In a recently released country and western song, Trace Adkins sings about the “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” At first, you might wonder what in the world a Badonkadonk is. But it becomes quite clear after listening to the song and especially while watching the video – the Badonkadonk is a certain wiggle girls do in a bar while dancing to Adkins’ songs. For a quick visual, picture the Starbucks girls from the Golf Industry Show wearing very short skirts while, as Adkins puts it so eloquently, “working that money-maker.”
It would seem such a song would be very far from causing any kind of deep thought, but at the very end of the song, as the music is fading out, Adkins comes up with these words: “There it is right there, guys. That’s why we do what we do. It ain’t for the money or the glory or the free whiskey. It’s for the Ba-don-ka-donk!”
Well, that got me thinking. Why do we do what we do? What is your Badonkadonk? A quick look at the profession of the golf course superintendent would pick out a few things that it is not. To reference the song, it isn’t for the money. While superintendents’ pay has increased throughout the years, you won’t find many on the Forbes 500 list. Unless, of course that super duper mega lotto ticket you bought with your morning cup of coffee at the Quickie Mart at 4:30 a.m. pays off, or you take the advice of oil executive J. Paul Getty, “Rise early, work hard, strike oil.”
It probably also isn’t for the glory. It can be hard to feel glory when you are waist deep in a hole fixing an irrigation leak the day before the biggest outing of the year. Or when you’re giving instructions to your crew, and as hard as you try, you can’t ever remember the Spanish word for weed eater.
The reason why a golf course superintendent does what he does certainly isn’t for the free whiskey, however there might have been a spike in the sales of Visine in downtown Atlanta last month.
So what is your Badonkadonk?
As a former superintendent, I can speculate what some options might be. Maybe it is for the view. How many professions allow you to see some 300 plus sunrises every year? If you want to know what the weather is going to be like on a particular day, ask a golf course superintendent at 6 a.m. He has seen the weather patterns at his course, and he can feel what’s going to happen better than the Super Viper Triple Doppler radar that Mr. Smileyface on television uses to “predict” the forecast.
Perhaps it’s for the relationships he builds with his fellow superintendents. Like no other profession I’ve seen, superintendents share in each other’s glory, misery, troubles and laughter. It doesn’t matter if the courses are close competitors or counties or states apart, the common goal of maintaining quality turf for golfers everywhere is always at the forefront. Maybe the reason the superintendent does what he does is the ability to pass on a work ethic to his family and young workers. Throughout the course of his career, a superintendent comes in contact with many impressionable young workers that are looking for a model to follow for a successful career in golf or other fields. Much like a farmer, the superintendent knows that every day, there’s a need to get out of bed and do something.
We all have our different reasons for why our feet hit the floor every morning. As the old saying goes, “if you find a job that you enjoy, you will never work another day in your life.” I don’t know if it is possible never to feel like you’re working, because even when I get a chance to play golf, it often feels like work. But if you look for the real reasons you go to work every day, look for your Badonkadonk, and you probably won’t find young girls in short skirts shaking, “what her mama gave her,” but you will enjoy what you do find just as much. GCN
Blaine Pinkerton is a technical representative for Green Velvet Sod Farms in Dayton, Ohio. He can be reached at blaine@greenvelvet.com.