PARTING SHOTS: Gimme five!

I sit here on a cold Cleveland winter's day with a pounding headache, bloodshot eyes and a drool puddle beneath my feet. No, I didn't overindulge last night. Instead, my condition is self-inflicted: deciding to re-read every column I've written for Golf Course Industry over the past five years.

Yup, it's been five years since the fools¡­er, I mean wise editors at GCI gave me free rein to fill this page with whatever the heck leapt forth from my demented brain. Reviewing dozens of these damn things was painful, to say the least, since I often succumbed to pontification and prediction. And, like most fortune tellers, I was wrong a lot. So, without further ado, here's a sampling of a few of the more interesting tidbits I spewed during my tenure:

February 2005 (first column): "So the bottom line is that all of us ¨C superintendents, owners, developers, golf professionals, etc. ¨C need to get over the idea that golfers are a necessary evil. We need to embrace the same philosophy and methods used by retail marketers to survive and thrive until the golf market corrects itself." Duh! And, oh yeah, the market never corrected itself.

July 2005 (writing about purchasing incentive programs): "I'll admit this can be a gray area, but the rule of thumb needs to be: If it doesn't benefit the facility directly, only accept the incentive with the knowledge of ownership. A great example is a vacation trip earned under various programs out there. I know several superintendents who somewhat sheepishly approached management to ask if it was OK to accept a trip. In every case, they were told, ¡®Go ahead. You deserve it.'" I suspect most clubs would now say, "Forget trips and gizmos and try to get it cheaper instead."

October 2005 (Quoting Rick Reilly on Tiger Woods): "Describing the racial state of our business, Reilly is absolutely at his best: ¡®Fifty years ago, 100 white men chasing a black man across a field was called the Ku Klux Klan. Today, it's called the PGA Tour.'" Insert your own Elin-chasing-Tiger joke here.

April 2006 (On former superintendents who became sales reps): "I kept pushing for him to spill out his guts about how hard it was and how much he hated some parts of it. But, he wouldn't do it. He insisted that ¨C even though it's a pain in the butt ¨C he absolutely loves his work. Why? Here are his words: ¡®It's not a job,' he said. ¡®It's a lifestyle.'" Okay, I think I got that one right. And life has only gotten harder for salespeople since.

August 2006 (Listing things I was skeptical about): "Global warming: Anything that gets Al Gore so excited automatically makes my B.S. meter jump off the scale." I'm "thawing" in my opinion about climate change, but I still think Al Gore is a punk.

March 2007 (Readers had whined about a GCI cover photo that "dissed" the superintendent): "Subscription cancellations were promised, and there was much harrumphing. Complaints are like cockroaches; for every one you get, there are probably a hundred more you don't see. I'm sure there were many more readers who thought the photo stunk, but didn't write or call." This hasn't changed. But I do genuinely appreciate every reader e-mail, call or death threat attached to a dagger embedded in my office door.

May 2007 (On how close relationships help us survive): "We evolve quickly and successfully. Despite being old fashioned in other ways, we have a pretty good track record of adapting to change. Our ability to evolve, survive and thrive is a direct result of our interconnectedness and our willingness to help others." Hmmm¡­ not bad.

July 2007 ("Noonan's Crusade" before the first Patriot Golf Day): "Rooney believes the golf community can raise at least $2 million for those children this year. Think about that for a minute. Sure, we can donate golf clubs to troops overseas, we can put magnetic ribbons on the backs of our trucks, and we can all say we support the troops; or, we can do something that really matters." Patriot Day has raised a lot of money, but we're still sending people to fight and die in a Godforsaken desert. Damn.

February 2008 (Steve Mona leaves GCSAA): "Steve is the last person to claim his time at the GCSAA was perfect. The past several years ¨C he was challenged to meet the board-mandated benchmarks and began to explore other job opportunities ¨C probably weren't comfortable. But the organization stabilized, grew, matured and prospered under his leadership. Every member benefited from that." You gotta admit the man's timing was perfect, wasn't it?

October 2008 (I was wearing rose-colored glasses): "Real estate will bounce back. It's a nearly immutable law that land values and housing prices might wane for a year or two, but eventually they will start to climb again. As goes real estate, so goes real-estate-driven golf." You think I might have been a wee bit optimistic in my time frame?

December 2008 (Obama's election): "The bottom line is that this new administration, most assuredly, has bigger fish to fry than us." I was right, but I wish I hadn't been.

May 2009 ("Golf's reality show"): "When a bad course does fail, there are an astounding number of schmucks who think they can run it better than the last guy." The rich schmucks, like Elvis, have left the building.

And so have I¡­ at least for another month.

Pat Jones is president of Flagstick LLC, a consulting firm that provides sales and marketing intelligence to green industry businesses. He can be reached at psjhawk@cox.net or 440-478-4763.