The Whiteboard

Here’s what is in the bag
Back in July, GCI Assistant Editor Katie Tuttle took the trip out to Hershey, Pa., to attend a LebanonTurf media event highlighting their newest product. Lebanon has been very secretive of the product over the past few months, releasing teaser advertisements to draw in curious customers, and even making a website where people could go and sign up to be informed the minute the product information was released on August 5.

At the event, held on July 27 at The Hotel Hershey, Chris Gray, Marketing Manager - Professional Products for LebanonTurf, finally revealed what exactly is in the bag.

Country Club MD is a new, GN 80, homogeneous fertilizer that Gray says is “the next stage in the evolution of golf course fertilizers.” For those curious, the MD stands for Maximum Dispersion, which is what this product offers. Country Club MD is made up of three granular components: Meth-Ex (A slow release, methylene urea nitrogen source), sea plant kelp meal (which helps the plant prepare for the stressful conditions as a result of fertilizing), and humic acid (which serves as a soil microbial stimulator and organic chelator). The last two components are also the biostimulants that facilitate the particle dispersion.

When it comes down to a competitive advantage, Country Club MD offers superintendents a product that provides stress protection for the turf, no mower pickup, and no particle migration. It can also be used over a wide variety of turf types, because the small particles can drop into the tightest canopies. Gray says they wanted to make sure that no matter what environment, whether it be bentgrass, Poa annua, Bermudagrass, etc, the product would work.

More about Country Club MD can be found on the product’s website (countryclubmd.com), as well as in the LebanonTurf insert in this month’s issue.

GCBAA Summer Meeting
GCI was on hand for the Golf Course Builders Association’s Summer Meeting, held July 23-25 in Monterey, Calif.

The meeting was three days packed with education, networking and of course a little golf, this year at Bayonet Golf Course located about 15 minutes from the event hotel. Education covered the full spectrum of hot-button issues in the golf industry, and included GCI’s own Pat Jones, senior contributing editor Bruce Williams and columnist Henry DeLozier among its esteemed list of guest speakers.

One event highlight was Steve Christman receiving the GCBAA’s Perry Dye Service Award. Christman, owner/president of Eagle Golf & Landscape Products, received the honor for his commitment to the GCBAA and its membership, as well as for being an innovator as a distributor of products to golf course contractors throughout the U.S. and abroad. This was only the fourth time the Perry Dye Service Award has been granted.

Another highlight was the event’s various charity auctions, which generated more than $50,000 for Sticks For Kids.

Check out the app edition for photos from the GCBAA Summer Meeting!

The Wit and Wisdom of Golf Course Architects
In the world of golf, its architects are the true artists, the people who mold 150 acres of woods, pastures – and sometimes lava sites – into the playing fields for millions of sportsmen. In the first volume of Putting a Little Spin on It, newly released as an eBook for Kindles and Nooks, long-time golf writer Mark Leslie gleans the best from 25 years of interviews with the cream of the architects crop.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to meet and interview the best golf course designers in the world,” said Leslie. “People with the class of Arnold Palmer and Gene Sarazen, the wit of Patty Berg and Jeff Brauer, the downright ‘good guyness’ of Ben Crenshaw and Jay Morrish, the earthiness and straightforwardness of Bob Cupp and the late Ed Seay, the creative genius of Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus and, well, scores of their colleagues.”

While this first volume, The Design’s the Thing!, conveys the reflections of golf’s designers, the upcoming second volume will allow golf course superintendents and other turfgrass experts to tell their side of the industry.

Leslie, the founding editor of Golf Course News (now Golf Industry) and contributor to numerous golf trade and consumer publications, added, “I thought it was time to put together a wide range of insights from them – many of which have never been published before.”

Volume Two, The Grooming’s the Thing!, will acknowledge the importance of course architects, but addresses the question: Where would they be without the men and women who groom these playing fields?

Leslie will reveal hundreds of insights, tips, buffs and rebuffs from golf course superintendents and other turfgrass experts in all points of the country – from Tim Hiers in Florida to Ted Horton in California, from USGA Green Section National Director Jim Snow and his colleagues to such university luminaries as Drs. Joe Vargas, James Beard and Frank Rossi.

Leslie, a journalist since 1970, has won national awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association. He resides in Monmouth, Maine.