Lawrence was hit by an ice storm last night. It's been raining here this morning, but the temperature has remained at 32 degrees... let's hope it stays that way. The photo is the view from my window here on the 4th floor of GCSAA HQ...
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OK, Greg Norman interview part II. Him and Bubba Watson almost won the Merrill Lynch Shootout last weekend... good to see Norman out there playing golf.
In this part, we talk about what he likes about superintendents, and why he wanted to get involved with the Environmental Institute for Golf...
GCM: What do you like about the people that are superintendents, and what is a common factor that they all share?
Norman: I think the common factor would be more of these guys have to make an adaption to what they’ve learned, to what they have in that 300 acres, or 120 acres or whatever the acreage is. You might go to an agronomy school, somewhere in the South, and end up at a golf course in Colorado. Some of the people I admire are the guys who can make that transition from one style of grass to another style of grass and do it seamlessly. Because there are a lot of differences in the soils and sand in the type of grasses you can put on them.
In Australia, for example it’s unique in its own right, down in the southern sand belt areas of Melbourne, because you have a Sutton’s mix, which is a grass we have on the greens down there -– it’s been around for maybe a century. It’s a mixture of five different grasses, on the putting green and it originated out of New Zealand. Because of the cold temperatures that can come in and the hot summers we have down there, the greens are always playable. Instead of using a transitional with rye, overseeding with rye on Bermuda, we always had three or four or five different grasses that could take care of it. And that to me was impressive to understand and learn about. I don’t know a lot about it, but I know the application and the application works. They’ve tried, they’ve gone into Royal Melbourne, for example, about 15 years ago, took out all the Sutton’s mix, tried to come back in with Penncross and A4 and (it) never worked. And now they’ve gone back to Sutton’s mix. So, again, there’s that greenkeeper committee, trying to keep up with technology, on the golf course, why change when the system is working?
GCM: We’ve got to talk about the Environmental Institute for Golf.
Norman: Yup.
GCM: Tell me how you got involved with them in the first place…
Norman: Well, I think again, it goes to, how big do you want your soapbox? They asked me to come in, just to be a, kind of like a figurehead. I told them I don’t want to be a figurehead. You guys have a wonderful platform here, it just depends on how you want to use your platform. And for a lot of reasons I said, I said I’ll go out there and I’ll be involved, but I want to be INVOLVED. I want to be involved by making more people aware that golf courses are good for the environment, not bad for the environment. To make sure that people understand that during golf course construction, the environmentalists, we work hand and glove together. We don’t fight each other.
When I first played golf in the late ‘70s early ‘80s in Europe, golf was looked on as an elitist sport and (for) degradation to the environment. I’ll never forget that. And it always ticked me off big-time, because when you look at the other way –- take a look at a residential community with no golf course -– they slash and burn and take everything down. You just take a look at state and federal governments, when they put a new freeway system, roadway system through, they don’t care about a wetland or a marsh. They just “shooo!” (wipes arm in a clearing motion) put them through there, they’re gonna go there. They don’t care about the runoff of the roads, they don’t care about the runoff off a supermarket, or a car park, where the water goes down a drain and gets flushed right into the ocean. We, as in golf courses, we control our runoff.
And yet everyone pointed there finger, they say, 'these guys, they pollute our waterway systems.' Well, I’ll tell you what –- we’re a hell of a lot cleaner than the majority of other things that are built out there. So I figure, these are my passions, these are my beliefs, these are the things I see take place… I said, you know, the EIFG… platform, soapbox, how big do you want it to be?
And I knew it’d be a slow process. Because to change the mentality that’s been built up over maybe half a century, overnight?… It’s gonna take time. And again, it’s making people aware, and brining people in. The people I have coming in on my advisory board are pretty high-profile powerful individuals in the world of golf. They understand the message. So, 1 turns to 2, 2 turns to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16, 16 to 32. So you see a doubling up, that’s the message I want to get out there -- golf is a pure game, and if done properly, it’ll work at protecting the environment. But again, done properly. Nobody’s ever written a booklet on the environment issues and sensitivity issues on building a golf courses and how we can do it. So write a book. Write a pamphlet. That’s the process we’re on right now.
GCM: You said it’s been a slow process. Has progress not come as quickly as you had thought?
Norman: To get the awareness out there? It’s taking a little bit longer than what I’d thought.
But a lot of people get asked into doing a lot of things. I get asked into a lot of advisory boards. Or to help other people. You have to be passionate about it and believe in it. But you’ve got to keep (knocks on table) knocking on the doors. You know? You got to send out your fliers and talk to them about it.
Steve Mona did a great job with it, unfortunately he’s leaving… but he did a great job with it because he believed in it. We’ll find his replacement, we’ll find a good believer in it. At the same time… I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed, I’m not saying that. Just probably a little bit slower than what I thought.
GCM: So is the EIFG a program you see yourself continuing to support in the future?
Norman: I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. It’s a great connector for me. I build golf courses. I understand it. I understand it from the sensitivity of a snail at Doonbeg (Golf Course in Ireland) to the harshness of a salt mine -- man, I’ve got a dichotomy of the pieces of property I’ve built up.
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