Hi Dave,
Doing any work out east (like way way out east in Asia)?
If you think you have it bad over there in the USA, at least your supers are qualified. Out here we are lucky to place a qualified person on a job.
Your thread brings to mind the problems we had years ago at one of our courses here. 36 holes, fully sandcapped etc. etc. all the bells and whistles (centralised irrigation), I think in the vicinity of 30-40million US$ would have been spent (excluding various gratuities to the approving bodies
).
Do you think we could convince the owner to hire a qualified super - so what pay him 200K a year, we are talking 36 holes and a big investment here? Oh no, the owner in his wisdom managed to snare an assistant at a local club for the princely sum of about 30K a year, an assistant who had never had 36 holes under his control, oh and no experience in the grasses at the new course.
Result, the course was basically "lost" in one year and if someone picked it up now they would be looking at rebuilding the whole thing.
Owners need to put supers role into perspective. They are in charge of a multimillion $$ investment that lives or dies on the decisions they make. They should be re-imbursed appropriately.