The seventh annual Syngenta Business Institute wrapped up today. GCM, on site for the event in North Carolina, asked several of the superintendents who were in attendance to describe their experience in one word.
Nate Fair, Wolf Run Golf Club, Zionsville, Ind.: "Fulfilling."
Junior Storie, The Links at The Rocks, North Little Rock, Ark.: "Insightful."
Bill Keene, Blacksburg (Va.) Country Club: "Awesome."
John Jeffreys, Pinehurst Resort, Pinehurst, N.C.: "Empowering."
Dave Smith, Fawn Lake Country Club, Spotsylvania, Va.: "Energizing."
Fred Gehrisch, CGCS, Highlands Falls Country Club, Highlands, N.C.: "Extraordinary."
John Cunningham, CGCS, Bellerive Country Club, St. Louis: "Motivating."
Cunningham, whose club will be the host to the 2018 PGA Championship, is convinced that it isn't necessarily business as usual for superintendents anymore. He gets it that now, perhaps more than ever, that their positions have grown beyond simply growing grass. That is why an event such as this, where they learned from Wake Forest Business School instructors who guided them through topics ranging from accruals to cultural perspectives, could help him become more complete in his job and, in the process, make Bellerive CC become the best that it can be in so many ways.
"We all went to school, got agronomy degrees, worked our way up through the ranks," Cunningham says, "but I think we're in leadership and management positions now. In my viewpoint, we're (superintendents) businessmen. There's some guys here who could be running companies. We are business leaders helping run multi-million dollar operations."
Read more about the Syngenta Business Institute in the January issue of GCM.
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