Summer couldn’t end soon enough for superintendents across the country, especially in the north and southeast where extreme heat and humidity did some serious damage to even the best-maintained courses.
2010 witnessed the worst weather in more than 25 years, and I’m sure there’s a lot more gray hair—if there’s any hair left at all—on the heads of supers everywhere. And speaking of heads, I know many of the younger members of our profession have never experienced a season like the one just past and are still scratching their craniums over the long list of agronomic ailments they had to deal with.
But we made it to fall, when cooler temperatures, shorter days, and hibernating members allow supers to catch their breath and get ready for the off-season turfgrass conference circuit. We’ll have a great deal to talk about—and commiserate over—as we meet and break bread with friends, colleagues, and fellow sufferers.
One feature common to most of these conferences is the regional “expert” who stands in front of the room and pontificates about the year just ended, dredging up the bad memories we’re trying to erase. I could never understand why after a miserable season we want to relive it. Sure, there are things we can learn from the past. But yesterday is history while tomorrow is the mystery. So why not a year in preview instead of review?
It makes more sense to look ahead, so here’s some of what I think we need to be doing in 2011. In the new year we should…
• …gather information that will protect ourselves from making the same mistakes again. This is especially important for those superintendents who have lost their jobs, fairly or unfairly.
• …increase off-season communication with our players/members. We have to tell them early and often why we are and doing what we’re doing, what steps we are taking to protect, promote, and preserve healthy turfgrass.
• …stop the green speed race. Golfers need to know that greens can be too fast, which usually leads to greens that can’t stand the strain of too many feet or too much heat.
• …remember that very few of us work at courses hosting a U.S. Open, so we shouldn’t attempt to maintain Open-like conditions for a week let alone an entire season. Memberships want to play golf, not wonder whether their courses are open because a small change in the weather caused a local environmental disaster.
• …get our members to worry about how their course is doing, not looking at the one down the street. Probably the smartest thing we can do is help our golfers understand just what it is we have to deal with and how they can help make things better.
• …recognize the issues that send up agronomic red flags and actively prevent their return. These include, but are not limited to, traffic wear, shade, height-of cut, poor irrigation practices, and shallow root systems. We need to identify the issues that have the greatest impact on our turf and be sure our members know and understand them, too.
• …call on our peers in the industry—fellow superintendents, consultants, and mentors—to help us do our jobs better, help us make the tough decisions, and most important, do it before a problem occurs.
• …keep our agronomic egos in check. Whether we are the member or the super, we need to remember that we’re never as good as we think we are and that in the constant battle with Mother Nature, she usually wins.
