From the desk of GCM

GCSAA to offer limited services last week of December

Things are about to get a little quiet around here.

That's because GCSAA has instituted a staff furlough for Dec. 28-31, sandwiched between the Christmas holiday Dec. 24-25 and the New Year's Day holiday Jan. 1. The association headquarters will provide minimal services through its call center on the days of the furlough.

Have a safe and happy holiday, and we'll be back here with new content Monday, Jan. 4.

Go west, young man: Myers heads to LACC

Russ Myers, CGCS, knew that 2009 would be an eventful year, both professionally and personally. He just didn't realize exactly how eventful it would become.

Shortly after the superintendent at Southern Hills CC in Tulsa, Okla., played host to August's U.S. Amateur and following his marriage and subsequent honeymoon in September, the 15-year GCSAA member decided to add another wrinkle to the mix — a change of professional address halfway around the country as the head of golf course maintenance at storied Los Angeles Country Club.

In the same year that his close friend and former roommate at SUNY-Cobleskill, Craig Currier, made a similar high-profile move from Bethpage (N.Y.) State Park to the private Glen Oaks Club on Long Island, Myers is leaving a facility where he hosted the wildly successful 2007 PGA Championship for a course on the verge of a major restoration of its famed North Course.

New challenges ahead for Currier

On a day when many along the Eastern Seaboard were busy digging out from one of the biggest snowstorms in recent years, Craig Currier was doing some digging of his own, plowing through more than 12 years of memories and mementos as he packed up his office and prepared for his final day as the superintendent at Bethpage (N.Y.) State Park.

Currier, an 18-year GCSAA member who is in a select group of superintendents who have hosted multiple U.S. Opens at the same facility, is leaving Bethpage, taking on the position of superintendent at the Glen Oaks Club in Old Westbury, N.Y., a private 27-hole facility just a short drive down the Long Island Expressway from the public facility he's tended to since 1997. His new position officially begins Jan. 1.

In his first interview since news of his move broke in the pages of Newsday in late November, Currier says the opening at Glen Oaks was a "once-in-a-lifetime deal.

"It's definitely a new chapter in my career," he says. "I've been at Bethpage for 12 1/2 years, and I've loved it and all of the people I've worked with. But as I considered the offer, I just thought it was now or never. It's a good move for my family and kids — I'm still on Long Island, and my wife can keep her job, which is great. The timing was right."

Now I want my own reality show

Only 11 days after I made this post, begging for a network (preferably HBO) to make a TV series out of Q School, NBC announces "Ticket to the Tour" will air on Saturday, Jan. 2nd.

From PGATour.com (click the link to watch the commercial):

It's a recurring drama that plays out every fall -- professional golfers on the brink of realizing their goal of becoming PGA TOUR members, either through the months of intense competition on the Nationwide Tour, culminating with the Nationwide Tour Championship, or through the grueling six-day marathon known as the PGA TOUR Qualifying Tournament.

Jackson picks his pro

Over the past five years, Florida GCSA Executive Director (and longtime GCM friend) Joel Jackson, CGCS, has finished 4th of 5th in the ING Pick Your Pro Contest. In 2008 when Razor Golf picked up sponsorship of the contest and Jackson finished 4th, he walked away with a Carnivore driver -- and he was happy.

Well, he's happier now. The former superintendent, big time executive, columnist and all around bon vivant (which in French means, by the way, good liver -- I don't know whether that means you live good or you actually have a good liver) has taken home the whole tote bag this year by claiming the top prize of a complete set of Razor Golf woods, irons, headcovers and bag. And not in a small way, but by being nearly 780,000 points ahead of the second-place finisher.

The contest has each entrant (ING members only) choose a different player for each FedEx Cup tournament, and they can only use a player once. Entrants are credited in points equal to the amount of official dollars the player earns in the tournament. At the end of the season, the top 15 accumulative point winners earn prizes from Razor Golf.

So congrats to Joel for sitting on top (Rees Jones finished 14th). Wondering if his golf prediction skills translate to the lottery, Joel tells me he can't get three numbers in a row to win his $5 back. That's OK, Joel, I don't think Rees has won the lottery, either.

New environmental sponsor for Phoenix Open; Good ink for UgMO

A couple of fun stories in the golf industry today, both involving TPC Scottsdale and our friend superintendent Jeff Plotts.

First, the PGA Tour's Phoenix Open,formerly known as the FBR Open, will now be known as the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Based in Houston, Waste Management is North America's largest environmental service provider.

Waste Management provides waste solutions like practical and sustainable renewable energy alternatives, comprehensive sustainability evaluations and new technologies to recover the resource in waste. Their core business is the collection, transportation, disposal and recycling of waste.

This should be a great partnership with the Phoenix Open, a tournament which regularly smashes attendance records on the PGA Tour.

"It is our plan to implement our service at the Waste Management Phoenix Open... and eventually turn this major sports event into the greenest tournament on the PGA Tour," says David Aardsma, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the company. "It is our plan to showcase practical reduction and recycling solutions and raise awareness about solutions that fans and communities can incorporate into their businesses and lives."

John Deere to sponsor Turf Bowl

GCSAA's annual Turf Bowl, a staple of conference and show for the past 15 years, has it's first corporate sponsor — John Deere Golf. And it also has a new attraction at the end of the competition — a series of cash prizes for the event's top teams.

The competition pits teams of undergraduate turfgrass students from across the country in a competition featuring questions in math, turfgrass growth and development and ID tests in soil, disease, weeds, insects and turfgrass species. Last year in New Orleans, a team of students from Purdue University won the top prize, ending Iowa State's run of seven consecutive Turf Bowl titles.

The complete press release about this partnership is posted below:

The Golf Book

If you're a fan of Sports Illustrated, you may have noticed that the magazine has been producing a book about every year, focused on a major sport. They've released "The Baseball Book," "The Football Book," "The Basketball Book" and "The College Football Book."

Well, golf is finally getting its turn. "The Golf Book" is in stores now, and might be a good idea for the golfer -- or golf course superintendent -- on your Christmas list.

SI was kind enough to send me a review copy. It's quite a nice book. It's a big book, like a coffee table book, and its mostly photos, with the occasional story sprinkled in here and there to keep it from being simply a photo book.

The super blogging sensation continues

Any more, it seems as soon as I post about one superintendent who has taken the plunge into the world of blogging, another sends me a note about their first steps into cyberspace.

Such was the case last week, when less than an hour after I added Tony Nysse and the team at Pine Tree GC in Boynton Beach, Fla., to our list, I received an e-mail from Rick Tegtmeier, CGCS at Des Moines (Iowa) G&CC with information about his new blog focused on golf course maintenance at one of Iowa's most renowned layouts

Tegtmeier told me that he'd been interested in blogging for sometime, but had been carefully watching what others in the industry were doing on the Internet, noting what he liked and what he didn't before diving in himself. "I wanted to hit the ground with a full-blown site that had a lot of information," the 28-year GCSAA member wrote. "I have all of my club newsletters that I have sent over the last 3 years and I have a history section, homeowners section, a video section of our homemade "how-to videos," and I am now working on our maintenance staff part. Thought I would share it with you.

"I have been watching and learning from the blog sites that you post. Thanks for sharing them with us."

Happy to do it, Rick, and glad you're finding inspiration in our blogging and the blogging of others. As always, you can access any and all of our super bloggers through the list you can find on the lower right side of this page.

Q School

I wish every sport had a Q School.

In the NBA, NFL, MLB, wherever, unless the player is a superstar, they usually fade away from the sport. That's because many of them are trying to make a team up until all the teams in the league say, "Sorry, we don't have a spot for you." And the player is forced into retirement, with no hoopla.

For example, when Antoine Carr, the original Big Dog, retired from the NBA, did anyone notice? Not really. He just wasn't on a roster anymore.

But as a fan of the Big Dog, I wanted to know what happened to him.

Every year I like to look at the list of players competing in Q School. I'm always shocked at how many of the players I've met, or watched on TV. And here they are, fighting for their Tour card.