When a disaster hits the golf course, a superintendent needs to be in communication with his management team and players to stay ahead of the panic damage. Sam Bauer, extension educator for the turfgrass science program at the University of Minnesota Extension, shows how to make sure that message says the right thing about how you’re handling the problem.
You’re a superintendent, you’ve got a disaster on the course. What do you do?
We do have several different tools available. We see a lot of golf courses right now just doing a blog. That is a really good resource for relaying what’s happening on the golf course. You have to be sure to communicate that you do have a blog to the membership and get those posts up in a timely fashion. The other one would be Twitter for more real-time responses of the course conditions. We see a lot of the higher-end courses as well even on there relaying, “Hey, we got a couple inches of rain, there’s going to be no cart traffic of course today.” Those two would be the main social media sources to get the message out to your membership. Obviously, there’s also email blasts to the club itself, if it is a country club or if they do have a membership base, to let them know what’s going on on the course.
When you’re talking about putting those messages out, what does that message look like?
Some of the very effective messages have been videos of what conditions are on the course if it was a really bad storm or something like that. It’s really good to relay that in video format to show what’s happening. For more of a detailed explanation, certainly a couple photos and then a nice writeup in layman’s terms of what’s happening turfwise on the course works, so there’s several different options. I think those that are doing it most effectively are doing a combination of the two.
In a lot of cases, whether it’s your general manager or your golf pro, it may be important to have them review what you’re writing to make sure it makes sense to them. They’re going to have a similar mind and viewpoint to what the golfing public has. For lack of a better term it’s really just dummying it down. Cut all the technical jargon and just flat out saying what’s going on without the turf science base in there.
How do you approach your management about these issues?
Let them know what is happening on the course and the potential implications. Give them a little insight on how long the course might be closed or what some of the damage could be down the road. You need to be sure they buy into what you’re telling them. You need to have them on board with you so they’re not behind your back saying “I don’t know what the superintendent is doing. This is his idea, and he’s telling us this but we’re not sure if it’s true or not.” You need to be sure they buy into that. That’s the most important thing. Once they do, they’re in a better situation to relay that message.
Just to be sure you answer all the questions they have just so nothing is left up in the air, making everything clear to them so they’re not second-guessing you. And you have to be confident and not second-guess yourself, as well. I’ve been in situations as well where it could go either way, you know, but it’s sort of this balance that the superintendent has to play and make the right decision in the moment. We all know decisions made in the moment are never the best, but you have to be sure that you’re confident in the decision you’re making and stand by it. I think you’ll have a lot more buy-in from your management if you’re confident. To be second-guessing yourself would have them second-guessing you as well.
When something happens on the course, what are the first three things you do?
First thing you do is you make an assessment. You see what the possible damage is. Once you have that assessment, you want to relay that not only your staff but also the clubhouse staff as well. Then, get an action plan in place, whether that action plan is to get a bunch of blowers or get some chainsaws or get water pumps or so forth. That’s how I see the situation laying out: Make assessments first, contact the relevant parties and then get a damage plan.
Right in the middle of steps two and three, when you’ve got your head around what the implications of the storm are, that’s the point when you start using Twitter and your blog to get the message out there.
Still pictures are great, and that’s included with step one. Be sure you’re taking pictures and video as it’s happening. We all get caught up in the heat of the moment to handle the problem, but you come back two hours later and the water level might not be where they were two hours ago so people can’t really understand what happened. It’s taking all this documentation when you’re doing the assessment that’s important. Pictures and videos speak volumes compared to words.
What do we have, 15,000 golf courses in the U.S.? There’s a community of superintendents, so I would be sure as a superintendent to touch base with the other three or four courses in your area and make sure they have a similar assessment to what you had. We don’t want one golf course going off and doing their own thing and making other ones look bad. It’s getting your head together with others in the community, and using those resources that are available by checking with the other superintendents.