Today's class may have been the best I have ever attended at the GCSAA conferences. Today's seminar was formatted after ESPN's Pardon The Interruption, except today, PTI stood for Professional Turfgrass Intelligence. Two of today's top turfgrass professors, Dr. Roch Gaussoin from the University of Nebraska and Dr. Frank Rossi from Cornell University as they battled through various golf management issues while accepting questions from the audience.
If you are not familiar with the TV show, two sports writers are given topics to discuss while under a clock. Today, each professor took five minutes per topic to preach their data or findings and give their views.
Some of the topics discussed were organic matter in greens, topdressing, aerification, fertility and fertilization applications, water management, mowing, rolling and other current events in the golf world. Superintendents were also polled frequently to gather a consensus of maintenance practices.
After an intermission they moved to the "Who am I?" segment which as you can see, provoked a few laughs. They imitated Tiger, Jack and even Johnny Miller (no love loss there).
During the 4 hour seminar, there were not a lot of new revealing facts that were presented, but it kept the wheels turning and gave me reasons to re-think, re-evaluate and return to the basics of turf management. I appreciate anything that keeps me on my toes.
So Steve, (and Mike and Justin)
ReplyDeleteIn another life I taught at a Leadership School for college fraternity members. One of the best seminars was, "To Build A Fire", how do you take what you've learned and bring it back to the community and put it to use. Obviously you cannot use everything at once. What will your priorities be and how will you communicate them? Any babes around the pool? How many females are there in your industry?