. Chris Wallace, a 22-year Hamilton veteran and Shaw’s second cousin, met Trainor through curling, one of Canada’s winter pastimes. He spent his first three Canadian Opens leading a crew responsible for maintaining Hamilton’s nearly 90 bunkers to PGA Tour specifications. A sore back means he’s sitting on a fairway mower while waiting for the Monday evening maintenance shift to begin. “This Canadian Open is big,” he says. “I don’t know how big, but it’s like waiting for a bomb to go off. You can tell it’s bigger than the other ones.”

Scott Borer, a longtime curling friend of Trainor, is an electric lineman who used a vacation week to work split golf course maintenance shifts. Borer also volunteered the 2003, ’06 and ’12 Canadian Opens at Hamilton. “I’m a lineman by trade, but golf is my passion,” he says. “Even though I take vacation to come here and don’t get paid, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love being here for the week.”

Borer’s fourth Canadian Open carried special meaning because his 16-year-old son Noah works at Hamilton. Borer dropped Noah off at school following morning shifts and the duo enthusiastically returned to the course each afternoon. Employees with the same last name are part of Hamilton’s charm. “This industry is a brotherhood and sisterhood all the way down to the people who work here,” associate superintendent Jordan Kitchen says.

Tracy Fowler and her brother, Jamie, the club’s arborist, demonstrate the familial ties. Tracy has worked at the club for 33 years, three years longer than Jamie, who briefly left golf course maintenance to pursue a welding career. “It was a horrible environment,” he says. “You’re breathing in smoke all the time. This course is our office. This course is our factory.”

The course also feels like home. Tracy and Jamie’s father, Tom, worked 47 years at the club, ascending from crew member to mechanic. Tom retired three years ago, but still asks his children about the club and its people.

Tracy and Jamie started working at Hamilton, where their uncle Bill Thompson held a supervisory position, before they could drive. Uncle Bill handed Tracy a garbage can and she weeded bunkers on her first day of work; Jamie was handed a trimmer and gas can and told to tidy the areas surrounding Ancaster Creek. “We grew up on a farm, so we were used to being outside,” Tracy says. “We loved being outside. The job just worked for us.”

Following high school, Tracy explored multiple career routes. She earned a horticulture degree from the University of Guelph and Trainor offered her an assistant superintendent position. A childhood job turned into a career. “I didn’t think it would last this long,” she says. “But I was like, ‘I don’t want to move, I don’t want to commute, and I like it here.’ One year led into another year, and the next thing you know, I have been here for 33 years.”

Without their current jobs, Tracy, who has 6-year-old twins, and Jamie are unsure how much time they would spend together, because they live busy adult lives. Remaining at Hamilton has allowed them to share four Canadian Opens. “I just want people to see how beautiful this place is,” says Jamie, whose tree clearing efforts opened enthralling views of valleys and mounds Colt utilized in the early 1900s.

Hamilton’s other sister-brother duo, Kayla and Clayton Campbell, worked their first Canadian Open together last month. Kayla, a former early childhood education student determined to pursue a career in golf course maintenance, excitedly bounced between holes, mowing greens for golf stars, including 26 participants from her home country. “This is my first Canadian Open and I’m very excited,” she says before the Monday evening shift. “The energy is very high with me. I’m an energetic person anyways. I’m very proud of mowing those greens.”

Clayton, a technician in his 10th season at Hamilton, exudes similar energy and pride, especially when observing his sister’s zest for golf course maintenance. Kayla approached Clayton a few years ago about working at the course. Neither imagined the conversation would lead to a third Campbell pursuing a full-time turf career. Their older brother, Ryan is an assistant superintendent at Beach Grove Golf & Country Club in Windsor.

The Campbells are philosophical about the Canadian Open and its impact on their family. Anything providing glimpses into the Hamilton region’s changing demographics – Canada’s ninth-largest city possesses an industrial reputation – to a wide audience must be embraced, thus the greens Kayla mows and Clayton treats represent something greater than immaculate Poa annua.

“It’s like the Raptors being in the NBA Finals,” Clayton says. “It allows people to see what Canada is about. We’re not showshoes and all those stereotypical things.” Kayla interrupts to emphasize the irony in her brother’s statement. “We were in scarves this morning!” she says. Clayton chuckles and adds, “Americans have a sense of pride in America. Canadians have that same sense of pride. Allowing the world to see anything in this country means something to us.”

Kayla plans on obtaining a turf managers’ short course certificate through Guelph, where Trainor, Kitchen and Tracy obtained their formal turfgrass education. The managerial trio provides guidance on apprenticeship and job training programs to young employees considering golf course maintenance careers. “Our strength is our people,” Kitchen says. “We have been a great incubator for some great turf professionals. We want to be a launching pad for careers.”

The camaraderie, career boost and festive atmosphere turf professionals experienced last month will be duplicated when the Canadian Open returns to Hamilton in 2023. The PGA Tour’s decision to move the Canadian Open from the July week following the British Open to the June week before the U.S. Open attracted a marketable 2019 field. A side benefit of the move is enhanced turf quality. “Early June is typically our best conditions,” Trainor says. Fan friendly additions such as the weekend concerts and a raucous hockey-themed par-3 called “The Rink” further contribute to the momentum.

Unless the Raptors become an NBA Finals regular, one of Canada’s seven NHL teams experiences a revitalization or the Canadian Football League’s appeal extends across borders, there’s no other major reoccurring major summer sporting event in a nation of 37 million proud and active residents. The opportunity to prepare surfaces for the celebration will always be worth the wait.

Brick Scott showed up in Texas a dozen weeks to the day after the Rangers played their first game. The team had arrived in the Lone Star State by way of Washington, D.C., where their fans still clamored to keep them even after the thud of 11 unaccomplished seasons as the second edition of the Senators.

Scott arrived more traditionally, by way of birth.

They remained entwined, team and tyke, for years to come. The Rangers climbed the division ladder throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, knocking on the proverbial postseason door but never quite stepping in. Scott, meanwhile, climbed his own growth chart during his childhood over in Sidney, an unincorporated community deep in the heart of Texas — “outside Comanche between Brownwood and Stephenville,” he says. “Population about 300.” For years, he cheered for Jim Sundberg, the star catcher and six-time Gold Glove winner, wearing out a Sundberg No. 10 jersey after receiving it as a gift. The day Iván Rodríguez, another star catcher and a 2017 Baseball Hall of Famer, first crouched behind the plate, he was listening on a radio from the top of a tractor in a hayfield on the family farm.

“I’m a big Rangers fan,” Scott says, “and I’ve watched these guys for years.”

Which is why this year especially is so much fun. Sure, the Rangers are winning again, and sure, their new Globe Life Field — which will finally offer a roof to protect fans from the oppressive Texas summer sun — is under construction and will open next March. But what really cracks Scott’s smile is the logo on his work cap: After decades on golf courses and decades more as a fan, he now wears the familiar shaded T of his favorite baseball team to the office every day.

Because his job is superintendent of Texas Rangers Golf Club.

Until earlier this year, right around the start of another spring training out in Arizona, there was no Texas Rangers Golf Club. The municipal course itself was still under construction — and the clubhouse, scheduled to open in early 2020, still is — its small mountains of earth moved a little more every day throughout the winter. “They brought a (Caterpillar) D10 out here,” Scott says, “and it looked like they were going to change the Earth’s axis, it was so huge.”

Part of a quartet of courses owned by the city of Arlington and operated by Arlington Golf, it had been called Chester W. Ditto Golf Course from the time it opened in 1982 until it shuttered for renovations in late 2016, not long after Arlington voters approved $24 million for the course. An opportunity to partner with the Rangers through 2054 — reportedly for 150 rounds per year in exchange for an equal value of game tickets and the rights to a brand name worth plenty in Texas — followed.

And now, as the Rangers push through the summer for their first playoff berth since 2016, “it’s been difficult getting stuff done on the golf course,” Scott says, “because there’s been so much play.”

Scott has plenty of reference and plenty of stories. He worked at Ditto for about a decade and a half and he remained on site throughout construction, working for almost two years out of a Home Depot shed dropped in the parking lot. He knows the course well enough that storing a fleet of 34 pieces of equipment — some of which are more than a quarter of a century old — and relocating his crew provided more of a challenge than a roadblock.

“I can’t say enough about how Brick and his crew persevered through all the adversity,” Greg Durante, golf services manager for Arlington Golf Division, says from inside the temporary pro shop that is only slightly larger than that old pop-up shed. “Getting this golf course grown in without a maintenance facility, working out of a parking lot, mechanics outside —”

“Outside with a light plugged in,” Scott chimes in from across the table. “Extension cords with a little shop light. It got a little crowded with eight guys.”

“It was amazing what they were able to do with what they had to work with,” Durante says.

The fall overseeding, for example. Scott worked with Turf and Soil Management — a small Texas company, of course — to handle an October overseed of a 70-30 blend of ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass: “They typically do ball fields,” Scott says, “so this was the first time they had something of this magnitude. They had to have a no-till seed they seed with, and of course, they hadn’t done it and I’m new at it, so after a couple holes, it was like, ‘OK, we need to regroup here.’ And so we outlined it with the seeder because it was taking so long, and then we came back with the broadcast spreader and did the middle. It worked out good.”

And regular maintenance and care for almost three dozen pieces of ever-aging equipment: “One of the things that’s definitely important for me is to have two greens mowers and two tees mowers,” Scott says. “We obviously don’t walk mow, but we have two of the new Triplex from Toro for our greens, we have a couple of fairway units — and I actually kept one of my older fairway units. We mow at fairway height. When we’re mowing three times a week, we’ll mow 46 acres at tee height.”

And, now that the course is filling up with golfers again, there are differences in working around folks who are paying far more for a round than they once did on the same property: “That has also been one of the dynamics we’ve had to change with the crew, just the mindset that we’re asking these people to pay a lot of money. You need to kill your equipment. I’ll pay you to wait. A lot of guys aren’t used to that mindset. So much of the work we do is predicated on us getting out early and beating the golfers. Before golfers tee off, I really want the majority of my guys to be on their second job.”

Scott’s full-time crew has bumped up from seven during the last year at Ditto to 10 today, along with some regular part-timers. That includes a couple veterans who have worked at the club even longer than he has — one just celebrated 20 years, another 22 — “but the majority of my crew are all new, so there have been some growing pains. But they’re good guys,” Scott says. “The resources are there for me. Obviously, my budget went up. The city has given us everything we need to make this a good course for a long time.”

The budget and the crew size are both subject to change, of course, especially if the course attracts more players and schedules more rounds than Ditto did during its last years.

“We base everything on demand,” Durante says. “At this facility, at some point you wouldn’t want to increase your rounds to 60,000 a year, because then it’s so hard to maintain it at that level, and it becomes counterproductive to run that many players through.”

The symbiotic branding between club and team has provided a p.r. bonanza, but newspaper, magazine and television stories about the club would not be as numerous as they are without a quality redesign and an impressive public course. Texas Rangers Golf Club has both thanks to Scott and Arlington native John Colligan.

Colligan and his Colligan Golf Design associate, Trey Kemp, overhauled an older course that, to hear him tell it, never maximized its sheer area or capitalized on its potential elevation change. Colligan and Kemp shuffled 18 new holes — each of which carries a baseball-inspired name, like Lead Off, Line Drive, Double Play, Triple Play, Around the Horn and, of course, Texas Leaguer — around the property’s 164 acres, incorporating 55 feet of elevation change and opening up enough land for a 23-acre practice area that includes a double-ended range. They also planted native grasses and buffalograss faces on the bunkers that just sort of look like Texas.

Colligan is a Dallas native, but he packed up and moved to Arlington back in 1974 — the year both Scott and the Rangers turned 2. Among all the courses he has designed during a decorated career, this one is probably the most personal, he says, and maybe even his best.

“I told Trey when we went in for the interview, ‘We’re pulling out all the stops. Don’t leave anything to chance and hopefully we’ll be selected,’” Colligan says. “I figure I’m here for the long haul till they stick me in the ground. I went to college here, and Trey went to UT-A as well, got his Master’s there, and I jokingly tell everybody that I have 70 or 80 guys I could call on any given night to bail me out of jail.”

Colligan lives about four miles from the course, and his office is even closer, only about two miles away, so he and Kemp visited 200 or so times during construction. The passion and pride they have for the project, Durante says, are obvious.

“There’s nobody in this room, nobody in this town, nobody in this state, nobody in this world that wants this project to be better than I do. Last thing I want is to go down the street and have people go, ‘There’s the guy who screwed up Texas Rangers Golf Club.’” — John Colligan

“To be able to do this project,” Colligan says, “there’s nobody in this room, nobody in this town, nobody in this state, nobody in this world that wants this project to be better than I do.

“Last thing I want is to go down the street and have people go, ‘There’s the guy who screwed up Texas Rangers Golf Club.’”

The Rangers are not the first professional sports team to lend their name to a golf club — nor are they even the first in the Metroplex, thanks to the Cowboys opening their namesake Golf Club in Grapevine back in 2001 and the Stars slapping their name on what is now called Stonebridge Ranch Country Club in McKinney in 2003. They are, however, the first Major League Baseball team to partner with a golf club and stretch their brand from lineups to links.

Not the New York Yankees, or the Los Angeles Dodgers, or the Chicago Cubs, or any of the teams you might expect. The Texas Rangers. A team with more losing seasons than not in its sweltering history. A team that played its first couple decades in a converted minor league stadium. A team without a championship or even a single 100-win season.

And, to be fair, a team so beloved that more than 2 million fans have showed up and cheered them on during on every full season save one since 1989.

This new venture aims to build on that beloved brand. Watch parties for opening day and big games — maybe even playoff games — in the clubhouse when it opens next year right around the same time the new ballpark will open. Golf club merchandise on sale all over the ballpark, too. Maybe even some players dropping in for a round during mornings or off days.

“Baseball players tend to play a lot of golf,” Colligan says. “I think that’s going to be a big draw, coming out here and not knowing who you’re going to run into.”

Iván Rodríguez has already tested the course, playing the first round back in February. Anybody know what Jim Sundberg is up to these days?

During the three-and-a-half years that Doug Norwell worked as an assistant superintendent under the legendary Matt Shaffer at The Country Club outside Cleveland, he learned plenty about water management and conservation. He learned even more about how to work with people.

“He was interested in growing people and moving them on, not keeping people and holding them back,” Norwell says. “And that’s how I approach working with my assistants.”

Shaffer, of course, is the former the director of golf course operations at Merion Golf Club, where he hosted a handful of headline events, including the 2013 U.S. Open, before retiring in 2017. Norwell, meanwhile, is still out on the course almost every morning, deep into his 20th consecutive year as superintendent at the historic Camargo Club in suburban Cincinnati.

Approaching its centennial, the Seth Raynor-designed gem is considered among the top classic courses in the country, with a footprint of more than 349 acres — 285 of them devoted to the course, and another 64 or so to a recently renovated practice area and stables. Norwell, too, is interested in growing people and moving them on, evidenced by his five former assistants who are now in charge of courses of their own — four of them within 25 miles of Camargo — as well as by his recent addition of a third assistant superintendent.

“I was just getting spread thin with additional responsibilities and went to three assistants, which I think is a good number,” says Norwell, who recently added assistant Kevin Veeley to a crew of 27 that includes fellow assistants Josh Clock and Bill Jones. “It’s been great, too, because it takes a little pressure off everybody. I think we’re all finding that stress isn’t good for any of us.”

Norwell is candid and open on and off the course, and he minces no words whether discussing his personal life, his years in the industry, even perceived differences between, say, baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials. But on the brink of 50, he tells nobody to get off his lawn. Instead, he listens and adapts, shifting his crew to become more representative of the current crop.

“I think it’s important that we do change and adjust to the workforce that’s coming to us,” he says. “We have to meet them in the middle a little bit, and I think it’s helpful to have three assistants to keep people happy in their jobs. Happy workers are better workers. It does reduce the stress.”

Norwell has also reduced stress over the last year by adding products to his agronomic program, including Daconil Action and Secure Action fungicides, both from Syngenta, which he uses almost exclusively on greens — “on the finest, most intensively maintained turf,” he says, “where you need the best results.”

To combat dollar spot, which is manifesting more easily than ever thanks to Cincinnati heat indexes in the high 80s and low 90s that tend to stretch now into the middle of October, he introduced Posterity fungicide last fall, too. “And I was really pleased that, with the high disease we did have, we didn’t have many issues at all with dollar spot,” he says. “It gave me three weeks of control during heavy rains, high humidity, high heat.”

And unlike his early years at Camargo — even his first decade and change — Norwell has spotted more and more signs of nematodes on the course. “It’s something I hadn’t really paid a whole lot of attention to because we were all taught it was a Southern problem,” he says. “It’s no Southern problem anymore.”

When he spotted the thinning and discoloration that are so closely tied to nematodes, Norwell consulted Syngenta territory manager Gregg Schaner, who first steered him toward disease testing the turf. “We sent in a nematode test and it came back really high,” he says, “at which point we had to start some treatments.”

Working with Schaner to develop a plan of attack, Norwell ultimately introduced a pair of nematicides into his program, including Divanem. “This year, starting out,” he says, “we were able to control the population a lot better. The generations are closer and tighter together, so we started earlier and are doing a lot better. You just control them. No matter what anybody says, you’re just trying to manage nematodes.”

The migration of nematodes, the evolution of dollar spot, even the more extreme maintenance of turf in general are all newer developments during Norwell’s almost three decades in the industry — and his two decades working on the same course. “You just need every tool at your hands, you know?” he asks rhetorically.

Last winter, Norwell started to gather together some of his old assistants — one more tool, more metaphorical than literal — their aim not golf, but beer. The monthly meetings serve as a sort of informal reunion and a cleanse from the stresses of daily grinds.

Pat O’Brien worked under Norwell until 2004 and has been the grounds superintendent at Hyde Park Golf & Country Club in Cincinnati ever since. Jon Williams is still in Cincinnati, too, where he works as the course superintendent at Coldstream Country Club. Scott LesChander is now the grounds superintendent at Terrace Park Country Club in neighboring Milford, less than four miles door to door from Camargo. Joel Hanlon is the most distant: as the grounds superintendent at Four Bridges Country Club in Liberty Township north of downtown, he works a whopping 23 miles from Camargo. Only Mark Daniels ventured out of state: he’s the head greens superintendent at Wannamoisett Country Club in Providence, R.I.

“They’re all older,” Norwell says. “They’ve got kids, which is interesting. They’ve all had the same kinds of trials and tribulations — they all put up with me for years — and now they’re out with their own job. They can vent about me, or they can vent about whatever’s going on, and everybody’s a good sounding board. You start to feel like a parent to some extent.”

Beers, like a regular round of golf, are an excuse for gathering together and catching up. “They feel like they can open up because everybody has their back,” Norwell says, adding that his old protégés help keep him young. Like most folks approaching a half-century of life, he has a variety of new aches, but he weighs only 13 more pounds — 168 total — than he did when he arrived at Camargo back in 1999.

“I like the idea of getting fresh guys,” Norwell says. “They’re fresh, it keeps you fresh, it’s helpful. You look back at some of the great things in history — like the Hoover Dam. If they built a Hoover Dam today, I’d be tempted just to quit my job and go work on building that dam. You know what I mean? Just because you’re building something that’s going to leave a mark for a really long time. Because what we do every day disappears by the next day. We’re cutting grass. That’s 98 percent of our job, and by the next day, you’re starting over. So how can I do something to put into the people who work closely with me? Help get them jobs and move them out.”

Planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. A little legacy, he says, helping others who will help others … who will help others … who will help others …

“I mean, it’s the truth,” he says. “If they were going to build a giant Hoover Dam again, I would love to go work on the construction crew and be part of that. That would be something — to be part of something a lot bigger. And I think you can be a part of something a lot bigger by building into people around you.”

Don’t hold back. Grow and move forward, onward, upward. And maybe share some drinks with old friends.