I’m pretty sure that, over the course of writing 400 or so columns, I’ve never once used the word “penultimate.” It’s such a cool-sounding fancy word that has a very simple meaning: “next to last.”

Well, kids, this is my penultimate column for Golf Course Industry.

After 15 years of filling up this back page with words, I’m going to write one more in December and then turn the space over to a new voice. I don’t know who it will be and I’m not going to ask ... it’s none of my business, really. We’ll all find out together when the January 2020 issue hits the streets.

In the meantime, let’s talk about some unfinished business.

I’ve tried to use this column over the years to shine a light on the good, the bad and (occasionally) the ugly of our happy little industry. And there is much that’s good.

Overall, I’m heartened that life has improved for superintendents over the past couple of decades. Recognition of your value among core golfers has grown dramatically. We’ve made huge progress in advocacy and understanding among lawmakers. Sympathetic coverage in the golf media is light years ahead of where it was in the ’90s. Fewer of y’all are dropping dead from overwork and lousy health habits, and more of you are achieving something akin to work-life balance. And we’ve built a culture of sustainability that will serve us well in the future.

But some stuff still sucks and there is work left to be done.

First, we haven’t made much progress in terms of managing golfer expectations. Blame television, blame the Tour, blame Augusta National, blame whomever ... but it’s really our own damned fault for being so good at creating fabulous fast and firm conditions at a wide range of facilities. Now we face a real challenge: How do you meet those expectations — which are often based on detail and “little things” — when you simply can’t hire enough bodies to do it?

Automation is, of course, the answer to that question. Yet the demand for something like autonomous fairway mowers is not being met by the manufacturing community for reasons I don’t fully understand. Where are the damned robots?

We need to stop pretending that there is a one-size-fits-all business model for golf course maintenance. The days of having 800 newly minted turf school graduates annually flooding the market and providing cheap “apprentice” labor are over and they’re never coming back. Stop bemoaning that and find a better way via technical schools, online education, and simple training and mentorship. Why can’t we hire for passion and fundamental skills and teach them the rest?

We must pay assistants more. Period. The future depends on it.

We also generalize way much about the “golf market.” I’ve been guilty as hell of this over the years. Too often we assume that all 14,800-ish facilities in the U.S. have access to resources and are managed by qualified supers. Not true today and never has been true.

Remember that less than half of facilities have a GCSAA member on staff and about a third of them have maintenance budgets under $300,000 annually. A big chunk of smaller-budget courses don’t even have a full-time superintendent. There isn’t one big golf market, there are at least a half-dozen smaller ones. Shouldn’t we adapt education and training strategies accordingly?

I’m glad to see more attention being paid to mental health but can we acknowledge that the majority of the anxiety we feel is self-induced? Honestly — and I hate to be the guy who finally says this — this notion that being a superintendent is the most stressful occupation in the world is utter nonsense.

We always make it sound like external factors (“unrealistic expectations”) are to blame when, in fact, the problem is this culture that we have perpetuated ourselves for a hundred years. This whole notion that turfheads are a society of mad monks who live and breathe every moment to produce perfect conditions needs to go away. Passion is great. Obsession? Not so much.

Here’s my advice: if you feel overwhelmed, talk to someone, go for a walk or workout, try some mindfulness, get some anti-depressant medication … DO SOMETHING instead of just bemoaning how tough it is.

Also, the idea that an article in Golf Digest somehow validates everything is bullshit. I love and respect Ron Whitten, but that piece did more harm than good.

So, there you have it ... my penultimate rant. There are a million more things I could bitch about, but it’s a beautiful day and I’m going for a power walk. In next month’s finale, I intend to share some love. Talk to you then.

We all want to be recognized for our talents and efforts. In fact, in a world where we take more than 93 million selfies a day, being ignored is certainly one of life’s biggest disappointments. One long-held suggestion to avoid being overlooked or taken for granted is this one: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

It’s advice offered by comedian Steve Martin, author Cal Newport (in a book with the same title) and printed on T-shirts and wall posters that adorn corporate breakrooms across our country. No matter our objective – recognition that leads to a promotion or simply the satisfaction that comes from a boss’s or colleague’s “good job” – excellence that demands attention seems a logical and valuable strategy.

Here are five attributes that can make you so good that you cannot be ignored:

1. Great attitude is a key factor in your success and ability to be noticed, whether you’re a golf course superintendent, golf professional or club manager. Savvy employers hire for attitude above other attributes. Stated in the negative, no one needs a grumpy or uncooperative manager leading today’s work force. There is enough friction in getting operational teams to perform at the high end of their capabilities without someone with a negative attitude pulling us down.

According to author Emily Smykal, whose findings were part of a CareerBuilder study by Harris Poll, nearly three in four employees (72 percent) spoke to the power of a positive attitude. “Positivity leads to a more productive workday and creates a better environment for fellow employees,” she writes. “Great employees consistently stand out for their upbeat attitudes and earn positive reputations for themselves.”

Building and keeping an attitude that leads others toward common goals requires a comprehensive understanding of the job’s requirements and a willingness to teach others to work harder, better and smarter. What’s more, great attitudes are contagious.

2. Eager learning keeps everyone involved sharp. Constant learners tend to be open, creative and receptive to new or different ideas – even if they’re someone else’s. Heather Huhman wrote on Glassdoor that an eagerness to learn shows openness to new ideas, willingness to think beyond today’s facts and invaluable curiosity. Robert Half, a specialist in recruitment and employment services, recommends that every resume show an eagerness to learn. This trait adds value for the employer and expands the performance potential of the employee. When you’re learning and growing, you are becoming a more valuable employee and one whose contributions are easily recognized.

3. Trustworthy teammates, especially in troubled times, are valued for their consistency, stability and integrity. Difficult and exigent circumstances reveal those who can stand tall and steady in crisis. One’s day-to-day commitment to being a trusted and respected teammate is manifested in a thousand acts. Ensuring that your actions match your words is an important trust-builder, as are genuine eye contact, thoughtful interactions, an openness to criticism, and the willingness to express oneself openly and with trust.

The world champion sprinter Carmelita Jeter breathlessly testified to the power of trusting teammates at the 2012 London Olympics when – after running the anchor leg on the women’s 4x100-meter relay team, she said: “I knew they trusted me like I trusted them. And I would not let them down.” Jeter and her trusting teammates bested a world record in the event that had stood for 27 years.

4. Mental toughness is critical when we encounter adversity, in life and on the job. Are you resilient and persistent enough to overcome challenging circumstances? According to Inc. magazine, qualities that make you mentally tougher are patience, perspective, focus (on priorities) and the willingness to confront adversity. The mentally tough understand that criticism or adversity is often not of a personal nature and see it as an opportunity to keep pushing toward their goal.

5. Careful planning – Planning is critical to sustained success. Managers who take a focused approach to plans and planning outperform their club’s budget. Advance planning reduces risk as managers identify potential threats and opportunities. Established, well-stated goals and objectives simplify and clarify your intentions.

Trimmers, blowers, power washers, generators, spreaders and robots.

ECHO Incorporated introduced a slew of new products during a media preview event Oct. 4 at its Lake Zurich, Illinois, headquarters. The products poised to spark the most interest in the golf market, though, stand out for what they don’t require – an operator.

ECHO, under its ECHO Robotics division, will become the latest company offering autonomous solutions to the North American golf market when it releases the RP-1200 range picker this fall. The RP-1200 joins the TM-2000 autonomous mower, giving ECHO Robotics a duo directed toward helping golf facilities handle the increasing volume of practice range maintenance. The range could offer a gateway to automation for superintendents, a group curious about robotic possibilities yet still leery of implementing operator-free technology on playing surfaces.

Golf Course Industry asked superintendents in its 2019 State of the Industry whether they are utilizing autonomous mowers. None of the 155 superintendents who answered the question indicated they use the technology on their respective courses, although it should be noted a few North American facilities deploy Cub Cadet’s RG3 on greens. A follow-up question asked how likely superintendents are to use autonomous mowers on greens, fairways and rough, with 57 percent answering “never” or “not likely” in all three areas.

The survey was distributed last December and didn’t include a question about the likelihood of using automation on a driving range. Since the release of the survey, the labor crunch affecting golf facilities has intensified. The U.S. unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent in October and thousands of superintendents spent significant periods in 2019 without a fully staffed crew. Conversations about robotics in golf and sports turf expanded earlier this year after ECHO Robotics unveiled the TM-2000 at the Sports Turf Managers Association Conference and Expo and John Deere announced an agreement to develop autonomous mowers for both markets with Netherlands-based Precision Makers before the Golf Industry Show.

ECHO Robotics will make its GIS debut in 2020 in Orlando. ECHO handheld products can be found in maintenance facilities across the country, but the RP-1200 is believed to be the company’s first golf-specific product. “It’s definitely exciting and a new adventure for us,” ECHO president Tim Dorsey says.

Vice president of robotics Joe Fahey and national robotics sales manager Jake Vollbeer are among the members of a team responsible for introducing the technology to superintendents and distributors. Demonstrations of the RP-1200 and TM-2000 working in tandem have commenced on select North American courses. Finding early adopters, Vollbeer adds, represents one of the company’s biggest challenge as it wades into a new market.

“Our internal knowledge at ECHO has grown dramatically over the last six months,” Vollbeer says. “It’s a continual educational process. We are trying to come up with different methodologies to educate the end user and the dealer, because things change very quick. The product that we have in front of us today isn’t anything like it was a year ago. It was completely different.”

The RP-1200 and TM-2000 were developed by Belgium-based robotics manufacturer Belrobotics, a company purchased by ECHO’s parent company Yamabaiko. Both products are available to greenkeepers throughout Europe, where automated mowers on sports fields and university grounds are common sights.

“We really believe this is the future,” Fahey says. “This has been proven in Europe. The Europeans are very much in tune with robotics. The number of robotic mowers sold in Europe is about ready to surpass traditional mowers. The market is huge there. North America is starting to figure it out.”

ECHO Robotics officials showed a video at the media preview event describing how Naxhelet Golf Club in Belgium maintains its range. The course’s system is fully automated, meaning balls are collected, cleaned and dispensed without human involvement. The video also illustrated how the TM-2000 works alongside the RP-1200, which holds around 280 balls. The TM-2000 features five blades, with height of cut capabilities ranging from ¾ of an inch to 4 inches. The mower can maintain up to six acres. The current version, Fahey says, doesn’t produce stripes.

“There are tradeoffs,” Fahey adds. “When you start mowing robotically, you are making a commitment to change. We all like stripes. But how about your grass looking like it was just mowed every single day? Would you be willing to have that tradeoff?”

Charging stations power the range picker and mower, and employees can monitor and control units via a mobile device or laptop. Once charged, the RP-1200 and TM-2000 work in a variety of conditions, including at night. Sonars alert the units of obstacles. Creating the infrastructure to operate the units requires installing wiring 2½ to 3 inches below the surface around a range.

“It starts with site selection,” Vollbeer says. “You go to the site and look for areas that we can’t go, like near a water feature. It’s then drawing a line in a plan, like an architectural plan where the wire is going to go, where the power is going to go, how do we get the power there. If the power is available and the site is good, it’s an afternoon to do the install. A ball drop can take a little more time depending how in-depth and complicated you want that ball drop to work.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s editor.

Tartan Talks No. 40

David Druzisky moved to Idaho before it became trendy, so he knows how to appreciate and utilize mountain views.

“Just let it happen,” he says. “Don’t mess it up.”

Druzisky joined the Tartan Talks podcast to describe his presence on an inland design island. Druzisky is the only ASGCA member based in Idaho. He moved to the Boise area in 2006 after beginning his career in Scottsdale, Arizona, another place where golf and majestic views intermingle.

The son of a golf course superintendent, Druzisky started his own firm in 1996. He was just 30 when he entered the ultra-competitive business. “I was probably too young and maybe naïve about it,” he says. “And it was probably a good thing because I didn’t realize the risk I was taking.”

To learn more about Druzisky’s background and work, enter bit.ly/DavidDruzisky into your web browser.

Remembering John Kinkead

Kinkead will be remembered by those in the industries he loved — notably golf and turf management — as an innovator and as a person whose perseverance set a tone for how Turfco continues to collaborate with its customers in products and services today.

It was in that innovative spirit that Kinkead, working closely with local golf superintendents in the Twin Cities, invented the first mechanized topdresser in 1961. Before then, topdressing in the industry consisted of slinging sand from shovels across greens and fairways. While still working at National Mower, the company founded in 1919 by his father, Robert, Kinkead spearheaded the introduction of numerous other turf innovations at Turfco. He also launched a company called Kinco.

Kinkead lived to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the family’s continuous contribution and joy in working in the golf industry. He also raised the company to international prominence as an inventive manufacturer of commercial-grade maintenance products for golf clubs, parks, agriculture, sports and landscaping, and held many patents.

Two of John’s sons, George and Scott, jointly operate Turfco.

“His legacy is with us every day,” Scott says. “He made being a good and honorable man, a dependable friend and loving father and respected business owner look so easy.”

DOLLARs (NO cENTS)

Sin City’s newest attraction boasts a big name (hello, Tom Fazio) and a bigger greens fee ($550?!) a chip shot from the Strip.

By Matt LaWell

Most of the first round of headlines about the new Wynn Golf Club, which opened last month in Las Vegas, has focused on its peak $550 greens fee, which, yes, sounds exorbitant compared to what most courses charge.

Consider, though, that the greens fee includes lithium battery-powered carts, caddies from a crew featuring more than a dozen current or former PGA pros, and four or five hours on the only course on the Strip — you can’t even play a round of putt-putt this close to the casinos — and it starts to feel almost like a bargain.

“And if you keep somebody from gambling for four-and-a-half hours,” says Brian Hawthorne, the executive director of golf operations, “we might be saving people money.”

Hawthorne joined a conference call last month with Tom Fazio, who partnered with his son, Logan, to reimagine a course he first designed almost 15 years ago. Fazio was Fazio, quipping about how he might have fired Logan if not for their familial bond, the “budget” he worked with (but not whether he came in under whatever that number might have been), and the great exaggerations of his retirement.

“That’s competition spreading rumors,” Fazio says. “Why would you retire from the business of designing golf courses? It’s easy, it’s fun, people pay you a lot of money and you work in great, exciting places for great people. Who would retire from that? Nobody. The only thing I retired from was going to meetings. I don’t go to meetings anymore because I don’t have enough time for meetings.”

“Most of the time we’re trying to block the views of surrounding areas, we’re trying to block the views of buildings,” Fazio says. “But we’re in Las Vegas, we’re on the Strip, we have these magnificent structures all around us and this magnificent environment of buildings and fun and excitement. There’s no way to hide them.” So, he embraced the surroundings.

The new course succeeds the old Wynn Golf Club, which closed Dec. 17, 2017 after a dozen years. During an earnings call two months before he shuttered the course with plans to develop a Paradise Park — a luxury hotel and convention center partnered with beaches, boat rides, water skiing and ziplines — former Wynn Resorts chairman Steve Wynn said transitioning from golf to broader entertainment would result in “a tremendous uptick in the value of our surrounding real estate.” What good is a 130-acre course that brings in a reported $5 million in profit when every one of those acres is worth two or three times that amount? “I’ve got a billion and a half dollars of real estate under that golf course,” Wynn said back in 2005.

But then Wynn resigned in February 2018 amid a flurry of sexual misconduct allegations and the executive team realized the financial benefits of a golf course. “Not only did we notice we lost 16,000 rounds of golf out there — 70 percent of which were cash — but we lost probably $10 million to $15 million worth of domestic casino business,” Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said on a 2018 earnings call.

The course might be key to future development, too. According to a recent profile of Wynn Resorts chairman Phil Satre published in The Nevada Independent, the company plans to develop on the 34-acre former New Frontier site it owns across the Strip from Wynn Las Vegas and Encore — and “getting the golf course back was critical to our positioning we have there,” Satre said.

For now, at least, “The idea was to incorporate not only the challenge from vegetation, but also relief and contour and framing and definition, and also some excitement in the terrain,” Fazio says. “We went from being a flat, narrow golf course to a rolling, elevated, framed setting.”

The course features Dominator Bentgrass greens, with Tifway II Bermudagrass and a seasonal ryegrass overseed on the rest of the turf — all under the eye of superintendent Jason Morgan, who received praise from Fazio.

“Every day during those hot summer months, those 100-plus degree days,” Morgan was “making sure the sprinklers were in the right position, making sure the spacing’s right,” Fazio says. “There’s so much detail that went into that course in a short space of time and Jason was the guy in the field making it happen.”

Oh, and about that $550 greens fee? “If you put the economics of everything involved in that, it’s really not a high price because of the value of that real estate, the value of what was spent to build it, the value to maintain it, the cost to maintain it in that location is extremely high,” Fazio says. “It’s shocking to me that a golf course exists in this location.”

Matt LaWell is GCI’s managing editor.

Spare Tire Storage Rack

At least one spare tire from every piece of equipment the Olde Florida Golf Club in Naples owns is stored in the 25-foot distance between the vertical beams of the Butler Building. Two-inch square tubing is welded the full length 10 inches away from the building’s horizontal beam so that various tire sizes can be stored in harmony. Five pieces of 1½-inch by 10-inch pieces of angle iron connect the 2-inch square tubing to the horizontal beam by welds. Also, for further structural support, additional 2-inch square tubing bars are welded to 1 ½-inch angle iron that is bolted to the beam and to the floor, spaced 60 inches apart. There are also four additional 2-inch support bars used to store scrap metal. The spare tires are organized and stored very efficiently. It took about one half-day to build and about $200 in materials. Guillermo Gomez, equipment manager, and Darren J. Davis, CGCS, are really good at what they do. Davis was the 82nd president of the GCSAA.

Granular Fertilizer Screen

This 2010 Lely Model W Fertilizer Spreader 3/8-inch mesh metal screen, with movable metal rod handle, is very effective for removing clumps of fertilizers and other bulk and bagged granular materials that can clog the aperture at the bottom of the hopper. One-inch angle iron framework is bolted to the sides of the hopper, which holds it in place, and the screen is easily removed when not needed. The materials were salvaged and already on-site and a former mechanic took about two hours to cut and mount the metal and screen. Former USGA senior agronomist Matt Nelson, co-owner, and Pat Borchard, co-owner, of Magic Valley Bentgrass/Magic Valley Turfgrass in Filer, Idaho, near Twin Falls, are very quality-oriented in everything they do.