The Turf Zone Podcast

Mississippi Turfgrass – Jay McCurdy, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Mississippi State University

Golf course designers and maintainers are increasingly interested in low-maintenance rough and natural areas. Labor shortages and maintenance costs are partially responsible for this trend. The general public’s growing interest in the environmental benefits of golf courses also contributes to the trend. Numerous sources establish the benefits of native and natural roughs. Although not discussed in length, benefits include:

* Aesthetics

* Reduced inputs, such as fertilizers, pesticides, fuel, equipment hours, and labor costs

* Improved stormwater retention and runoff water quality

* Temperature modification

* Wildlife habitat inclusion

This article covers several important topics regarding native golf course roughs in the southeastern United States, including species selection, establishment, and maintenance.

Southeastern states share similar environmental and socioeconomic conditions that influence course design and play. These conditions, while not unique, distinguish southeastern golf course design and maintenance from that of other regions. For instance, many architects and aficionados desire the aesthetics of a links-style, fine fescue rough, but in the Southeast, this is rarely practical or sustainable.

The Southeast’s humid subtropical climate is characterized by warm and moist summer months. Annual rainfall can exceed 50 inches. Much of that rainfall occurs during the active growth period of warm-season plant species, which dominate the playing surfaces where golf is played year-round. Contrast this with the temperate oceanic climate of Scotland, for instance, where annual rainfall is roughly half that of the southeastern United States and the temperature range is ideal for cool-season species. For these reasons, species selection, culture of native areas, and expectations for golf courses in the southeastern United States should be soundly based.

It is important to differentiate native and naturalized species. Native plants originated locally and predate European settlement. Naturalized plants are not native but grow, reproduce, and maintain viable populations without human intervention. These definitions may seem academic, but an owner’s or architect’s specification of one or the other may have real and lasting consequences.

Natural areas in the southeast are not limited to grasses. They may be composed of trees, broadleaf forbs, sedges, and rushes. Each of these species plays an integral part in a healthy ecosystem.

Many American golfers and superintendents are familiar with the look of fine fescue roughs on links-style courses, such as Chambers Bay or Oakmont. Unfortunately, fescues often fail to persist in the mid to coastal Southeast and are rarely “low maintenance.” Despite the availability of many suitable native and naturalized grasses, superintendents are often unfamiliar with their characteristics.

 

Tall Fescue

Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) is common in golf course natural areas throughout the Southeast. It is a cool-season grass native to Europe and Asia but has been naturalized in many places outside of its native range. Many pastoral golf settings (Sweetens Cove, Old Waverly, and Jackson Country Club) have mixtures of tall fescue and the native warm-season grasses little bluestem and broomsedge. Tall fescue is only moderately drought tolerant compared to most warm-season alternatives; nevertheless, it persists well in much of the mid and deep South. As a cool-season perennial, it is best established in the fall. It tolerates relatively low mowing heights in the moderate climate of the Southeast’s transition zone but generally does not require mowing to propagate by seed, as seed heads ripen in midsummer.

Tennessee Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Tennessee Turfgrass, we’re interviewing Frank Turner, General Manager of Tennessee Green Lawn and Landscape and recipient of the Tom Samples Turfgrass Professional of the Year. Frank, thanks so much for talking to me.

Frank Turner: Thanks for having me, I appreciate the opportunity.

 

TTZ: Well, I’m going to just start at the beginning. Let’s go way back, and tell me a little bit about how you got into the turfgrass industry.

FT: Sure. I started when I was probably in high school, maybe after my senior year, I took a job at a golf course in Middle Tennessee, in Hendersonville. It was Bluegrass Country Club, and I’d played golf before, I enjoyed the game of golf, and it was just an opportunity for a summer job, so I took that after graduating high school. My freshman year in college I was planning to major in forestry, and noticed quite a few students in that program, this was the early 70s and I think everybody wanted to be in forestry, so it looked like the job market might not be that favorable after four years, so I decided to change my major and went and talked to the department head at UT and found out that they offered a program in turfgrass management and so I changed my major going into my sophomore year.

 

TTZ: And you had the privilege of having as your advisor Dr. Callahan, is that right?

FT: Yes, Dr. Lloyd Callahan was my advisor and I still remember speaking to him the very first time, asking him about job possibilities and what the program was like and he was my advisor throughout my four years at UT.

 

TTZ: So what happened after your studies at UT? How did you start actually working in the business?

FT: Again, Dr. Callahan was instrumental in pretty much all of the golf course jobs that I got after I graduated from UT, indirectly or directly. He had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship from the Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association, which was the Charlie Danner Scholarship, and I was fortunate enough to receive that award. Charlie Danner was a golf course superintendent that was noted in the southeast. He was the superintendent at Richland Country Club in Nashville at one time. He was also superintendent at Capitol City Country Club in Atlanta, and he was noted at the time for converting bermudagrass greens to bentgrass greens, which is somewhat ironic in that now we’re converting bentgrass back to bermudagrass. I received that scholarship award and was asked to apply for the position of assistant superintendent at Capitol City Country Club in Atlanta and I took that job, was there for about two-and-a-half years before moving back to Tennessee and a superintendent’s position at Graymere Country Club in Columbia, Tennessee.

 

TTZ: And have you stayed in Tennessee since then?

FT: Yes, I was in Columbia for about six years. In October of 1986, I took the superintendent’s job at Cherokee Country Club in Knoxville and was there from 1986 to 1998. I’m thankful that I was given an opportunity with the Litton Cochran family here in Knoxville to form a landscape department and build that department, supervise that department and we maintained their properties. They were owner-operators of 31 McDonald’s restaurants in and around Knoxville, and we worked exclusively for them and within their company just maintaining their properties. And then in October of 2018, Mr. Cochran decided to retire, and he sold a number of his stores, but still kept nine of them. And so I had to make a decision what I was going to do next. Because nine stores was not going to keep myself, and four men that work with me, busy 40 hours a week. So Mr. Cochran and I talked it over and with his financial backing and his business and professi...

Pennsylvania Turfgrass – Max Schlossberg, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof. Turfgrass Nutrition/Soil Fertility, PSU Center for Turfgrass Science

As turfgrass managers, understanding the nutritional requirements of our turf and staying abreast of its nutritional status comprise important responsibilities. The methods by which we do so are varied, and generally coined fertility or nutritional assessment techniques. One of these techniques, soil testing, was the topic of a cover article I penned in the Fall 2016 Pennsylvania Turfgrass issue.

Tissue testing is the nutritional assessment of a plant through sampling of its vegetative tissue, followed by elemental analysis in an agricultural laboratory. The next step is to interpret the analysis results, which involves characterization of nutrient levels by keyword or index. Last is the recommendation step, typically comprising zero or more fertilizer treatment(s) recommended to reverse current or pending deficiencies.

 

Why is tissue testing an effective nutritional assessment technique? 

Reason 1. Because it is a direct analysis of the biomass we foster, revere, and defend. This morning’s clippings were yesterday’s canopy, so how wouldn’t they contain valuable information? Despite reading several popular twitter feeds, I’ve yet to discover a valid answer. If your health declined, and you sought medical help, which doctor would you prefer: the one who insists on examining you, or the one who insists on examining your living conditions? Relative to dicotyledonous angiosperms, grasses are simple plants that distribute acquired nutrients across vegetation per local concentration gradient. As a benefactor of robust research and reporting, our discipline maintains species-specific expectations for leaf concentration of fourteen mineral plant essential nutrients and arguably three additional elements. Ostensibly, the same cannot be said of current fertility assessments of turfgrass soil.

Reason 2. Because the full panel of turfgrass tissue nutrient concentrations readily implicate contamination, it intrinsically supports quality assurance and control efforts. Of course, discovering a clipping sample to be contaminated by fertilizer or soil is not a desired outcome. Yet even experienced scientists commit sampling errors and know well enough to jettison tainted observation(s) from the set. This is because agronomists recognize the irreplaceability of plant essential nutrients, and the likelihood of a faultily derived fertilizer recommendation consuming valuable time and resources, all while not remedying jack! And, yeah, irreplaceability is a word. I liken a full panel of turf clipping nutrient levels to a Figure-8 knot, the knot most used by climbers to secure their harnesses. Do you know why the Figure-8 knot is most used? Because its proper configuration is more readily confirmed than every alternative. Allegorically speaking, it is better to discover the error and restart than plow on oblivious and die. For those readers who took TURF 435 in residence, you may like that analogy as much as my photorespiration one. Perhaps not. Regardless, example tissue test results indicating sample contamination by source are shown (Figure 1). Full test results of single, stand-alone soil samples do not afford equivalent insight or indication of sample contamination.

 

Tissue Sampling

As with soil testing, the sampling step is an incredibly important component of the tissue testing process. Hence, the following guidelines to consider when sampling turfgrass tissue:

Collect a comprehensive sample set. If you have one or two fragile greens (out of 20) or one problematic field in a complex of four; by all means, tissue sample these suspect systems. However, be sure to ALSO sample tissue from one or two of yo...

Arkansas Turfgrass – Mike Richardson, Eric De Boer, and Thomas Walton – University of Arkansas

Last winter (2019-20) was a very mild one for the Natural State. In Fayetteville, our daily high and low temperatures were consistently above the 30-year average and, more importantly, we only had a handful of days when the temperature dropped into the teens and no days where we were in the single digits (Figure 1). However, don’t let one nice, mild winter lull you into thinking that you should not be doing everything you can to prepare for the winter ahead. This is especially true for golf course superintendents that are using warm-season grasses such as ultradwarf bermudagrasses on their greens.

Winterkill has been an ongoing challenge over my 20+ years of doing research in Arkansas and there are still no “magic bullets” or “super grasses” that will solve all of your problems. Although we usually think about those super low temperatures as being the main culprit, winterkill can also be the result of winter desiccation or low-temperature diseases such as spring dead spot. We have conducted countless field trials associated with winterkill at the UofA-Fayetteville over the past twenty years and have investigated everything from cultivars to fertility programs to various winter over-seeding approaches to the use of plant growth regulators (PGRs), wetting agents, fungicides, and protective covers. What have we learned? You should use the best available genetics, apply proper fertility, utilize PGRs, and possibly apply wetting agents, fungicides, and covers!! ALL of the tools in your toolbox should be in play when preparing for the dark days and cold nights of winter. Another factor that is always an issue when winterkill shows up is the overall health of the turf going into the winter. Remember, any area that has been weakened by shade, poor drainage, traffic, compaction, weed competition, herbicide injury, etc., is likely going to be an area that could be damaged by a hard winter.

Genetics are always a great place to start when thinking about avoiding winterkill. The development of cold-tolerant bermudagrass cultivars really ramped up back in the 80s and 90s and was led by the turfgrass breeders at Oklahoma State University, including Dr. Charles Taliaferro and now Dr. Yanqi Wu. Some of their landmark bermudagrass cultivars that have really “moved the needle” in terms of cold tolerance include early vegetative cultivars like Patriot and seeded cultivars like Riviera and Yukon. In recent years, a number of new hybrids such as Latitude 36, Northbridge, and Tahoma 31 have shown even more promise for protection against winterkill. The Arkansas Razorbacks installed ‘Tahoma 31’ bermudagrass in Reynolds Razorback Stadium in 2019 and that selection was primarily based on its superior cold tolerance. The Razorbacks have also converted most of Baum Stadium to ‘Latitude 36’ over the past 5-6 years. Over that time period, issues with winterkill have been almost non-existent with these new grasses. Although more energy has been focused on developing cold-tolerant bermudagrasses than other species, there are also some exciting new developments on the horizon for traditional lawn grasses like St. Augustinegrass.

When looking at the ultradwarf bermudagrasses (UDB) for putting greens, there are fewer options with regards to genetics, but we have certainly seen differences in our trials. We conducted a 3-year trial at Fayetteville that included the major UDB cultivars Champion, MiniVerde, and Tifeagle. Although the degree of winterkill that was observed each year was strongly influenced by the severity of the weather, we consistently saw less winter injury on MiniVerde and Tifeagle than we did on Champion (Figure 2). We recently published that work and would be happy to share a full copy of the paper (De Boer et al., 2019).

Pennsylvania Turfgrass – Travis R. Russell and John E. Kaminski, Ph.D.

This year is likely one that we all are going to want to forget. While our undergrads were on spring break and the two-year students were at TPC Sawgrass volunteering for The Players Championship, Penn State decided to shut down campus for the remainder of the semester. Faculty and students scrambled to shift to online learning while others were stuck at home waiting for their internships to begin.

On March 19th, Governor Wolf ordered all non-life-sustaining business to close across the state. Turfgrass managers scrambled to get exemptions to at least be able to maintain their turfgrass during the shutdown. On May 1st, golf courses throughout the state of Pennsylvania were reopened for play. We are all now familiar with “pool noodles” in the cups, no rakes in the bunkers, no touching of the pins, and four golf carts per foursome. Things looked very different from a golf perspective.

From a “turf” perspective, things also started out a little slow. Bentgrass was slow to wake up and Poa seedheads peaked right around the time golf courses were opening. These were all par for the course and not atypical in any given year. Throughout May and June, golf course fairways were in some of the best shape we’ve seen, but turf health was about to go south.

Many areas had limited rainfall. State College had less than 1” of rain total during the months of May, June and July. That also coincided with periods of extreme temperatures in June and July. The need for supplemental irrigation to keep turf alive combined with high temperatures and relative humidity resulted in a series of disease outbreaks in the middle of the summer.

 

Bacterial Wilt

Bacterial wilt is an uncommon disease of annual bluegrass. Bacterial wilt was diagnosed several times in our lab this year from multiple golf courses throughout the northeast region. In fact, a severe bacterial wilt outbreak occurred on a young annual bluegrass green at our research facility in early June (Figure 1). The disease was initially observed as small, speckled necrotic spots on the green in early to mid-June that quickly coalesced into larger diffuse areas of turf loss by early July.

Control of bacterial wilt is difficult since chemical options are not efficient or practical with products having to be applied after every mowing. Instead, turfgrass managers must designate a mower specific only to the infected turfgrass surfaces and mow in the afternoon when turf is dry to limit spread to healthy areas of turf and to avoid abrasive cultural practices while disease is active.

 

Anthracnose

Anthracnose (Figure 2) is chronic disease on annual bluegrass green during the summer. Symptoms include yellow to orange spots of infected Poa but expand into a general thinning of highly infected areas. Golf course superintendents can easily identify this disease by looking for blackening at the crown and black fungal structures (i.e. setae) on individual leaves. Although we diagnosed samples from other region in June, anthracnose severity began to increase in the first few weeks of July on our research putting green. By the end of July into early August, anthracnose was uniformly distributed throughout the green.

Preventive fungicide programs are essential to effectively control anthracnose. In addition, minimizing physiological stress is recommended to slow disease intensity. Maintaining adequate fertilization and irrigation will significantly limit physiological stress that can increase disease severity. Increasing mowing height is a critical mitigation strategy but long-term cultural control strategies of reducing organic matter thatch development with regular aerification and routine topdressing when disease is not active will significantly help in combatting the disease.

Virginia Turfgrass Journal – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

 

VTC Member and Assistant Director of Grounds & Landscapes (A Division of Facilities Management) at Old Dominion University

How many years have you been in this position?

I am headed towards my 15th year with ODU. The position has changed over the years, but the position’s objectives remain mostly the same.

 

How did you decide to pursue a career in turfgrass management?

The truth is, by proxy. My first green industry job was right out of high school. It was at a retail nursery in Northern Virginia where I grew up. I delivered trees, sod, mulch, and other bulky items. When at people’s houses they would often ask me about lawn care, so I had to be familiar enough with turf to help them.

After college, I did park maintenance which included mowing/trimming, but I spent most of my career in arboriculture. In 2006 when I accepted my position at ODU, turf care was a huge portion of the job and certainly the portion many considered to be most important. My understanding and education on turf care has been evolving ever since.

I would not wish to mislead people, there are so many turfgrass managers who are so much more knowledgeable than I am. While turf management is a senior responsibility of my position, I tend to view it collectively, i.e. a component of the entire Grounds Management occupation.

 

What path led you to your current position?

I worked my way through college by working at retail and wholesale nurseries. My intention was to become a forest ranger. After college, I moved to West Virginia to work for their park system — I was in park maintenance while waiting for an opening as a ranger. One day I was on selective timbering crew for a fire control project and realized how much I missed maintaining plants. I also realized I didn’t like the cold weather.

I moved to South Carolina and took a job with a tree planting company that helped build golf courses. My exposure to the turf managers along the SC coast at some of the most esteemed golf courses in the nation intrigued me, particularly the IPM side of their job. Personal reasons brought me back to Virginia and I was fortunate enough to gain a position with Bartlett Tree Experts who sent me to their school of Integrated Pest Management. I was a professional arborist and IPM technician for a few years before moving on to ODU.

I had a strong background in many aspects of the green industry and wanted to enter public service to apply my skills in one place where I could see impact. One place where I could watch the land change over time, if you will. I also wanted to work with a team that was dedicated towards integrating urban landscapes – trees, shrubs, and turf all working towards the same objective. The objective to beautify and enhance our urban environment while optimizing all the benefits plants can provide for a community and the people within it. I am certainly fortunate to work for an agency which supports such objectives and to be surrounded by the talent and creativity of my co-workers.

 

What is the best part of your job?

Universities are interesting places. So many people of different cultures, ages, and backgrounds… all in pursuit of bettering themselves and improving the world around them. It is inspiring and makes me want to work equally as hard to help frame a background for the time they spend here. The landscape of ODU should not just be space between classrooms, rather, these grounds should provide an opportunity. So, for me, the best part is to see people learning and interacting with our outdoor campus. To know that a complete ecosystem exists in the middle of an urb...

North Carolina Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

TheTurfZone: Welcome to TheTurfZone. Today we’re speaking with Neal Glatt, Managing Partner at Grow The Bench and business coach certified by the Gallup Organization. Welcome Neal.

Neal Glatt: Thanks for having me, Julie.

 

TTZ: I’m going to start out with a little explanation about what we said in your intro. You are a business coach, certified by the Gallup Organization. Can you tell me a little about what that means?

NG: I get to help businesses improve, usually around sales and management, which is really my passion is helping teams perform really well. And the Gallup organization is the world’s largest independent polling organization. So especially with election season right now, people are probably used to hearing “According to a Gallup poll…” That’s where most people know Gallup from is they call people up, they ask them what they think and they do it all around the world, more than anybody else and they don’t take any money from anybody, and just spend millions and millions of dollars on payroll to survey people. What they’ve developed are these world-class surveys is a lot of great information about what people really want and how it related to business. So when it comes to high performing teams, Gallup has essentially invented the category of what we call “employee engagement.” For the past 35 years, has been publishing information about what makes a highly engaged team, what even is a highly engaged team, and most importantly for us today, how can we take something really simple, at very little cost and put it into action to get more from our teams and make everybody feel better.

 

TTZ: You mentioned High performing teams, and that’s really what we’re going to focus on today, and fine tune that for the green industry. Can you tell me how you got into sharing this type of information and this type of business coaching, specifically in our industry?

NG: It actually happened the other way around for me. I graduated college with a degree in marketing, wanted to go into sales and started working for a landscaper and so I was working in this industry before I knew any of this great business stuff. And I had all the same challenges that other green industry companies have – too hard to attract people, too hard to keep people, nobody really as invested as I wanted them to be. Just trying to make it, and through that process of being frustrated and failing at management, I started to learn the hard way about some things that needed work. I was fortunate to work with or have employed some other really great managers and I’d see glimpses of greatness from people. And I see, you know, this person’s really great at developing relationships and people seemed to really like that. Or this person’s really great at developing people, and meanwhile their team is doing better with all the hard metrics. So systematically, I studied that and discovered some of the science and a few years ago decided to go out on my own as a business coach and earn some certifications along the way that support that. So I have the opportunity, being self-employed to work with any industry, but I just have a heart for the green industry because it served me really well. I think what we do is so important and so overlooked, and I get pretty excited about bringing this cutting-edge science to the green industry in a meaningful and practical way because I think that the green industry needs some love and gets overlooked by a lot of people.

 

TTZ: I absolutely agree. In these podcasts and in speaking with turfgrass professionals and nursery and landscape professiona...

Tennessee Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Tennessee Turfgrass, we’re interviewing Paul Webb, General Manager and Golf Course Superintendent at Humboldt Country Club and TTA Board Member. Good morning Paul, how are you? 

Paul Webb: I’m doing well, how are you? 

TTZ: Doing good. Thanks so much for taking some time to talk to us this morning. I’m just going to jump right in and ask a little bit about your current position there in Humboldt. How long have you been in that job?

PW: I’ve been the general manager and golf course superintendent since August of 2011, so just a little over nine years. I came to Humboldt Golf and Country Club in February of 2010 as the superintendent alone and after a year and a half of being here, there was some turnover in different management positions and I was asked by the Board to become general manager and superintendent on an interim basis and nine years later we’re still here. 

TTZ: In having both of those titles, what additional responsibilities do you have and what does a day look like when you hold both of those titles? 

PW: It’s more focused on the turf side because I still feel like that’s the most important asset of the club and it is my background, so I feel more comfortable in it as well. As far as the general manager, I used to have to do a lot more day-to-day tournament operations and food and beverage, and over the years, our club has expanded in a way of hiring some more management underneath me and it’s given me an opportunity to do more oversight and not as much hands-on with those different operations. I’m still responsible of reporting to our Board of Directors on a weekly and monthly basis, I work hand-in-hand with our club officer and committee members and I’m responsible for the yearly budget of the entire property, so every day is a different challenge. Whether it’s something on the golf course, in the clubhouse, dealing with a swimming pool – just all aspects of a country club. 

TTZ: That is a wide scope of work and responsibility. I frequently hear that there are unique challenges to addressing what the Board wants to see and also what members want to see. Do you feel like that’s sometime an uphill battle or have you leveled off on that part of the job? 

PW: It’s somewhat leveled off. I’ve been here so long that I know for the most part what they expect and I know what are the areas where we need to improve. Our Board is constantly looking at ways to make things better, which is exciting for someone like me, that they don’t want to just have status quo, whether it’s on a monthly/yearly basis, the entire club is looking at any facet or any angle to make this place better and that’s a good thing for me because we don’t just get stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over. 

TTZ: Let’s rewind a little bit. How did you get into turfgrass and what jobs and what path led you to your current position?

PW: I’m a little bit different than your typical turf manager. I did not start out in college to go through the Agronomy path. I went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville looking, started out as a business major and then after a couple of years decided that I wanted to do something within sports, but I didn’t know what. So I got a degree in Sport Management and I minored in business. In sport management I did a couple internships at various golf courses like Fair Oaks in Oakland, Tennessee and Gettysvue in Knoxville and Covington Country Club in Covington, TN. After graduation, those opportunities opened my eyes to the fact that I wanted to be on the Agronomy side of it. So once I graduated from Knoxville, I began dating my wife and she was a nursing major at ...

New England Blade – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

 

TheTurfZone: Welcome to TheTurfZone. Today we’re speaking with Neal Glatt, Managing Partner at Grow The Bench and business coach certified by the Gallup Organization. Welcome Neal.

Neal Glatt: Thanks for having me, Julie.

 

TTZ: I’m going to start out with a little explanation about what we said in your intro. You are a business coach, certified by the Gallup Organization. Can you tell me a little about what that means?

NG: I get to help businesses improve, usually around sales and management, which is really my passion is helping teams perform really well. And the Gallup organization is the world’s largest independent polling organization. So especially with election season right now, people are probably used to hearing “According to a Gallup poll…” That’s where most people know Gallup from is they call people up, they ask them what they think and they do it all around the world, more than anybody else and they don’t take any money from anybody, and just spend millions and millions of dollars on payroll to survey people. What they’ve developed are these world-class surveys is a lot of great information about what people really want and how it related to business. So when it comes to high performing teams, Gallup has essentially invented the category of what we call “employee engagement.” For the past 35 years, has been publishing information about what makes a highly engaged team, what even is a highly engaged team, and most importantly for us today, how can we take something really simple, at very little cost and put it into action to get more from our teams and make everybody feel better.

 

TTZ: You mentioned High performing teams, and that’s really what we’re going to focus on today, and fine tune that for the green industry. Can you tell me how you got into sharing this type of information and this type of business coaching, specifically in our industry?

NG: It actually happened the other way around for me. I graduated college with a degree in marketing, wanted to go into sales and started working for a landscaper and so I was working in this industry before I knew any of this great business stuff. And I had all the same challenges that other green industry companies have – too hard to attract people, too hard to keep people, nobody really as invested as I wanted them to be. Just trying to make it, and through that process of being frustrated and failing at management, I started to learn the hard way about some things that needed work. I was fortunate to work with or have employed some other really great managers and I’d see glimpses of greatness from people. And I see, you know, this person’s really great at developing relationships and people seemed to really like that. Or this person’s really great at developing people, and meanwhile their team is doing better with all the hard metrics. So systematically, I studied that and discovered some of the science and a few years ago decided to go out on my own as a business coach and earn some certifications along the way that support that. So I have the opportunity, being self-employed to work with any industry, but I just have a heart for the green industry because it served me really well. I think what we do is so important and so overlooked, and I get pretty excited about bringing this cutting-edge science to the green industry in a meaningful and practical way because I think that the green industry needs some love and gets overlooked by a lot of people.

 

TTZ: I absolutely agree. In these podcasts and in speaking with turfgrass professionals and nursery and landscape profe...

Pennsylvania Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com

The professional Turf Management movement that started at Penn State in the mid-nineties has become like an extended family. One of its founding members is Dr. Douglas Linde. We spoke with him recently between classes at Delaware Valley University, where Linde wears multiple hats: professor, golf coach, researcher, and student mentor. He has been a professor of turf management at Delaware Valley University since 1996, when he was recruited to develop and direct the new turf management program there.

Designing a Program

Looking back, it seems obvious that Doug Linde was the right person in the right place at the right time to develop a turf management program. He recalls that it was a hot new field of study with a lot of demand in the nineties. Penn State had just launched a Turf Management major and Delaware Valley wanted to offer the same discipline in a different setting. Linde had earned his bachelor’s degree in agronomy and environmental science from DelVal in 1991 and his M.S. (1993) and Ph.D. in agronomy from Penn State in 1996. He was also a three-time Most Valuable Golfer and team captain while playing at DelVal as an undergraduate and already had name recognition and many industry connections.

The turf management program which Dr. Linde designed and developed at DelVal prepares students specifically for careers as golf course superintendents, sports field managers, and lawn care specialists. The curriculum provides a strong academic base in plant and soil science with many technical classes in turf management. However, a lot of class time is also spent visiting nearby turf facilities and doing hands-on work on the College’s putting green, lawns, and sports fields, all of which had to be built from the ground up when the program started.  Experience360, a graduation requirement for all full-time undergraduate students at Delaware Valley College, asks students to choose four credits from multiple experiential learning activities, depending on their major’s program requirements. Dr. Linde is a firm believer in getting your hands dirty and feels that the required work experience component is a real highlight of the Turf Management Program.

Linde credits his Penn State mentor Tom Watschke with encouraging him to pursue the advanced degrees that made his leadership role possible and with introducing him to the professional world of turf management. He is also grateful to KAFMO for helping him and the DelVal turf program by supporting students with scholarships and providing opportunities to network with KAFMO professionals at conferences and at the golf tournament. “It helps that they are a fun group of people,” he adds.

What Came First, Grass or Golf?

When asked what first drew him to a career in turf management, Linde’s answer was quick: “Golf!” Like most of his students, it was passion for a sport that marked his career path. Doug Linde grew up as the son of a golf course superintendent on Wedgewood Golf Course in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. He developed a love for the game of golf and golf courses at an early age and, as one of the top golfers in Delaware Valley University history, he took over the program as head coach in 1996.

Coach Linde led the Aggies to the program’s first-ever conference championship, the Freedom crown, in the conference’s inaugural year for golf in 2005,