Tips for getting social

Some of the brightest beacons of turf social media put down their phones and gathered together for an hour of drinks, friends and, yes, engraved awards at the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show in Orlando.

For the 12th straight year, we recognized superintendents, assistants, educators, sales folks and more at our Super Social Media Awards ceremony, sponsored and hosted by Aquatrols. In case you missed the series of stories we published online in advance of the show or the live event, here are some nuggets to help you tune up your social media in 2023 and beyond.

“Understanding your hashtags is really important and tagging other people is really important. I always use the hashtag #GuelphTurf if I can fit it in the character limits. And before I use a new hashtag or invent a hashtag — like for our upcoming conference, #OTS2023 — I use a hashtag checker to make sure that doesn’t mean something else, like the Obstetricians Teaching Schedule or something other than the Ontario Turfgrass Symposium. Those can be very helpful for amplifying your message.” — Sara Stricker, Guelph Turfgrass Institute, @GuelphTurf on Twitter, Best Overall Use of Social Media

“I feel like the more information that we share with others, the greater we can increase other people’s positions and be able to aid people who want to go down this path. It’s not about holding it in and trying to be better than somebody. It’s about helping us all be better at what we’re doing. It’s shared ideas. That’s what I’m about. It’s a reciprocity thing. I’m sharing and I hope you share the same stuff with me, because I’m not on an island. I need information, and I’m craving to know how people are doing certain things and how it’s working for them. It just enriches everything we’re doing out there.” — Chad Allen, The Club at Chatham Hills, @BentgrassWizard, Best Idea Shared

“Take a chance. Take a risk. Put yourself out there. Same way I did with GreensPro, it was extremely uncomfortable to take money I had saved and invest it into a company where we just didn’t know. And it was extremely uncomfortable the first time I played guitar with (my wife) Kristie in front of people at some bar in Illinois. And it was extremely uncomfortable when I made the first video where Kristie was singing and I was playing. But all that uncomfortableness has led to all the things I’ve talked about. I’ve been so fortunate — 99.9 percent of my experience with the nitwittery I’ve put out there has been positive. My favorite quote is from Wayne Gretzky: You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” — Paul Hurst, @GreensPro, Best Use of Video

“I tell people that Twitter is basically your business card. It’s how people are going to see you. If you’re not being professional on there, that’s going to reflect poorly. I tell people, always be mindful of what you put in your tweets, especially in your pictures. Look at your pictures real closely, and make sure everything that’s in there should be public. I have seen a few people posting pictures of sprayers upside down in ponds and that type of stuff. That’s not something that we want to do. Think of the potential impacts of the stuff you put on Twitter and be professional.” — Chad Braun, Town & Country Club, @CBraunEM, Best Overall Use of Social Media

“Don’t try to copy. Look for an original niche. A lot of people post beautiful pictures of their course. I post trees and different views of the sun in the morning. Find something that really piques your interest and share it with people, and just try to be who you are. I don’t profess to be the smartest guy or know everything. I ask questions. Sometimes, I ask probing questions — I may have an answer from my beliefs — just to get the conversation going. That’s how you learn different things. You may not like it, but it cuts down on complacency when you ask probing questions.” — Steve Whitaker, Old Barnwell, @Steve1968, Best Twitter Feed

“I love #TurfTwitter. I love seeing people’s innovations and how they are doing things differently. You learn you don’t have to do things exactly the way everybody else is doing them. I feel like everybody is coming up with fun ideas and posting them. It’s also nice to know people are in the same boat as you. If we’re in a drought, maybe a lot of people are also in a drought. Or if it’s non-stop rain, it’s non-stop rain elsewhere, too. My ultimate favorite are people’s shop cats if they have a shop cat. Everybody has a dog, and I love looking at the dogs. But the cats are so unique and not everybody has them.” — Carol Turner, Bigwin Island Golf Club, @greensgurl, Best Twitter Feed

“Honestly, I’m hoping our members learn the dirty stuff that we do, the things behind the scenes they don’t realize. I’m hoping they see their golf course in a light that oftentimes they don’t see it in. We see angles and things like the sun coming up in the morning that they don’t see sometimes. There are things that we pick out that maybe the golfer doesn’t think about or see all the time, because we are just on this property so much more than they are. I try to show them a different perspective that maybe they haven’t seen before.” — Ian Daniels, Country Club of Jackson, @EanDaniels, Best Twitter Feed

“We all like putting the word out, saying what we’re doing. We like to show off the spectacular views, like the aerial photography. We’ve got a drone that helps show areas of work we’re working on as well. All really good tools you can use. It’s all helping promote what we’re doing. The main thing to get across is that it’s really easy to do, and others can quickly pick up and do it. Say what you’re doing, promote what you’re doing to your members and others. It’s so easy. Just do it.” — Neil Sherman, Ipswich Golf Club, @igcecology1, Conservation Award

“In my world, work, play and life are all sort of connected. That means anything’s game for social media and I never really think about it as a promotion for work — although I always make sure I promote the resort. It could be nature, it could be metrics, it could be a response. I like promoting other things that interest me. I guess it’s a potpourri for me, everything’s open. I never would have thought that this would be the progression of my life, but it’s an interesting part of it — and I do only see it as a small part. When you’re getting a tweet from me, it’s similar to what I’d be doing anyway, taking a picture, making a comment, talking with a member, that kind of thing.” — John Reilly, Longboat Key Club, @turfmonkeyboy, John Kaminski Award for Social Media Leadership

Now playing on any device

A 14-episode YouTube series produced by a University of Denver professor highlights female volunteer efforts at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.

By Rick Woelfel

The golf and turf industries are bracing to get a fresh look at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open and the corps of female volunteers who supported the event.

“Breaking the Turfgrass Ceiling” debuted last month to coincide with the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show. New episodes in the 14-episode series are being released each Friday on YouTube.

Dr. Sheila Schroeder, a professor in the film department at the University of Denver, is the executive producer. She distributed postcards in Orlando with QR codes to make for easy access to the series for show attendees.

A recreational golfer, Schroder was enthused about sharing the stories of the women in turf who were on hand at Pine Needles last June for the U.S. Women’s Open.

“That is what appealed to me, because I’m very much about female empowerment, about equity, about inclusion,” she says. “That’s my own mission as a filmmaker.”

Schroeder learned about Women in Turf after attending a KPMG Women’s Golf Clinic in 2021. She met golf course architect Kari Haug, who was part of volunteer team supporting the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open at The Olympic Club. Haug, in turn, spoke with Kimberly Gard from Syngenta and Shelia Finney from the GCSAA who were putting together a team of volunteers to support the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles. The pair invited Schroeder to make the trip, and Schroeder and her assistant Leif Soederberg were on site at Pine Needles.

“We filmed primarily with our phones,” Schroeder says. “We did that primarily so we could have the immediacy of shooting something, editing really quickly and putting it up (on Twitter and other social media) so the content was not real time, but very close to real time and tell the stories of a really incredible group of women.”

Once they returned to Denver and began archiving their video, Schroeder, Soederberg and a team of interns realized the treasure trove of material they had and that there was too much of it to set aside. The idea for a series celebrating women in turf was then developed.

“I would say we have 14 solid episodes, which to me is a little bit mind-blowing considering that we thought we could probably pull five or six together,” Schroeder says.

The inaugural episode was recorded at the Olympic Club, where Schroeder spoke with director of golf maintenance Troy Flanagan, green committee chair Marissa Mar and 2021 U.S. Women’s Open volunteer Noel Popoli. The first episode is the longest in the series, approximately 12 minutes, and sets the stage for those that follow, most of which are in the three- to six-minute range.

“(The opening episode) covers a lot of territory,” Schroeder says. “It covers the ‘why’ something like the Women in Turf team is necessary.”

The female volunteers were welcomed from the moment they arrived at Pine Needles to support David Fruchte and his team. They were certainly needed. In the weeks leading up to the championship, the crew maintaining the Pine Needles course numbered just 11. But most of all, what the women brought was their enthusiasm. Schroeder recalls the comments of one member of the Pine Needles staff.

“He said, ‘The women bring a different energy to the course every day. They walk in, they’re laughing, they’re excited to be there, they’re excited to be with each other,’” Schroeder says. “He said that rubs off on all the men, ‘because sometimes we just wander in and jump on the tractor or the mower or whatever and we’re off doing our thing but they made it a much more exciting and social event.’”

And the women were energized by working alongside other women sharing their stories, and how they coped with the challenges they faced as women in a male-dominated industry.

“When you talk to these women about their experiences, they’re talking about their experiences at their home clubs,” Schroeder says. “They’re talking about what it’s like to raise small children and be in the industry. You’re talking about what it means to be the only female mechanic in the golf industry and then they discover that there’s one more standing next to them at Pine Needles. So, it’s moments like that that while we were at Pine Needles, some of the discussion that we had were about women in the turf industry in general.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer, host of the Wonderful Women of Golf podcast and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.

Tartan Talks 80

Jeff Blume executes the bulk of his work in Texas and Louisiana. Greg Martin spends most of his work hours in the Midwest.

Neither part of the country yields an abundance of golf sites with fabulous natural drainage, thus making Blume and Martin ideal guests for a Tartan Talks podcast episode focused on understanding and correcting drainage issues.

“A solid drainage plan will go a long way to helping a superintendent solve a lot of other issues,” Martin says. “If you can invest in drainage, you can refocus those annual budget items to things that are more visible.”

From drainage fundamentals to determining problem areas on a course, Blume and Martin, a pair of ASGCA past presidents, cover plenty of surface and subsurface content using relatable words and concepts.

“If I was going to do an analogy, it would relate it to the circulatory system of your body,” Blume says. “If the heart is what’s pumping everything and everything goes to the heart and goes away from the heart, in a drainage system your lakes and your outlet points are, in essence, your heart and everything streams out from there. You have to look at it holistically, because otherwise you are just chasing water around the property.”

The episode can be downloaded on popular podcast distribution platforms.

INDUSTRY BUZZ

The USGA announced the launch of its GS3 smart ball, which calculates putting green speed, firmness, smoothness and trueness. The rechargeable tool collects more than 15,000 data points and is the same size and weight as a standard golf ball. … The GCSAA announced that 11,000 people attended its Conference and Trade Show last month in Orlando, a slight dip from the 11,700 who attended the last pre-pandemic show in 2020, also in Orlando. Seminar attendance tallied 6,300, the highest mark since 2008. … The Penn State quartet of Zack Newsome, Hunter Shaw, William Hilderhoff and Nate Moore won the 2023 GCSAA Collegiate Turf Bowl, beating out 61 other teams from 27 colleges and universities. Three other Penn State teams finished third, eighth and 10th, and teams from Purdue, Kansas State, Michigan State, Maryland, Ohio State and Iowa State also finished in the top 10. … Envu introduced its Resilia root health solution. The “all-in-one solution for major soil-borne pathogens” is designed to help handle Pythium root rot, fairy ring, summer patch, pathogenic nematodes and take-all root rot. … AQUA-AID Solutions unveiled its ShockWave linear decompactor and Vredo Turf Buddy. The ShockWave is designed to reduce bulk density while increasing the soil’s ability to move water through the profile and enhance soil aeration, while the Turf Buddy is designed to repair thinning or damaged turf areas using the Vredo precision cutting and delivery system. .. John Deere introduced multiple new golf maintenance options, including the 6700A and 7700A E-Cut Hybrid Fairway Mowers, the 185 and 225 E-Cut Electric Walk Greens Mowers, the TruFinish 1220 Utility Rake and the Gator GS and Gator GS Electric. All are now available for domestic orders. … SiteOne Landscape Supply introduced its LESCO Flash fungicide, designed for golf course use from April to September and billed to control dollar spot. … Steel Green Manufacturing started production at its new facility in Lebanon, Indiana, more than three months ahead of schedule. The facility doubles the company’s manufacturing area to 30,000 square feet. … Tee-2-Green introduced its new Prestige Premium bentgrass blend — combining Pure Distinction and Pure Select. … Toro showcased its electric and autonomous offerings, including the GeoLinks Solutions autonomous fairway mower, the eHoverPro battery-powered slope mower, and the Groundsmaster e3200 and Greensmaster e1026.

PEOPLE NEWS

Dr. Roch Gaussoin is the recipient of the USGA’s 2023 Green Section Award. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and extension specialist has dedicated almost two decades to researching critical aspects of putting green construction and management, with his collaborative approach contributing to buffalograss improvement. … John McDonald II succeeded his father, Chip McDonald, as president and CEO of the Maryland-based golf course construction firm McDonald & Sons. Erik McDonald is the company’s new VP and COO, Chip will move into an emeritus role, and Chip’s wife, Betty, will continue as secretary and treasurer. … Kevin P. Breen of La Rinconada Country Club in Los Gatos, California, was reelected to a one-year term as GCSAA president — the first president to be reelected to the position in 76 years. … Rutgers student Travis Campbell received the inaugural Larry Powell Scholarship from the GCSAA. Established last year by GCSAA past president Mark Jordan and the GCSAA Foundation, the scholarship is designed to focus on GCSAA members, or those interested in becoming a member, from underserved populations. Campbell recently finished a 10-month internship at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte, and worked previously as an assistant superintendent at Indian River Golf Club in West Columbia, South Carolina. … Dr. Mike Fidanza, the Penn State Berks professor of plant and soil sciences and the former editor-in-chief of the International Turfgrass Society Research Journal, recently served as the editor of the new textbook “Achieving sustainable turfgrass management.” The book focuses on implementing eco-friendly initiatives in maintaining turfgrass. … Trent Manning of Ansley Golf Club in Georgia won the 2022 Edwin Budding Award, given annually to an equipment manager or related innovator, technician or engineer who has made a significant impact on the golf course and turf industry. Manning also hosts the Reel Turf Techs podcast, which is part of the Superintendent Radio Network. … Harold Mitchell is the new golf course superintendent at Pinetop Country Club in Arizona. The Arizona native and University of Arizona alum most recently worked as both superintendent and general manager at Laughlin Ranch Golf Club in nearby Bullhead City. … Longtime turf pro Jeff Eldridge is the golf segment lead for the United States for Nufarm. … Twenty-four years after starting at the company as an intern, Dave Linngren was promoted to SVP — West Region for Landscapes Unlimited. … Ralph Meola is the new Mid-Atlantic territory manager for Quali-Pro. Meola worked the last 17 years as the superintendent at Elkridge Club in Baltimore.

COURSE NEWS

BallenIsles Country Club recently wrapped up a nine-month East Course and practice grounds renovation that was led by Nicklaus Design senior designers Chris Cochran and Chad Goetz. The renovation lengthened the course from 7,189 yards to 7,474, and updated the design, bunkering and greens complexes, and included regrassing. … Canal Shores partnered with KemperSports on a bold restoration plan for the 103-year-old Canal ShoresGolf Course in Chicago’s north suburbs — including a renovation of holes in front of the clubhouse that will serve as a new youth golf facility and help create a caddie academy. The planned $5.9 million project is already more than 67 percent funded and is scheduled to start in June. … The Golf Club at Devils Tower in Hulett, Wyoming, extended its operating deal with Landscapes Golf Management, which has helped triple the club’s revenues since 2013. … In Atlanta, John A. White Golf Course picked Bobby Jones Links for management — the firm’s eighth management property in Georgia. … Audubon International announced that Invited — f/k/a/ ClubCorp — will direct more than 200 of its golf courses to join the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf and achieve certification over the next few years. About 140 of Invited’s courses are already ACSP-Certified for golf.