The right tools for the job

I just returned from my annual fishing adventure in the wilds of northern Canada. It’s one of those fly-in deals where a dozen of us spend a week at an island camp in the middle of a huge glacial lake fishing our brains out 15 hours a day. It’s not unusual to catch 50 to100 fish per person each day, including 28-inch walleyes and monster 44-inch northern pike. No phones, no e-mail, no TV, no houses or shops or McDonalds around … just fishing, scratching manly body parts and telling lies amidst a million acres of unspoiled wilderness. In short, it’s a little slice of angling Nirvana that I look forward to all year.

Thanks to a snafu with the airline, Pat Jones didn't have his own fishing tackle, but that didn't stop him from reeling in a few big catches.

I had one teensy weensy problem this year: The wonderful folks at Northwest Airlines managed to lose my tackle box on the flight up. We arrived in the middle of the night, so there was no chance to buy any replacement gear. I had to borrow lures, reels, etc., from my buddies. My new “tackle box” consisted of a coffee can filled with a handful of orphan spoons and jigs I begged off of others. I still did okay, but I was bummed out that I didn’t have all the right tools for the job.

But, my misfortune led to my thinking about all the tools that superintendents and managers need to do their jobs well. I’m not talking about pesticides or mowing equipment. Instead, the most important and valuable tools are often things like budget templates, record-keeping spreadsheets, master plans, standard operating procedures, job descriptions, bidding forms, etc. After all, the business of golf course management demands good business practices as much as good agronomic techniques.

Golf Course News is looking for a few good business forms to add to our “Business Tools” section. You can help about 17,000 of your colleagues who visit our site each month by sending your “tools” to our associate editor, Rob Thomas, at rthomas@gie.net. We’re also looking for corporate information such as tank-mixing calculators, calibration info, FAQs and other tools developed by industry suppliers. Anything and everything will be appreciated and shared with others.

And, while you’re at it, please send me any spare fishing tackle you might have sitting around. Northwest still hasn’t found my tackle box.