Defining Today’s Golf Teaching Professional
Photo by borisvolodnikovBy Andrew Penner
USGTF Level III Member, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
100 Tips for Golf Managers Book “Coming Soon”
Photo by longhorndaveThe purpose of this book is to present to you thoughts and ideas on golf management in order to motivate, encourage and guide you in the industry.
Here are a few excerpts from the upcoming book.
- Golf management provides a great opportunity to learn and grow personally. Therefore, take advantage of this. You will be the same today as you will be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet.
- Constantly challenge your employees to develop new skills. Ask them to put themselves into situations where they can grow personally and professionally. In other words, take your employees on a journey with a specific outcome.
- You don’t need to be an accountant, an agronomist, a lawyer or have a degree in marketing to manage a golf facility. You will, however, require people skills, know how to delegate and empower and be inquisitive and knowledgeable in many of these areas.
- Regular meetings with the entire staff are essential. Plan in advance for these. Proper planning prevents poor performance. Have a message and a goal in mind. Each meeting should begin with a follow-up of the results of the previous meeting. You can keep these meetings upbeat and even fun and still ensure that your objectives are achieved.
- Pay close attention to fostering a good relationship with the teaching professionals at your facility. They are unique ambassadors to the industry. Their ideas, input and suggestions can be very valuable to a successful operation. Always try to ensure their success.
- Members need to know that if there is an issue, you as the general manager, are going to face it. Anything can be solved as long as you are open to communication. Most things in golf management can be summarized in two words: Challenge, Response.
- Be a student of your industry; trends, competition and niche opportunities. If you are not continually learning about golf management, you won’t be in first place.
- When you happen to play golf with a member or guest, never allow yourself the opportunity to be judged negatively. A well-adjusted person is one who can play golf as if it were a game.
Golf Management Info Regarding Aerifying Greens
Photo by ShellVacationsHospitalityGolf greens are usually aerified with 3/8 inch hollow tines and 1 ½ inch spacing from hole to hole. These are some of the advantages and disadvantages of Aerifying golf greens:
Advantages:
• Relieves soil compaction • Allows deeper, faster penetration of water, air, fertilizer, and pesticides in the root zone. • Allows for the atmospheric release of toxic gases from the root zone. • Improves drainage, helping to dry out saturated soils and prevent the formation of puddles. • Improves water penetration into dry or hydrophobic soils. • Penetrates the soil layers that develop from topdressing with dissimilar materials. • Provides thatch control by stimulating the environmental conditions that promote healthy soil microorganism activity for thatch decomposition. • Increases rooting by constructing a medium more conducive to active root growth.Disadvantages:
• Temporarily disrupts playing surface. • Increases turf surface desiccation as roots are exposed. • Produces coring holes that provide a better habitat for cutworms and other insect pests. As you can see, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for the long-term health of the green year round.
A Golf Management Primer on Golf Course Design
Photo by dMap Travel GuideBy Patrick White
USGTF Contributing Writer, Middlesex, VT
Nature’s Intentions
It’s no insult to today’s golf course architects – who as a group are exceptionally talented and knowledgeable in the fields of art, science, and design – to point out that for all of the technology, financing and modern earth moving equipment at their disposal, they seldom are able to match Mother Nature when it comes to crafting golfing rounds. It’s the courses on the sandy, barren, Scottish linksland that have served, directly or indirectly as the inspiration for all golf course architecture. These layouts were built by wind, water and other natural forces, while grazing sheep and burrowing animals seeking shelter gave the layouts their character and provided ready made hazards.History of Design
Still, even the most revered of these venues were improved by man. While golf has been played at St. Andrews since the 15th century, it was the imagination of golfers over several centuries that sought out routings to take the best advantage of the natural topography. And when the game advanced beyond what the site would allow, golfers didn’t hesitate to make changes. In 1764 at St. Andrews, four existing holes were combined to form two, resulting in an 18 hole course that would become the standard for the game. Later in the 1830’s, club maker and top golf professional Alan Robertson was commissioned to widen the fairways on the course and improve a green on the Road Hole – the first known putting surface to be designed by man. Bolstered by the experience, Robertson would go on to “design” other rudimentary courses in the British Isles, helping to lay the cornerstone of the golf architecture profession we know today. Robertson’s protégée’, Old Tom Morris continued the work on the St. Andrews course, and added further to the legitimacy of golf design by continuing to improve the Old Course and building the New Course at St. Andrews. Others, notably the Dunn and Park families of Mussel burgh, Scotland, began to hear the calling of course design and their work began to spread the game of golf throughout the British Isles and beyond.Architecture Expands
It was during this expansion of the game that the practice of golf architecture truly came into its own. Faced with sites that lacked natural characteristics of the Scottish sea sides, architects were forced to do more to the land and rely less on Mother Nature. Most prominently, this transition took place in the Heathlands near London in the late 1800’s. There, course design pioneers such as Willie Park Jr., H.S. Colt and H.S. Fowler proved that, with some tree clearing, a bit of earth moving and a little imagination, inland sites could provide a satisfactory and even impressive environment for golf. Such adaptation and improvisation proved prescient, because around the same time golf was gaining popularity in the U.S. – where the landforms had little in common with the Scottish linksland. Among the earliest pioneers to build courses in North America was Scotsman Willie Davis, who laid out such seminal courses as Royal Montreal in Canada, the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island and Shinnecock Hills on Long Island. Others, mainly Scottish immigrants, were frequently contracted to construct courses, often on the estates of wealthy patrons new to the game. Beyond the few highly respected courses of the day, most of the earliest American golf architecture was rudimentary at best. In a recent book entitled “18 Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon,” golf architecture and historian Geoffrey Cornish documented the fast and furious nature by which many courses were “staked out” by Scottish transplants traveling through town. Some of these courses contained ridiculous 700 yard holes while others were just a mundane collection of greens and tees placed out on non-descript land. Even so, these rustic courses helped to spread the gospel of golf in this country. One of the figures to call for courses of greater design quality was Walter Travis, an Australian who came to this country and established himself as perhaps an amateur golfing champion, accomplished course designer and leading writer / editor on all topics golf. His work, along with a largely Scottish contingent, helped rectify the situation in the first decades of the twentieth century with scores of improved layouts.Old Meets New
Ironically, if there was a father of golf architecture in America, it was Canadian-born Charles Blair Macdonald. Macdonald was among the first to intensively study the greatest golf holes of Europe and adapt (not to be confused with “copy”) them to sites in America. In 1907 he penned an essay setting forth the criteria by which a golf course could be evaluated, including such factors as soil, natural terrain, and quality of turf, as well as the length and variety of holes. His methods for judging one course against another represented an early precursor to the modern infatuation with course “rankings” that today seems to color any discussion of golf architecture. The essence of Macdonald’s approach can be found at The National Golf Links on Long Island, a collection of what he considered the world’s best golf holes. Among these specimens are interpretations of such holes s the Rhedan, Sahara and the Alps. Obviously, both at The National on other courses, the natural topography necessarily altered the holes slightly, sometimes allowing for new interpretations of the great holes considered even more impressive than the originals. Some setting in America, though a far cry from Scottish linksland, proved just as ideal for golf – albeit with more effort required to prepare them. When businessman and amateur golfer George Crump saw the sandy soils and natural movement of the land in the pine forests of southern New Jersey, he made it his life’s calling to design and build a golf course there. The result, Pine Valley Golf Club, is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest courses. With input from some of the world’s most accomplished architects of the day, Crump hewed out a course far different from those Scottish golfers were accustomed to. Pine Valley was one example of a new style of golf architecture that was emerging, dictated in many ways by the landforms available. In the place of open, hard, fast ground of Scotland that encouraged bump-and-run approaches came greens and fairways surrounded by trees, sand or water, many times requiring aerial approaches. Fortunately, equipment improvements at the time helped facilitate this type of shot making. And many American courses were less influenced by wind than their Scottish counterparts, again, allowing greater emphasis on higher shots. The 1920s proved to be a glamorous period for golf architecture in America – figures such as Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, William Flynn, Seth Raynor and other were all active during this time. And with the national economy booming, there was increased financing available to purchase land and build courses. Still, even during this ere, architects were limited by a lack of mechanized earth moving equipment and were forced to mostly rely on the natural contours of the site. As Ross stated at the time, “God created golf holes. It is the duty of the architect to discover them.”Technology Brings Innovation
In the middle of the century, as prime building sites became more scarce and heavy equipment more commonplace, golf architects found themselves moving beyond largely “discovering” and improving golf holes to, in many cases, actually constructing them. Around this time, Robert Trent Jones, a golf architect and born self-promoter, brought a new consciousness of course design to the golfing public and a new stature to the profession. His innovations went beyond marketing, however. Jones was a pioneer in the design of tee boxes and other course features to accommodate various golfing abilities. “It’s easy to set up a golf hole and golf course for the professionals in this manner. But setting it up for the professional, the average club member, the senior player and the woman player at the same time is another matter,” wrote Jones in his book, Golf’s Magnificent Challenge. “Flexibility in tee placement would seem to solve the problem, but it really doesn’t. Place the bunkers for strong players and sometimes women can’t get over them on the second shots. String multiple bunkers along the fairway’s edge and the women then are playing the better men. Often there is no total solution, no way to accommodate all classes of golfers. But the conscientious architect will devote careful attention to achieving the best possible compromise.”The American Society of Golf Course Architects offers a free brochure on “Selecting Your Golf Course Architect: Questions & Answers.” For more information on ASGCA, visit their website at www.golfdesign.org.
Patrick White assisted golf architect / historian Geoffrey Cornish with two recent books on golf architecture: “18 Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon: A chronicle of North American Golf Course Architecture,” published by Grant Books and “Classic Golf Hole Design: Using the Greatest Holes as Inspiration for Modern Courses,” published by John Wiley & Sons.
Praise employee’s effectively.
Photo by rsepulveda
A golf club manager’s most powerful tool is the ability to praise your staff effectively. “The sandwich technique,” in which you couple a piece of praise with an item of critique is a good way of getting the results that you want. For more information on “the sandwich technique” please refer to Golf Teaching Pro magazine, Summer edition at usgtf.com
Try to be specific in your praise. A vague statement like “You’re doing a great job,” is less meaningful then a precise description such as “The pro shop has never looked better, keep up the good work.”
A good golf manager plans his week in 30 minutes.
Photo by chispita_666It is a well known fact that to manage a golf facility takes a certain amount of planning. Simply ask yourself these questions
• What results do you want to see by the end of the week? Write them down and rank them according to importance.
• What do you have to do to achieve your goals? List the necessary activities, and put them in sequence.
• How much time will each activity require? To plan realistically, allow yourself more time than you think you will actually need. This gives you flexibility if unexpected problems develop.
Take a look at your calendar and decide when you can accomplish each activity. Most people underestimate the power of a schedule, but you won’t get much accomplished in the golf management industry if you don’t schedule time to plan your week.
Tactics to boost morale
Managing with questions.
Wisdom of Golf Management