Random photo #7
Hitting the road
Feb 6, 2018
In February of 2018, the Super Bowl was played in Minneapolis, and the Golf Industry Show (as it was called then), took place in San Antonio, TX. Today’s random photo was one I took as I prepared my slideshow, prior to a seminar I taught at the 2018 conference. It would be my second time teaching this four hour seminar on bentgrass management and the only time I would teach the class by myself. The inaugural edition of the seminar was a joint effort with my friend Thomas Bastis, then golf course superintendent at Cal Club in San Francisco. After one year together, Thomas became a tournament agronomist for the PGA Tour and his schedule no longer allowed him to attend the conference. Subsequent versions of the seminar would be co-taught with another friend, Dr. Doug Soldat of the University of Wisconsin.
In 2018, I was doing a lot of speaking engagements. The winter of 2018/2019, I was rarely home more than two weeks at a time. My wife made so many trips to the airport that she became all too familiar with the condition of a black plastic bag hung up in a tree near the exit to MSP International Airport. The bag first caught her eye when she mistook it for a bald eagle. But I digress…
I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to come and speak at a conference. It was the Atlantic Golf Course Superintendents conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I was invited to speak about promoting bentgrass at Northland Country Club. Seven years after the first visit, I was invited back to Halifax, where I gave an updated version of my talk, explaining everything I had learned since the first talk.
I’ve loved the opportunities to share my experiences with colleagues from all over the world. Putting my thoughts into a presentation and talking through an approach isn’t just valuable to the audience, it’s valuable to me as well. I cannot tell you how many times a question I’ve received while giving a talk has led me to take another look at a particular practice. Oftentimes, resulting in a change for the better.
The pandemic brought a halt to speaking engagements and while they have slowly come back, I’ve been pretty happy to sit on the sidelines for a few years. The reasons being some combination of having been there, done that and our family having grown from a foursome, to fivesome. Next week, I’ll be hitting the road again, returning to one of my most frequent stops, Ontario, for a talk at the University of Guelph. Having a speaking engagement on the docket has made me realize how much I’ve missed it. I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned since the last time I hit the road.