I was 100% flat dead wrong

[John Kavanaugh]

About the effects of having a professional tournament at Victoria National in late June would have on the course.  As many of you know Victoria National held a Nationwide/Web.com tournament during the last week of June.  The temperatures were well over 100 deg each day as the course hosted 900 rounds of golf including Pro-ams and practice.  I played the course again for the first time this Saturday and in no way could tell anything out of the ordinary occurred over the past couple of weeks that I chose to be absent from the club.

I have never been shy about criticizing the GCSAA, USGA, PGA and every turf school with the exception of Penn State.  I've not been slow to lay blame on young shiny shoed supers.  Truth be known I've been a jerk to the industry in general.  I was wrong.

I would like to publicly show my appreciation to Matt Weitz, the Superintendent at Victoria National, his staff and all the fine people from all parts of the country who came to his aid. 

One request and one question.

The request:  If any of the supers on this board know Matt please let him know that he turned me after a decade of doubt.

The question:  What would you suggest that me and my fellow doubters could do for Matt and his staff to show our appreciation without creating a liability for ourselves or the club?

[Greg Tallman]

Tell him to read through your comments on GCA over the years and then this far shorter, less passionate apology.

[John Kavanaugh]

Tell him to read through your comments on GCA over the years and then this far shorter, less passionate apology.

Our last super printed out all of my comments.  I'm sure they are still in my file.

[Greg Tallman]

Tell him to read through your comments on GCA over the years and then this far shorter, less passionate apology.

Our last super printed out all of my comments.  I'm sure they are still in my file.

Seriously? Wow. Must have been a wonderful relationship!

[Ted Cahill]

When I saw the title to this post, I thought you were referring to your political leanings...

[John Kavanaugh]

Tell him to read through your comments on GCA over the years and then this far shorter, less passionate apology.

Our last super printed out all of my comments.  I'm sure they are still in my file.

Seriously? Wow. Must have been a wonderful relationship!

He moved on to a more high profile job and we found a better superintendent.  Turns out we were great for each other.

In fairness I must admit that this Saturday I spent most of my time waiting standing next to our greenside fans.  I've even considered asking the club if our high school football team could borrow one to cool off the team between plays.  I'm even coming around on the fans.

[Michael Whitaker]

Maybe your new super will firm up the greens so that dropping the flagstick won't damage them! 

[John Kavanaugh]

Maybe your new super will firm up the greens so that dropping the flagstick won't damage them! 

That is what is amazing.  The fairways and greens have remained firm both before and after the tournament!  I can't explain how he did it.  Even this Saturday, during a record drought and heat, the course was in as good of shape as anytime in the last 10 years.

Even the tees on the par 3's came away unscathed.  I don't get it.

[SL_Solow]

Other than buying him dinner or a bottle, the best thing you can do for any great Greenkeeper is to understand that sometime in the future some member(s) will decide that the greenkeeper doesn't know what he is doing and will seek to make his life miserable.  Since you know better, you must be ready to take up the cause and defend your Greenkeeper.  Employees, no matter how good they are, lose every "fight" with members unless other members are there to defend them.  Let him know you have his back.

[Robert Emmons]

John,

Offer to buy lunch for him and all his staff one day as a thank you for all their efforts...RHE

[Terry Lavin]

Have a "Man of the Year" outing in his honor, get a bunch of foursomes to play, have a dinner afterward, followed by a Roast, and let him pick the victim.  Everybody wins.

[JR Potts]

Maybe your new super will firm up the greens so that dropping the flagstick won't damage them! 

That is what is amazing.  The fairways and greens have remained firm both before and after the tournament!  I can't explain how he did it.  Even this Saturday, during a record drought and heat, the course was in as good of shape as anytime in the last 10 years.

Even the tees on the par 3's came away unscathed.  I don't get it.

900 rounds played by quality players on foot from multiple tees who actually replaced divots with mix and grass was likely a whole lot less damaging to your course than having 500 rounds with jag-offs on carts dragging their feet all over the greens and not repairing ball marks and divots.

Member play is the worst thing to happen to golf courses.  The vasy majority wants all of the quality without putting forth any of the personal care.

[Anthony_Nysse]

JK,
  I will pass along your comments to Matt. He's a very good Supt and deserving of a post such as Vic. I know the VN has been sprayed with one of the "sun screen" type products that have been spoken about in another thread. Place looked great on TV.

[Pete Lavallee]

I'm even coming around on the fans.

I vividly rember your displeasure when they were installed. Although VN looked great on TV, the fans really stuck out; several friends asked why on earth weren't they removed for the Event? Were they even used that week; can't the greens survive one week without them?

[Don_Mahaffey]

Other than buying him dinner or a bottle, the best thing you can do for any great Greenkeeper is to understand that sometime in the future some member(s) will decide that the greenkeeper doesn't know what he is doing and will seek to make his life miserable.  Since you know better, you must be ready to take up the cause and defend your Greenkeeper.  Employees, no matter how good they are, lose every "fight" with members unless other members are there to defend them.  Let him know you have his back.

This...its no fun being on the losing end of a mob mentality

[John Kavanaugh]

I'm even coming around on the fans.

I vividly rember your displeasure when they were installed. Although VN looked great on TV, the fans really stuck out; several friends asked why on earth weren't they removed for the Event? Were they even used that week; can't the greens survive one week without them?

Pete,

I am proud that I fought the fans from day one and accurately predicted that once we had one we would have twenty.  But I lost that battle and now use them to my own benefit to cool off my big fat self whenever possible.  One great thing about how Matt is utilizing the fans is evidenced by the fact that they were left up during the tournament.  It proves that the course was protected for the members enjoyment for the remainder of the golf season at the possible expense of a bunch of strangers playing for a ton of money.  I wasn't there but would guess that the fans were turned on before and after play each day in an attempt to manage the extreme temperatures we saw that week.  Perhaps they had originally intended to take the fans down but made a correct call in extreme conditions.

The fans are taken down for the period roughly from September to June which does let us enjoy the course when in Southern Indiana it is most enjoyable.  I have also noticed that the current management does evaluate the conditions and turn them off in the summer when ever possible.  The old super ran them 24 hours a day in the rain or cool evenings.  Did I say I love Matt?

If I were a young superintendent with a family at a course where fans were already installed and purchased I would use them as well.  The key, like herpes, is to not get them in the first place because fans once purchased will never go away.

Matt has also played a key role in refurbishing our Sub-Air system.  Maybe it is a coincidence but where this has been done the green in question went from worst to first.  We have also done extensive tree removal around the greens which were once shaded.  It's really all good.

[Kris Shreiner]

John,

Kudos to your acknowlegement of Matt's efforts, and admitting you may have had the lash out a bit too harshly in the past to those fellow turfheads in the industry. It is ONE TOUGH JOB to deliver for a facility consistently. During the occasional tough patch, they get roasted quite often and many are shown the door, even after having done a stellar job for YEARS prior.

We all can make a bad call, or mis-step, now and again. If the body of work has been solid, a reprieve is generally in order, unless the mishap was a total blunder that was avoidable and had severe financial repercussions.

I join you in toasting the dedicated turf pros (and the rest of those in the industry) that bring a passion and dedication to making a difference on their ground and in the game. I will also give a shout out to the PSU turf boyz who are working their tails off just now as we start hitting the blast furnace weeks here in PA. Stay cool folks!

Chers,
Kris

[Tim Martin]

About the effects of having a professional tournament at Victoria National in late June would have on the course.  As many of you know Victoria National held a Nationwide/Web.com tournament during the last week of June.  The temperatures were well over 100 deg each day as the course hosted 900 rounds of golf including Pro-ams and practice.  I played the course again for the first time this Saturday and in no way could tell anything out of the ordinary occurred over the past couple of weeks that I chose to be absent from the club.

I have never been shy about criticizing the GCSAA, USGA, PGA and every turf school with the exception of Penn State.  I've not been slow to lay blame on young shiny shoed supers.  Truth be known I've been a jerk to the industry in general.  I was wrong.

I would like to publicly show my appreciation to Matt Weitz, the Superintendent at Victoria National, his staff and all the fine people from all parts of the country who came to his aid. 

One request and one question.

The request:  If any of the supers on this board know Matt please let him know that he turned me after a decade of doubt.

The question:  What would you suggest that me and my fellow doubters could do for Matt and his staff to show our appreciation without creating a liability for ourselves or the club?

Warm and fuzzy JaKa. You wear it well buddy.

[Tommy Williamsen]

John, one of my clubs hosted a Nationwide event for three years.  I had the same worries about the damage the course might sustain.  I never went to the tournament but a week after the event the course looked like it did a week before the event.  We did not get as many spectators as a regular PGA TOUR event though. 

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Oddly VN was lucky. Those temps combined with course prep for a event almost always stresses a course to a great extent. This is not the supers fault. It is just part of preparing a course for touney play and then living with the healing process for a few weeks to a month. John I frankly thought you were wishing you had not been a BJ for DR or just jacking anybody around for the heck of it over the last decade or so. lol

[Joe_Tucholski]

John what were you expecting prior to the tournament?  Did you figure in an attempt to increase green speeds during the week the greens would be stressed beyond their recovery point?

As Tommy Williamsen mentioned the number of spectators at the Web.com tour events is significantly less than a PGA tour event.  A course I worked at in high school hosted a Buy.com tour event and it didn't seem like there were many more spectators at that event than there were at some of the high school tournaments. 

Would most people agree damage to a course from a PGA tour event is primarily due to spectators (thousands of spectators walking the exact same path and the placement of grandstands)?

I'm not trying to take away from the work of a super.  It is amazing what they and their staff are able to do in order to maintain healthy turf and if Matt Weitz is on your good side I'm sure he deserves the praise.

[John Kavanaugh]

John what were you expecting prior to the tournament?  Did you figure in an attempt to increase green speeds during the week the greens would be stressed beyond their recovery point?

Joe,

Victoria National has bent grass fairways in a climate that has been questioned under normal conditions.  As I am sure you are aware we have been under record heat with temperatures 105 and above.  I thought it would be natural to push the very limits of the life of the fairways to ensure firm and fast conditions.  That is where I was wrong.  Matt was somehow able to provide excellent conditions without killing the fairways.  From the very little I saw on TV the fairways seemed to have very good bounce and roll.

It also appeared to me that the greens were normal speeds, 10 or 11, and not the 13 or 14 that may have killed them.  I don't know who made the decision to keep the greens at a manageable speed but am very grateful.

I also mistakenly thought that the contestants would take many more divots during practice rounds and swings during competition.  I was also obviously wrong about the respect they would show the course.  One aspect that I do enjoy is the divot pattern on the practice facility.  Less than 5% of the competitors use the VJ landing strip method to hit balls.  That is fine by me considering I personally find that look disturbing.

If this tournament was held in the spring or fall perhaps you could pooh pooh the efforts of our superintendent, his staff and the powers that made crucial decisions.  It is the fact that under these extreme conditions on bent grass fairways a tournament was held without disruption to member play that I find commendable. 

[John Kavanaugh]

Oddly VN was lucky.

I can't accept that it was just luck.  The heat wave was not a surprise or a sudden event.  The tournament had been scheduled for close to a year.  The number of contestants and rounds were set.  The money to do it right was made available.  An excellent plan that included the ability to make changes as needed was put into place.  The only possible variable was the quality of the professionals in charge.  They proved themselves and deserve much more than passing it off as luck.

[RJ_Daley]

I have never been shy about criticizing the GCSAA, USGA, PGA and every turf school with the exception of Penn State.  I've not been slow to lay blame on young shiny shoed supers.  Truth be known I've been a jerk to the industry in general.  I was wrong.

JK, this still left me wondering what you are saying about all the other turf research stations throughout the country, who have trained and continue to train and update supers with in-service and seminars?  Hopefully you recognize that pretty much any serious turf student who aspires to be a professional, and actually studies the science, knows more and learns more about turf by end of 1rst or  2nd year in, than most all of us lay folk.  One can read the magazines, and such, and make an effort to learn, but let's face it, a serious student is taught fundamentals of turf and soil science that we do not normally use as a basis for making criticisms.  As you know, turf research stations are in varying parts of the country, and some focus more on warm season than cool season turf, particularly their research plots are located in their particular climate. 

I just think that criticism is OK when it is accompanied by a willingness to express one's idea or point but then ready to sit back and listen to the professional, whether that pro was trained at Texas A&M,Nebraska,  Wisconsin Turf OJ Noer, Michigan State, Georgia or Penn State, and all the other dozen speicalty turf programs. 

Science trumps laydom folk science, talk radio, and member 19th hole discussions.  Sure, the University schools seem to develop a certain affinity to some of the industry funding sources and may overemphasis their products to keep the research funds going.  But, science always responds to the current new thing, and they will even benefit from studies of this heat, and stresses.  We do move the ball forward, and we should support all those that seek to do so through education, at all schools, IMHO.

[John Kavanaugh]

Science trumps laydom folk science, talk radio, and member 19th hole discussions.  Sure, the University schools seem to develop a certain affinity to some of the industry funding sources and may overemphasis their products to keep the research funds going.  But, science always responds to the current new thing, and they will even benefit from studies of this heat, and stresses.  We do move the ball forward, and we should support all those that seek to do so through education, at all schools, IMHO.

Science more than any other source has been the lead factor on driving up the cost of the game.  I think it is criminal that Universities are leading young minds who could be perfectly capable civil engineers down a prim rose path of making a living being a golf course superintendent.  Turf research and education should strictly be limited to the graduate level after a student has received an education that is marketable beyond golf.