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.
The other item comes from left field a little bit, but I was intrigued by this post from the blog of sportswriter Joe Posnanski. Joe is a longtime columnist for the Kansas City Star who recently took a new job as one of Sports Illustrated's main feature writers. I've known Joe a little bit because our wives were sorority sisters in college, and I've always respected his writing and his ability to draw readers in to topics and stories they might not otherwise care much about.
Case in point is this post, which recaps a speech he gave at this week's Sports Turf Managers Association (managed by former GCSAA'er Kim Heck) conference in Orlando on — you guessed it — turf. Joe knows nothing about turf. Most of the readers of his blog know nothing about turf. Yet, this speech, reprinted in its entirety in this post, seems to have struck a chord with those readers. I thought a group of people who actually did know a little something about turf would find it interesting.
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