From the desk of GCM

A loss for the Penn State family

It's been a sad few weeks for the alumni, faculty and friends of the Penn State turfgrass program, as they have been mourning the death of Paul Heller, Ph.D. (pictured here in the blue shirt, alongside another Penn Stater, Robert Walker, during a visit to St. David's GC in Wayne, Pa.). Heller was a longtime professor of entomology in the program who died on Jan. 18 after a long bout with colon cancer. He was 61.

Shortly after Heller's passing, we heard from Henry Wetzel, Ph.D., a former student of Heller's who now works as a turfgrass consultant based out of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. He's assisting us in putting together a short obituary for Heller that we'll publish in the March issue of GCM, and sent along a remembrance of Heller that he wrote for the Philadelphia GCSA's March newsletter. We thought our blog would be a great place for folks to get a more-detailed sense of what Heller meant to the Penn State family, so we're pleased to present Wetzel's thoughts today.

I was deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of Dr. Paul Heller, Professor of Entomology at The Pennsylvania State University. I first met Paul in grade school as a tag-a-long with my father at St. David's G.C. Reflecting back, little did I know that Paul was instilling in me the basic principles of integrated pest management (IPM) needed to make the best management decisions for turfgrass. I have fond memories of Paul and Bob Walker visiting St. David's while I was in high school, establishing and evaluating experimental or demonstration insect management plots. If Paul was tied up with teaching or extension responsibilities, Bob visited and collected data with Dad, but typically they visited as a team.

GCM hits the iPhone; more super bloggers

I swear this is totally coincidental, but less than 24 hours after the marketing machine that is Apple unveiled it's latest toy, the very first iPhone compatible (and, ultimately, I assume iPad compatible) issue of GCM has hit our digital newsstands.

As you may or may not already know, the first fully digital edition of GCM launched in July of 2009. It's an exact replication of the printed magazine, complete with live Web links in both advertising and editorial, the ability to share stories or entire issues through a variety of sources and capabilities that include embedded video and audio. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you head over and check it out right now.

An extension of that step into the digital world is the unveiling of the iPhone version of GCM. Now, this isn't a separate app that you need to download. In essence, this is a mobile-enabled version specifically for the iPhone (don't worry, Blackberry users. Our provider, Advanced Publishing, will have your version up and running in no time). You'll just open Safari, type in the URL http://digitalgcm.gcsaa.org and you're off and running.

Superintendent Thousandaire -- Jones versus the other guys

You might remember at last year's GIS I was invited by BASF to play Turf Jeopardy against some of our industry rivals. (In case you don't remember,  I won, and BASF donated $1,000 to the three participants' charities of choice.)

Well, BASF has another game for all of us attendees at the GIS in San Diego, and once again, they've asked a couple of turf media members to go at it for the sake of charity.

And of course I said "yes!"

This year's game is dubbed "Superintendent Thousandaire"and will be a riff on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" BASF has written up a nice blog about the game, the competitors, and who we're all playing for. You can read that here.  If you'd like to come out and watch the game in person, stop by BASF's booth (3039) at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 11th.

If you are a superintendent who would like to play Superintendent Thousandaire (and win up to $1,000)  click over to here and tell them why you want to play. Tell 'em Jonesy sent ya.

We Are Golf initiative set to launch

An effort to score some points for the game of golf, both on Capitol Hill and in the court of public opinion, will officially tee off later this week at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., and GCSAA is among the golf organizations at the heart of this effort.

We Are Golf, which is being described as "an initiative to change the face of golf and to represent the economic, human and environmental benefits of the industry," was announced via a press release today and will be formerly introduced this Thursday at the PGA Show, with a second "official" announcement will take place during the Golf Industry Show in San Diego. It's a joint effort by GCSAA, the Club Managers Association of America, the National Golf Course Owners Association of America and the PGA of America to overcome some of the inequities the industry feels it faces at the local, state and national levels of government.

“We have learned that even though we have made some progress, the audiences that we are targeting do not know enough about our industry and how it has been affected by past legislation,” GCSAA CEO Mark Woodward, CGCS, said in the press release. “Take the environment, for example. Golf courses provide the infrastructure to help communities manage runoff and the green space provides a variety of benefits. We Are Golf will intensify our efforts to inform and educate on issues such as this.”

We Are Golf has secured the services of The Podesta Group, a Washington D.C.-based governmental and public affairs firm, to represent the effort in its legislative and advocacy efforts.

Here's the complete text of Monday's press release:

David Feherty, Roy Williams thinking about supers

A couple links you might enjoy.

First, David Feherty pens a column for Golf.com entitled "Modern greenskeepers are the PGA Tour's real magicians."Go for the superintendent love, stay for the Phil Mickeslon love handle pot-shot.

And then, our old (and to some around Lawrence, former) friend Roy Williams compares his job as a college basketball coach with that of a golf course superintendent in the Charlotte Observer. The quote was nabbed by longtime golf writer Ron Green Jr. Williams said, "I said this morning everybody thinks they're smarter than every basketball coach, and everybody thinks they're smarter than every golf course superintendent. You know what's best for the greens, and you know what's best for somebody else's team."

Heh, thanks, Coach. Hey, GCM got Coach Williams to talk about superintendents way back in the December 2002 issue. Wow, that was a long time ago... hard to believe. That was actually my first Reflections interview for GCM.

Williams told GCM:

Chargers, Cowboys ruin Reflections reverse-curse

No, I'm not a big San Diego Chargers fan. I like the Cowboys OK, more than a Chiefs fan is supposed to, really.

But I'm bumming that these two teams fell flat in the playoffs. I was hoping to start a new tradition -- featuring Super Bowl winners on the Reflections page.

Last year, we profiled Super Bowl champ Ben Roethlisberger in the February issue of GCM. It was perfect, because Roethlisberger won the Super Bowl a week after the magazine came out.

This year, I hedged my bets. I ran my Tony Romo interview in  January. Hey, they were playoff bound, OK? In February... I went with a former San Diego Charger. I haven't been able to get an interview with Phillip Rivers or LaDainian Tomlinson (though I was close with LT once), but I figured a player in a Chargers uniform... that counted as GCM  putting it's money on the Chargers.

Sorry. Both flopped. Apparently I should have gotten Favre.

Rules of golf go mobile and other stuff

The staff is GCM is hard at work on finishing up the February issue of the magazine. Lots of good stuff in there — profiles on the winners of the Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards, a look at good-friend-of-GCM Anthony Williams, CGCS, who is this year's winner of the President's Award for Environmental Leadership, an examination of how superintendents can survive, and maybe even thrive, while their courses struggle through serious financial hardships like bankruptcy.

But in the midst of all that work, a couple of interesting things have caught my attention that I wanted to pass along. The first comes from the USGA, which has now launched a mobile version of the rules of golf. It's currently available only for the iPhone or iTouch, but versions are on the way for both Blackberry and Android devices. In essence, they've boiled down every rule, definition and decision found in the printed version into an app you can access from your phone during a round of golf. Of course, you're not supposed to use phones while on the golf course, so not sure how that's going to work, but you'll figure it out.

Golf's secret boom in China

I came across an interesting story in the Financial Times recently. It's an in-depth story about a secret golf complex being constructed in Hainan, China. The size of the complex? Twenty-two courses large, my friends.

Click here for the full story, "Golf's secret boom in Hainan, China" by reporter Dan Washburn.

I asked some people-in-the-know from that corner of the world what they knew about this project, and the common response was, "Yeah... it's pretty secret." I also heard that the courses are going to be championship-caliber (which is echoed in the article) and that the courses are being built with the environment in mind.

There are some pretty amazing things in golf going on around the globe right now. I hope we get to learn more about this project soon. If you're in the know on this project, shoot me an email or stop by the GCM booth in San Diego to drop some more knowledge on me.

A Cinderella story

When I was in college many, many moons ago, I took a class called the History of Rock 'n' Roll.

Now, before you accuse me of going to clown college, let me say that this wasn't a class normally offered by the university. Instead, it was an option during "interterm," which was the three-week period between the first and second semesters where our liberal-arts education was put into full effect.

Students had a whole host of options during interterm. They could take a single class — offered every day, usually for two or three hours — with a wide array of topics to choose from. They could travel (I spent one interterm on a school-sponsored trip to Japan, Hong Kong and Korea). They could take part in a professional internship (I worked at a Kansas City radio station my senior year).

So maybe that's why, along with the obvious subject matter, I was so drawn to a news release I received last night from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., about their interterm program and one of the classes being offered right now — "Caddyshack 101: Lessons from the Coolest Sports Movie Ever Made."

A cyclone of super bloggers

We're always happy to spread the word about more of our friends in turf who have their own blogs, and here's another one: Iowa State University.

The Cyclones have been blogging since June 2009, and it looks like they've got the hang of it. Marcus Jones, a graduate research assistant at the university, tells me the site has had 5,000 views since they started it up. They're posting at a clip of about 10 posts a month.

"For not really knowing what to expect when we started, I would say the blog has been a huge success," Jones says. "I think the best part of this whole experience has been seeing how the industry responded to the blog with such energy. I have really enjoyed sharing information that will benefit superintendents and it has been great reading and learning from the articles that the superintendents post."

So check them out over at www.iaturf.blogspot.com when you get a chance. We'll also add them to our own list of Super Bloggers!