To mow or not to mow

I find it ironic that I am sitting at my keyboard on the Ides of March, scrolling through social media posts from the previous evening about the army of push mowers at TPC Sawgrass and the PGA Tour’s Players Championship.

The PGA Tour’s social media account shared a brief video of a large number of tournament volunteers push mowing rough while in formation. I admit it looked impressive, and I know that event draws as many volunteers as any major championship, including a contingent from the United Kingdom. I know they were putting the extra workforce to effective use.

Several folks (industry and non-industry) commented about whether this was a “good look” for the industry in the name of sustainability. Others came to the defense of the agronomy team. And then I attempted to enter the chat and explain that I did not think the agronomy team was under attack, folks just did not like the Tour’s account making us look bad. Sound familiar?

How does this make us look bad? For starters, it’s important to remember our profession is in constant battle with public perception. These battles are decades old and revolve around water usage, chemic — excuse me, plant protectant usage and now carbon emissions (more on this last one later).

The GCSAA advocates on behalf of golf course superintendents as being good stewards of the environment, and golf courses helping the environment by filtering runoff, serving as carbon sinks, and providing wildlife habitat and valuable green space within urban landscapes. But despite all those efforts, public perception sometimes trumps reality, and the simple-minded folks just do not know what they do not know.

They see acres and acres of lush, green grass while irrigation sprinklers turn in the sun. An army of volunteers equipped with hoses ensure that lush, green playing surface continues to look its absolute best. They see more people tending to one sand bunker than work on the entire maintenance staff at their home clubs.

One wise voice in the group of disapprovers stated it best in my opinion, “just because we can doesn’t mean we should.” It’s hard to believe there’s an entire generation of young superintendents and assistants that doesn’t realize 27 years ago the fairways at Congressional Country Club were walk mowed for the U.S. Open. That’s right, look it up. Not to be outdone, Winged Foot walk mowed fairways that year for the PGA Championship, but you never heard about that as much as we heard about who did it first.

I don’t know if there was a secret meeting or backroom deal where superintendents agreed to never go down that path again. But now that an entire generation working within the industry is unaware of things in the past, perhaps, it’s necessary to have a discussion.

I typed out what I figured was a very thoughtful reply to one person questioning the motives of the group in disagreement with the video. By the time I finished, the post I was attempting to reply to was removed.

What I intended to say was we are living in a world where each day we are subjected to talk about climate change, carbon emissions and sustainability. And whether you agree or disagree with these topics and their origins is irrelevant. We merely live and work within this world while others hold positions of power, authority and establish policies for us to abide. In other words, an army of gasoline-powered push mowers is not the best optic for an industry priding itself on sustainability, regardless of the situation.

It’s the same argument I made on these pages a few years ago when I asked you to stop posting pictures of your early order pallets. Yes, it’s great your facility has the means to provide you and your team with the tools necessary to provide healthy playing surfaces. But you do not have to show the world.

It’s also ironic this conversation was sparked by the same tournament that only completed one round in 2020 before cancelling the remainder of the event in the wake of the pandemic. The same pandemic brought players back to the game of golf and provided the industry with a much-needed boost.

Hard to believe that four years later, we’re still discussing how the public perceives us negatively and they do not know the truth, yet we somehow find a way to trip over our own feet.