If you’re a superintendent or manager, always assume you’re the first impression. Whether it’s an email, a direct message, a phone call or a verbal conversation, always assume you’re the first contact.?

The industry is struggling to find new people, GOOD people, who will find a passion and make this a career. The solution could be as simple as you.?

We all remember our first contacts in the industry. They were the people who completely changed our lives. Did they know it at the time? How do you know that you’re a student’s first impression? You don’t! Always assume you’re the first impression.?

This industry is very small. You don’t know when you’ll have someone approach you about your career and their interest. What will you do??

If that student takes an interest in your work, pass along your contact information, show them how to mow a green, arrange a meeting with them or offer advice, support and encouragement. Even if you can’t help, tell them, “Keep me updated on your journey,” at the very least. ?

You’d be surprised how far a five-minute conversation can take you and that student. We don’t know where the next graduating class will be in 10, 20 or 30 years. You want to be remembered for good reasons, right? ?

Encourage and help that student. They will always remember you when they’re applying to schools, internships and jobs.?

The industry only has two degrees of separation. Why not be the person they recommend to their fellow classmates or industry friends? It might help you land an employee, intern or student. ?

That student will always thank you. They will call you when they have landed a job or internship or have successfully accomplished something meaningful. ?

They will seek you out at a conference or a virtual lecture. One day they might introduce more students to you. ?

Turn on your camera and interact with others during virtual lectures. There might be a student on the other end who could gain a contact from you.?

Comment on a student’s Twitter post. You don’t know how much that means to them. The latest generation of students are very familiar with social media. It’s second nature. Social media is how students interact with prospective schools or employers. Respond and give them the time of day.?

Be the person who they come to when they have a problem. If you can’t fix it, you know someone who can.?

ALWAYS take a student seriously and talk to them today. If they come to you today, positively respond. Take that time to listen and treat them like a professional, because they will be professionals, too, one day.?

Most students know what they want or plan to do. Don’t wait for them to prove themselves before you listen. Make eye contact. Remember their name.?

Look at a student’s potential and not just the résumé. Be amazed by their achievements. In 20 years, they will come up to you and say, “Thank you” and “Remember me?” ?

You remember your first impressions. Now is your time to be the first impression.?

When they get a microphone or are put in your position, you will be the person they want to thank and resemble when it’s their turn to be the first impression. ?

Most of my interactions have been positive and have left me wanting to pursue this industry more.?

I’ve only had a few people brush me off, but had those been my first contacts, I would’ve never found my passion for this industry. Don’t be that person.?

Age means nothing. Treat everybody as a professional. If the student is being professional, you should too.?

Don’t just look at age and credentials. Look at their potential and where they might be in one, two or three decades.?

I have accomplished everything I have because of the kindness and encouragement from those who have supported me. My accomplishments wouldn’t exist without those people.?

DO NOT EVER be the person to dismiss someone for their age or lack of credentials. You can always get credentials, but you can’t teach passion.?

Don’t run irrigation on someone’s passion. See someone’s passion or potential. Grab onto them and don’t let them down. Take them under your wing. That student will be the new face of the industry. One day you can retire and say that the industry is in good hands.?

How many of you would be where you’re at today if your first impressions weren’t positive? How many of you would’ve had the confidence or support needed to get your education and/or your experience in the career you have today??

It took me SIX WEEKS to find the courage to reach out to the first person I ever spoke to in the industry. I thought I wasn’t worthy enough to ever get a response. They proved me wrong. But what if they didn’t respond at all??

More than a year later, I have the strongest professional connection with that person. This person has by far been one of my biggest supporters and has helped me to gain the confidence to accomplish as much as I have today.?

Because of my first few impressions, I have completely changed my academic and professional goals so I can continue to work with and for them.?

I will always be very grateful to those professionals and leaders in the industry. I look up to them and will be sure to give the same first impression when it’s my turn.

As everyone knows, this has been a very difficult year to find labor for golf course maintenance operations. We decided to get a little creative with our recruitment strategies this past spring at the Country Club of Asheville in the western North Carolina mountains. Instead of posting on a job board or a recruitment website, we reached out to local high schools.

I contacted five different high schools in Buncombe County and spoke directly with different guidance counselors. All of them were very helpful with recruiting students to join our team. I created a flier that was specifically geared toward students, highlighting the perks of working in golf course maintenance for the summer — including working outside, flexible hours, free lunches, golfing privileges and joining a fun team in an exciting work environment. Each school I contacted posted the flier in the school, with a few of them forwarding it to their golf coaches and teams to help spread the word. Some posted it in online job boards for their students.

I’ll be honest, I had no idea how this strategy may play out. But within a few days my inbox started flooding with emails from interested students. By the end of the week, I had more than a dozen interviews scheduled. By the middle of May, we had hired eight high school students to join our team. As schools started finishing exams, these new hires started showing up to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

It was like a breath of fresh air having these kids join our staff. They were eager to learn, and they all got along with each other and worked well with the existing staff. Within the first month, we had them trained on how to walk mow, rake bunkers, weed eat, fill divots, move tee markers, Buffalo blow, roll, and edge heads and valve boxes. Having these young, energetic high schoolers complete the more labor-intensive job assignments allowed our full-time staff to focus on mowing with the heavier machinery.

It was awesome having these young men work with us, but we all knew it wouldn’t last forever. As summer came winding down, they started going back to school and reality started setting in. A few of them were interested in working weekends throughout the school year, which has helped tremendously throughout the fall golf season. Those who didn’t want to work during the school year asked if they could come back and work next summer.

The most rewarding moment of the summer happened when a young man approached me before his last day and asked me how he could turn this into a career. I was honored to tell him about my journey and how I paved my way into the industry. I told him about some of the turf schools in the state and some of the scholarship opportunities available. He even borrowed a few turf management books I had in the office. This brief interaction made all those hours of training worth it.

This past summer at the Country Club of Asheville was very rewarding for me as a supervisor. With the current labor shortage, it is harder than ever to find dependable staff who show up with a positive attitude and take pride in their work.

There have been a lot of negative statements about this generation of teenagers and their work ethic — they won’t get off their phones, they’re spoiled, they won’t show up on time and they just don’t want to work. But I can proudly say from my experience that those things are not true, and that the future is very bright!

I think we have all been there. Early morning on the golf course, the sun crests over the horizon and the light filters through the trees to show a sight many don’t ever get to experience — those “magic hour” moments.

We pull out our phones and feverishly start snapping pics from different angles and vantage points. We run to our chosen social media platform and wax poetic, posting phrases such as “Blessed to be here,” “This is what it’s all about” and “The crew is killing it.” Before you let that feeling slip away, there is someone else we need to be thanking: the golf course architect.

I know what you are saying, “All they do is design the dang thing. It’s up to us to grow it in and maintain it to its present condition.” On some level this is true, and I don’t want to take away anything from what our staff does on a day-to-day basis. What I’m trying to say is sometimes the golf course architect gets low billing in this whole scenario.

I’m lucky enough to work on a Pete Dye design and it is amazing. The contouring and the angles in which Pete routed The Club at Chatham Hills are breathtaking. You know as well as I do that most people who play golf these days only care about one thing: How fast are the greens today? It’s sad to think that these individuals are missing out on what’s really important about golf. The rolling hills, the different angles you are given when attacking the green in relation to your tee shot, the placement of hazards and the shadows they cast to give the illusion of depth and size. All these elements converge to form the golfing experience.

Alister MacKenzie said, “Any architect worth his weight in salt would know that beauty is more important than strategy.” I’m just as guilty as the next guy and I get wrapped up in the green speeds as well. As I mature as a turf professional, I try to make it a point to educate myself on what golf course architecture really is and how it relates to my position. Whether it’s the Golden Age greats with their template holes or the modern-day giants with their minimalist designs, these courses were designed to challenge golfers and expand all their senses.

You might be thinking these designs are impossible to maintain with our budget and some features are too extreme. I get it. Pete designed The Club at Chatham Hills with more than 190 bunkers. It can be a struggle to maintain these bunkers, but we strive to keep them in top condition so we can match up with how they were originally designed to play. We task ourselves with high expectations, because we see the beauty that others do not. Thanks to the golf course architects, we get to have those “magic hour” moments daily and it pushes us to be better. I say all this knowing that the labor market is thin and finding employees is the most challenging thing we do.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Sometimes change is necessary and hard decisions must be made. I don’t fault or judge others for those choices, but if you have the knowledge and history of what made your course special, it may open the doors for alternate decisions. If possible, dive into the history of your course and find out what makes your course design important to your membership and ownership and focus on that.

When you show personal interest and reflect the interests of others, people are more apt to listen to what you want to accomplish. You may end up opening their minds — and their pocketbook — a little bit further. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Golden Age gem designed by A.W. Tillinghast or a run-of-the-mill course designed by Rosco P. Coltrane, all golf courses have a history and there is value in that history.

That’s the difference between a good and a great turf professional. The good look at the course, accept it at face value, and never develop a curiosity for its history or design. The great look at the course as a challenge, embrace and study those obstacles, and highlight those attributes that make it unique.

Golf course architecture is as fundamentally important as the grass that is growing on it. When you do get those “magic hour” moments, remember there was someone else standing there having those same feelings long before we took over. Our friend, the golf course architect.

Renovating bunkers, creating alternate lines of play and recontouring green surfaces are part of the foundations of golf course architecture. Play corridors that have been designed to give intelligent purpose to striking the ball can go beyond typical features. There are many factors that go into the design of a golf course that involve shaping the land. Let’s explore one underutilized area at many golf courses: stormwater treatment.

Shaping the land for golf was my original passion. It is what gets me excited when developing grading plans. Contouring the ground expands the types of shots played and entices players to be creative with ball striking. Not all golf shots need to be heroic. Sand bunkers do a wonderful job of visually establishing lines of play, but there are plenty of renowned golf courses with other features that determine golf angles. Just look at the famous 13th hole at Augusta National Golf Club.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects. Last century, when I worked for Cornish, Silva and Mungeam, we focused probably 60 to 70 percent of our time on new courses with the remainder on renovations or restorations. Restorations primarily focused on golf features and occasionally strayed outside the existing hole corridors when there was evidence. New course work mostly started with a canvas of forested or “landfill” landscapes. We routed courses to best utilize the topography for golf holes, minimizing adjustments to elevations. In New England, adjusting elevations often means blasting. The only place that worked effectively was Black Rock Country Club in Hingham, Massachusetts.

New courses required the understanding of stormwater and we took advantage of that knowledge by redefining watersheds so that stormwater was collected and used for irrigation. There are some courses, like The Golf Club at Oxford Greens in Oxford, Connecticut, that would not have had a sustainable water supply if these efforts would not have been made.

Recently, my projects have taken a slightly different look at stormwater. Now the focus is on water quality. To do this, I am creating swales or, one of my favorite terms, ditches to move water through pond shelves, forebays and soil filters. The key is to blend these manmade features with the golf course proper so they not only improve water quality, but also have a positive aesthetic impact and even become strategic elements.

The scope of a project more than 10 years in the making at Pine Orchard Yacht & Country Club in Branford, Connecticut, included rebuilding the first fairway, second tees, ninth tees and fairway, plus removing phragmites. Raising the fairways and improving the soil structure has eliminated the full moon flooding. When the next major storm comes crashing into Branford and neighboring New Haven, any flood water will now quickly drain away and prevent long-term standing water. With the 10-foot-tall phragmites removed, vistas were opened between holes and created the much-desired long views.

Sometimes lost is the value of the engineering metrics that defined the tidal flows, storm elevations and flood storage volumes I had to meet with regrading the hole corridors. (Thanks to BSC Group, a Boston-based multidisciplinary consulting firm, for those metrics.) A significant hole corridor adjustment was the re-alignment of the tidal creek across the first hole. Prior to the work, the creek had little effect on how the hole played for longer and more accomplished players. They blasted their tee shots to the soft but at least playable fairway. However, the creek had a detrimental effect on seniors, ladies and less accomplished players who often found their tee shots rolling in the water if they did not lay up. Can you imagine laying up almost 100 percent of the time on the opening tee shot, thus forcing the hole to become a par 5 because the approach shot was now out of range? This was not a strategic choice.

Shifting the creek alignment farther down the hole as part of the marsh regrading allowed for the shorter hitter to hit a full tee shot to the left fairway. Giving the creek a sinuous flow and splitting the fairway 65 percent left side no carry and 35 percent right side all carry gave the longer players something to ponder. Depending on the wind direction and strength, the average player now has a choice to try and carry the creek, playing up the tight right side alley or playing more left and bringing the newly expanded left greenside bunker into play.

Further up the New England coast, in Bristol, Rhode Island, is a tight, very rudimentary course called Bristol Golf Club. Bristol is a course that an editorial in The New York Times called the “Worst Course in America.” After my initial walk, hired as part of a team to improve water quality and habitat, I would agree. The second hole tee shot played with a major electrical transmission line 50 yards in front of the tee. The soil conditions were so wet I am still surprised that the majority of the site was not delineated as wetlands. Stormwater passes through the course from the neighboring industrial park and junkyard and is further enhanced by more Canadian geese than actually reside in Canada.

I looked at this project as an opportunity to not only improve the water quality and expand the wildlife habitat as the grant funding required, but also to save a golf course that, with some changes in tee location and a couple new greens, could be a great beginner’s course. Working with Wright-Pierce and Save the Bay, among other groups, I created a ditch that connects to special aquatic areas so stormwater traveled through pockets of native vegetation. US Pitchcare completely understood the concept, leaving found boulders and rock in place to provide additional erosion control and pockets for the water to settle. This is out of the ordinary for most golf course contractors as we often want to create maintainable turf.

Working within the modest budget placed limits on earthwork and expanded work areas. The site’s topography, or lack thereof, could only be enhanced with the material created in the stormwater excavation. Even the soil filter media was used for the tee and green rootzone to simplify the project. There was no existing soil suitable for a rootzone! So far, these ditches have done their job at consolidating stormwater from the playing areas, and even drying the surrounding soil.

The most manmade pond I’ve seen in many years was also transformed by adding two wet shelves with upland islands. These islands have hosted some small birds and they were planted with geese-limiting vegetation. Even geese don’t like thorns! To further limit geese, the wall-to-wall mowed rough is being transformed into out of play — even for a beginner’s course — native rough. Some areas will be mowed a couple times a year. Others will be transformed slowly, with successional vegetation, back to an eventual forest.

Phase 2 just finished and continued the water quality work and included a new green for that famous second hole. This green will have some contours that will mimic some of the stormwater swales and even define the surface into separate plateaus. You can’t take the architecture out of the project!

There are many aspects to golf course architecture that are unique to the profession. Redesigning bunkers is one. However, when an architect can resolve flooding, remove invasive species and create habitat for native species among other green infrastructure measures, and blend it thoughtfully with the demand of golf playability and maintenance, everyone wins. Given the apparent changes to our climate, these combined projects will only be more important going forward.