This month on Superintendent Radio Network: October 2024

Welcome back to another month in review on Superintendent Radio Network. We published six new episodes, all of them always available, for free, wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple, Spotify and our own website.

October opened with some international flair when Rick Woelfel talked with Chiara Ferrari on Wonderful Women of Golf. Ferrari has an incredible name, of course. She also has an incredible résumé: She recently volunteered at a pair of Italian Opens and the 2023 Ryder Cup around her work at Montecchia Golf Club, near Venice. She has also worked as an intern at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, where she was a part of the maintenance team for this year’s Solheim Cup, and is now interning at Quail Hollow, where she’ll help prep for the 2025 PGA Championship. “I enjoyed the Ryder Cup,” Ferrari said. “It was amazing. A really, really nice experience. I met so many people, (including) women. It’s different in Italy; there are not (so many) women. It was incredible.”

Are we living in a second golden age of golf course construction? The last four years and change have certainly been a boomtime if nothing else. I talked with Landscapes Unlimited chief development officer Jake Riekstins — who normally spends about every other week on an active work site — about the current state of construction and renovation on Beyond the Page. “Tee sheets are full, wait lists are longer than they’ve ever been, there’s a clamor for people to get on the golf course,” he said. “And that, of course, fills the coffers, and that allows people to take a hard look at deferred maintenance and infrastructure.”

Plenty of former Home Depot employees now work in the golf course maintenance industry. But how many orange alums are equipment managers? Whatever that small number might be, Rolling Green Country Club’s Ryan Deering is among them. He climbed the corporate ladder for seven years before moving over to the Arlington Heights, Illinois, club. “My father-in-law … knew how mechanically inclined I was, but working for Home Depot, I’m not allowed to touch the machines,” Deering told Trent Manning on Reel Turf Techs. “It was frustrating to watch a new hose get installed, leak immediately, and I couldn’t just grab a wrench off the shelf and tighten.”

October and November are the best months on the calendar — not necessarily in that order — and I will not listen to arguments. Assistant editor Kelsie Horner, publisher + editor-in-chief Guy Cipriano and I traveled to a dozen different clubs and courses in five states in recent weeks. Public, private, resort, single- and multi-course, East Coast, Midwest, Western … quite the variety. Then we talked about it on Greens with Envy. Some of the highlights? Kelsie recalled her first solo work trip (no hole-in-one this time, unfortunately), and Guy waxed poetic on folks who love golf course architecture. “There aren’t many of us,” he said. “We think this is the center of the universe — people who love golf course architecture and high-level golf course maintenance — because it is the center of our work universe. … It’s a small group, but when you come across people in the group, you can go for days upon days upon days talking about it and being amazed by it.”

Guy celebrated 100 months of Tartan Talks — 100 months! More than eight full years! — by talking with Cynthia Dye McGarey about both her golf course architecture and some of the loads of incredible and industry-shaping work her family has done over the decades. Dye McGarey didn’t necessarily want to follow her father, Roy, or her uncle Pete and aunt Alice into the industry. “When you grow up in it, you see the ups and downs in the economy — and you’re one of eight kids — it was stressful a lot of the time,” she said. “I didn’t imagine making it a career.” But she joined her cousin Perry in the 1980s and launched her own firm in the 2000s. Now she works with her son Matt McGarey — part of the family’s fourth generation of architects. Here’s to at least 100 more great episodes!

Guy wrapped up the month with the third edition of Construction Conversations, our newest podcast and a welcome addition. Every episode has been packed with personal stories and plenty of planning and execution advice. Just take this nugget from Kansas City Country Club superintendent Pat Rose: “We decided we were going to get our bunker sand brought in by railcar from Emmett, Idaho. It sounds crazy, I know. That’s the way the industry is going. If you want to get high-quality materials, you’re going to have to do some things that seem very strange.” Oh, and this little bit of information — not a surprise, but still stark when you see it in print: “You’re really looking at three to four solid years of planning in this project.”

Remember to subscribe to Superintendent Radio Network wherever you listen to podcasts to catch every new episode.

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.