Turf Day

First thing you notice about the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show: this ain’t the PGA Show.

The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, headquartered in Lawrence, Kansas, is a membership organization dedicated to all aspects of golf course management. This year’s GCSAA event took place at the same Orlando venue as January’s PGA Show. The similarities end there.

Formerly known as the Golf Industry Show, the GCSAA event is staged for the men and women with boots on the grass. There’s no “apparel” section. If you’re looking for clubs, balls, or golf bags, look elsewhere. However, if you need biological products, drainage systems, erosion control, grinders & sharpeners, heavy equipment, irrigation, mowers, pesticides, spreaders, seeders, topdressers, tractors, trenchers, turf aerators, waste water treatment, weather monitoring equipment, or “wildlife management/control products,” you’ve arrived at the correct wing of the stupidly large Orange County Convention Center, where parking is horrific, but at least it costs 20 dollars.

There is a modicum of overlap among attendees relative to the PGA Show. Those who own or manage golf courses, having checked out drivers, irons, putters, and apparel two weeks ago, are back to see if they can afford a new tractor or trencher. The vast majority of attendees at the GCSAA, however, are the people who get their hands dirty. Superintendents and their staff are immediately recognizable as the ones with deep suntans and no neckties.

To that end, much of the week is dedicated to education. The “trade show” portion of the event is what takes up space on the floor of the convention center, but there were dozens of seminars and stage demonstrations throughout the week. When I attended on Wednesday, those included such crowd favorites as “Sustainable Soil Health through Soil Remediation & Water Treatment” and “5000 Moisture Readings just by Mowing and Using that Data to Reduce Watering by 20%.” Those titles are verbatim, and I am not making fun of them, because I do not understand them.

But: big machines? Those I get.

If you need to move dirt or cut grass, you are in the right place.

At the PGA Show, the grandest pavilions on the floor were occupied by predictable heavy hitters: Titleist, Ping, and Callaway on the equipment side; Ralph Lauren, Peter Millar, and Lacoste among the clothiers. That makes sense when your most important client is whoever stocks the pro shop. When, instead, your target demographic is the group that keeps the course alive, you get a different set of booths:

If you’ve ever seen a movable machine with a logo at a golf course, it was here: John Deere, Kubota, Toro, Yamaha. Deere’s pavilion was akin to that of Titleist or Callaway. Toro was also grand in scope, and drew an interested crowd for its “IntelliDash” course management system (third image above).

“IntelliDash” is a software program that allows the clubhouse to track virtually everything on the course: the location of all their equipment (including those offline for repair), the weather forecast and any frost warnings, the irrigation schedule, moisture in the ground, humidity, and even the work schedules of each member of the grounds crew. Toro implants sensors on their equipment and in the dirt to send a stream of data back to a central dashboard. Much like the PGA Show last month, programs that simplify and streamline complex processes drew heavy attention at the GCSAA.

Now, the best part: dogs.

Under the category of “Wildlife Management/Control Products,” we find Flyaway Geese. From their website: “Since 1997, Flyaway Geese has provided businesses, corporations, airports, military installations and golf courses across the country with humane and effective migratory bird solutions. With a continuous supply of trained champion bloodline Border Collies and a large support team, Flyaway Geese is one of the industry’s leaders in providing professional bird management and Geese solutions.”

I never knew I needed Geese solutions.

Rebecca and Josh Gibson are a husband-and-wife team in North Carolina. As the website suggests, they breed border collies — from Wales, it turns out — to chase undesirables off your property. Rebecca and Josh were both present at the GCSAA show and showcased how their highly trained dogs operate. If you’ve ever been around a Border Collie, you know how much they love to work. They also brought collie puppies and COLLIE PUPPIES:

Rebecca held two demos on Wednesday with Jen, a blonde two-year old Border Collie who was tasked with herding a flock of ducks around a pen. Rebecca used both verbal commands and a whistle to move Jen around the birds. It was, by far, the most attended booth at the GCSAA Show. If you’re in the market for a dog who can get shit done, I present: Jen.