This month on Superintendent Radio Network: February 2025

Welcome back to another month in review on Superintendent Radio Network. In case you missed anything in February, we published four new episodes, all of them always available, for free, wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple, Spotify and our own website.

Hannah Orr has worked for years in both golf course and sports field maintenance — as an assistant at various clubs and on the crew for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons and Omaha Storm Chasers. She’s now about to enter her second full season as the superintendent at Shadow Ridge Golf Country Club in Omaha, Nebraska. “I love running equipment,” she told Rick Woelfel on the Wonderful Women of Golf podcast. “That’s kind of why being the head super I prefer to be on the scene. I bring my office on my cart with me and my notebook is always with me, because I don’t enjoy being in my office. I want to be out with the crew. I love mowing fairways. I try to get on every piece of equipment as much as I can. Because if you’re not doing it, you’re not seeing it.”

Ever walk around a trade show floor with Outside the Ropes columnist Tim Moraghan. Let me tell you, it’s a treat. After checking loads of simulators (and plenty of clothes) at the PGA Show in Orlando, Tim joined me on Beyond the Page to discuss how simulators might change the game for everyday golfers (they’re such a training tool that even Tim miiiiight get one) and the pro game (eh, not so great). “I’m not going to predict the future,” he said, but I have been in tournament golf since 1979. Nothing much has changed in the format of the game other than turf quality is better, equipment is better and the players are certainly now athletes.”

Not too many equipment managers started out in law. But Anthony D’Onofrio. Long before landing at Marine Drive Golf Club in Vancouver, British Columbia, he studied criminology and figured he would work either as an attorney or in law enforcement. “I needed a summer job while I was in school,” he told Trent Manning on the Reel Turf Techs podcast. “I ended up working at a golf course and I started on the crew. Within a couple of months, they mentioned to the super that I have a mechanical background” — growing up, he often worked alongside his dad, a 25-year technician. D’Onofrio moved inside, never finished that criminology program and has been working on equipment for the last 12 years.

The month wrapped up with Episode 104 of Tartan Talks, Guy Cipriano’s monthly conversation with a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. His latest guest: Alex Hay, who, like D’Onofrio, lives in British Columbia. Unlike D’Onofrio, Hay was raised in the United Kingdom and has traveled around the globe for his work with Lobb + Partners Golf Course Architects. “You look at where other ASGCSA members are working and there are definitely some faraway, amazing places that probably wouldn’t be considered for golf a few years ago,” he told Cipriano. “It wouldn’t be a surprise to get a call from anywhere.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.