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In this episode of Frankly Speaking, Frank chats with Josh Smith, the golf course superintendent of Orinda CC in Northern CA. As usual, Frank and Josh cover a lot of ground from his early days in golf course construction and having his paintings commissioned by the likes of Weiskopf and Doak, to his current role as GC Superintendent and the foundin…

In this episode, the Rockbottum CC gang gets tangled up in AI golf, but Momma figures out how to neutralize the situation.โดย TurfNet RADIO

Frank has a conversation with Tyler Bloom about the current and future labor issues facing the golf industry. Tyler outlines the value of investing in recruiting and retaining talent at every level of your organization. As usual Frank and Tyler cover a lot of ground in a short period of time, but still have time to talk about the impact of automati…

In this episode, Willy and the gang struggle to complete the radio show while running the golf course and finally just give up and go straight to Storytime for a tale about an Alphabetic Turf Consultationist . . . who hated Rockbottum CC.โดย TurfNet RADIO

Frank had a chance to catch up with an old friend and renowned turfgrass scientist Dr. Roch Gaussoin on the eve of his recent USGA Green Section Award. Roch and Frank catch up about his storied career that led to him receiving the USGA award. The conversation eventually leads to some fascinating information about organic matter testing and developm…

Frank reconnects with Paul MacCormack, The Mindful Superintendent, to reflect on 10 years of mindfulness practice and living life in a more intentional way. Frank and Paul discuss unlearning, and letting things go as means for offering yourself permission to be present and be human. This wonderful conversation ranges from vulnerability and failure,…

In this episode, Ludell is accused of embarrassing behavior at BIGGA, Boof tries to win a women's golf tournament and RW discusses modern tournament cup-changing methods. Presented by DryJectโดย TurfNet RADIO

In this episode of the TurfNet Renovation Report, host Anthony Pioppi chats with Matthew Staffieri of MAS Golf Construction (Hopkinton, MA) about building a successful golf course construction business from scratch. Staffieri graduated from UCONN with a degree in agronomy and then worked at The Country Club for the 1999 Ryder Cup, where he became i…

So who graduates from UMass in 1971 with a BS in Plant and Soil Science, takes an assistant job at a very private/secretive 500 acre facility on the NY/CT border, gets promoted to superintendent three months later, grows in a new back nine... and then stays for 51 years? We'll tell you who: Mike Maffei, CGCS, recently retired golf course superinten…

In this episode, Frank has an in-depth conversation with Dr. Adam Thoms at Iowa State University about his research on soil management for putting surfaces, use of waste products like amino acids, and other potential biostimulants effects on golf turfgrass performance. Expect some deep dives on how amino acids and glycerin from bio-diesel can impro…

Our latest All Star of Turf is Michael Morris, CGCS, 36-year Director of Buildings and Grounds at Crystal Downs Country Club in Frankfort, Michigan. A native of Frankfort, Mike is one of the few golf course property managers who has spent his entire career at one course, in his hometown. He is also a rarity in obtaining a BA and MS in English and f…

In this episode, RW gets tangled up in AI when he tries to use Chat-GBB to write the radio show and that failure results in a spirited rant aimed at those we entrusted with getting out the water conservation message. Just as the way forward is revealed, Count Noomskool of the World Globalar Golf Forum arrives and waves huge sums of money at Momma, …

Frank has an in-depth chat with GCSAA’s Director of Government Affairs, and the smartest person in Lawrence, KS, Chava McKeel. Frank and Chava explore the new Memoradum of Understanding between the GCSAA and the EPA, what it means for members, the industry and how it could unlock opportunities for increasing recognition of the value of golf courses…

In this episode of Renovation Report, Bradley S. Klein, Ph.D., talks with former superintendent Tom Feller, general manager at Cedar Rapids Country Club in Iowa. A superintendent at Cedar Rapids for nearly 20 years, Feller discusses overseeing a Ron Prichard-led restoration of the 1915 Donald Ross classic, outlasting a half-dozen general managers b…

In this first "It's not just about growing grass" segment of TurfNet All Stars of Turf, we recognize Scott Dodson, CGCS, and John Taylor. Both career superintendents but perhaps better known as the founders of the Golf Course Hockey Challenge, an annual 2-day/4-game tournament that attracted as many as 16 teams of hockey playing superintendents, as…

Jordon Bowling found his calling into turfgrass management a little later than most, at 22 with a six-month old son to boot. His brother-in-law, Chad Kuzawa, was an NC State turf grad making the rounds of some clubs in the southeast and convinced Jordon to visit from his home in Michigan and shadow him for a couple of days. That set things in motio…

Chad Allen, finishing up his first year as golf course superintendent at the Club at Chatham Hills near Indianapolis, IN, has a unique background and training as a substance abuse and addiction counselor prior to shifting to turf management. A recent attendee of both Green Start and the Syngenta Business Institute, Chad employs a "bottom up" manage…

Dr. John Dempsey speaks with Frank in this episode of Frankly Speaking focusing on how plant defenses can be activated using certain products and what that defense activation means. Enjoy some lively Irish banter from Dr. Dempsey about his career and our usual deep-dive segment where we endeavor to understand how plants defend themselves against st…

Frank chats with regular guest Brian Whitlark, Senior Consulting Agronomist for the USGA’s West Region about getting ready for Desert Golf Season. How did the overseeding go and with more folks staying around in the summer months, how is transition been the last few years? Of course, no conversation would be complete with discussion of water use in…

Jared Viarengo of Applebrook Golf Club in Malvern, Pennsylvania, bucked a trend early in his career by also becoming general manager at the club in eastern Pennsylvania. Since then, Viarengo's role has expanded as the club's director of grounds and director of club operations. In this broadcast, Viarengo discusses how his career started in the fiel…

Frank catches up with longtime colleague Professor Jim Baird of UC-Riverside. Frank and Jim discuss a career path that led from a youthful interest in golf and course care to his current role as the lone turfgrass scientist in the UC system. Jim speaks frankly about water, overseeding, product evaluations and the Bermudagrass breeding program that …

Frank sat down recently with the Montgomery County Revenue Authorities Director of Agronomy, Jon Lobenstine to discuss his career development, experiences overseeing 9 golf courses, creating an inclusive culture, as well as robots, GPS sprayers, organic matter and even vineyard management! In typical, “Frankly Speaking-style”, these two cover a lot…

In this episode of Renovation Report, Bradley S. Klein, Ph.D., talks with superintendent-turned-consultant Josh Lewis of Gradoville-Hertzing Management Group about the state of the industry in California. Lewis, who worked as a superintendent in Washington and California, also discusses the scope and escalating cost of restoration projects in Calif…

In this episode of the TurfNet Renovation Report, former USGA Green Section agronomist and now independent consultant Dave Oatis chats with Anthony Pioppi about things clubs should consider prior to embarking on a restoration or major renovation project.โดย TurfNet RADIO

Our latest Rising Star of Turf is J. Richard Brown, newly minted golf course superintendent at Florence (SC) Country Club. Richard got the nod for the Florence job after ten years "apprenticeship" in the South Carolina golf market, starting with five years at various courses in Myrtle Beach before becoming the senior assistant at Orangeburg Country…

Signals of a changing climate are everywhere, from more intense storms to more frequent droughts. The basis of this change lies in carbon emissions and the solution potentially lies in sequestering the carbon into our soils. Grasses are perfect vehicles for this process. In this episode of Frankly Speaking, Frank Rossi speaks with Drs. Claire Phill…

Some career superintendents make their marks by hosting major tournaments or pushing the agronomic envelope, while others quietly go about their business of growing great grass while also navigating the potholes and pitfalls that invariably spring up over time. John Carlone, CGCS, has done that over 37 years as a golf course superintendent at two c…

Rockbottum Radio presents our annual Halloween broadcast, with not one, but three spooky golf stories. These stories are full of scary messages and at least one real good golf course management tip, so send out the crew, close the office door and settle in for some golf trauma as only Rockbottum CC can share.…

Frank has another in-depth conversation with a turfgrass breeder, this time Dr. Melodee Fraser, Director of Research Eastern Division for Pure Seed Testing. During the conversation In the TZ, grasses are challenged by heat, drought, excess rainfall and by default lots of foliar and root pathogens. Dr. Fraser outlines the process and lets all us ins…

In this episode of the TurfNet Renovation Report, Anthony Pioppi chats with Michael Osley, CGCS, about his relocation from a 20-year stint in Colorado to take over the resurrection of St. Joseph Bay Golf Club in the crook of the Florida Panhandle. Challenges abounded, including significant course damage and losing his family's home to Hurricane Mic…

Sean Tully of the Meadow Club in Fairfax, California, has made a name for himself as a fan and ultimately an expert on classic-era golf course architecture, particularly Alister MacKenzie designs. The Meadow Club, where Tully is director of grounds maintenance, is in fact the first course in North America designed by MacKenzie and one of several in…

In this episode of Me Maintenance, Peter McCormick chats with Zach Bauer, golf course superintendent at the Valley Country Club in Centennial, Colorado, just southeast of Denver. Zach had gone into this year on the heels of myriad construction/renovation projects (both golf course and clubhouse) with depleted groundwater, very dry soils and dessica…

Frank is joined again in this episode with golf business expert Jim Koppenhaver from Pellucid Inc., leaders in golf business data science and analytics to discuss the “covid-dend", i.e., the persistent gains golf has made since the pandemic. Frank and Jim also discuss how golf can manage the coming recession and what data from previous recessions t…

In this episode of Renovation Report, Brad Klein talks with Canadian golf writer Lorne Rubenstein about the positive attributes of links golf and why links golf is, in Rubenstein's view, the best golf. They also diiscuss their mutual affection for Royal Dornochourse and how European golf's acceptance of brown conditions is much more conducive to lo…

In this episode of Me Maintenance, Peter McCormick chats with Stuart Butler, host of HWOM the Podcast and newly minted Head Greenkeeper at Westgate and Birchington Golf Club on the southeast coast of England. Leaving a 20-odd year stint as a senior greenkeeper at Royal St. Georges Golf Club and with it the type of work/life balance that many in the…

One could argue golf fairway grassing has the largest impact on resource consumption due to the amount of intensely managed land. Large applications of fertilizer, pesticides and water are consumed in our finest operations across the country on fairways. Frank speaks with Professor Eric Watkins of the University of Minnesota on how grass type impac…

For more than 30 years, David Fruchte has been superintendent at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina, the site of this year's U.S. Women's Open, which once was owned by LPGA legend Peggy Kirk Bell. A graduate of the turfgrass program at Purdue, Fruchte learned the trade from the legendary David Stone at the Honors Cou…

In this episode of Rockbottum Radio, Rockbottum CC's latest hire prefers to work from home, inflation takes a toll on course operations, and RW shifts his customer emphasis from thrifty golfers to the elite class. A run-in with royalty leads RW to wonder how we got here.โดย TurfNet RADIO

Frank speaks with Professor Chase Straw at Texas A & M about precision irrigation management by understanding soils, distribution issues, and digital irrigation management using remote sensing and soil moisture sensing. Dr. Shaw discusses a range of topics that confront the golf turf industry and how the right data used with a well-designed irrigat…

In this episode Frank Speaks with Paul Roche, irrigation industry veteran and now president of Golf Water of Wake Forest, NC. Frank has known Paul since the mid-1990’s during Paul’s time with a Rochester-based irrigation distributor and eventually as co-author of the definitive irrigation textbook Golf Course Irrigation: Environmental Design and Ma…

In this episode of Renovation Report, Brad Klein talks with golf course superintendent Nick Peinovich of Eau Claire Golf and Country Club in Wisconsin, about a recent renovation of the course near Minnesota's Twin Cities that was designed by Tom Vardon, the lesser-known brother of British golf great Harry Vardon. Peinovich discusses how a member au…

Anthony Pioppi chats dream career moves and all things Seth Raynor with Alex Beson-Crone, the superintendent at Blue Mound G&CC in Wauwatosa, WI. Alex grew up in the Milwaukee area and worked up to the assistant postition at Erin Hills, but his life-long dream job was Blue Mound. When the superintendent position opened up there, he made the jump to…

In this episode of Frankly Speaking, our “water guy” Mike Huck, President of Irrigation and Turf Services, chats with Frank about the past, present and future of water. The conversation ranges from “all water is local” and the classic movie “Chinatown” to the obstacles and opportunities for conservation. Will there be a “free market” for water and …

In this episode of Rockbottum Radio, RW pulls a highly classified but long-buried StoryTime out of the vault. It's the kind of story where everyone involved is no longer around to object.โดย TurfNet RADIO

In this special episode of Frankly Speaking, Frank is joined by four top turfgrass diagnosticians from across the USA. Our Northeast correspondent Rich Buckley from Rutgers University, From the ACC we have Lee Butler at NC State, from the Midwest I chat with Kurt Hockenmeyer from UW Madison, and Emily Braithwaite from Oregon State University in the…

The big question on the turf industry's mind after the epic 2016 Ryder Cup Matches at Hazeltine National Golf Club (Chaska, MN) was, "Where's (senior assistant superintendent) Ryan Moy gonna go?" Turns out the answer was one just about nobody expected: Head Groundskeeper for the Minnesota United Football Club at the still under-construction Allianz…

For parts of four decades, Ralph Kepple has been the caretaker for the historic home course of the late Bobby Jones. A graduate of Ohio State, Kepple was named superintendent at East Lake Golf Club in 1992 and since 2018 has been the club’s director of agronomy. During that time, East Lake has been synonymous with the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour …

In this episode of Me Maintenance, Peter McCormick chats with Steve Cook, CGCS MG, Director of Grounds at Medinah Country Club in Chicagoland, about his life-changing experience climbing Ama Dablam, a 22,000' Himalayan peak in Nepal in 2016. Integral to the project was a fund-raising effort for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, for which Steve raised $35…

In this episode, we reveal how to get nitrogen, along with a short demonstration of the perfect job interview and included is an extremely in-depth segment of Unfiltered News. Storytime is a conflagration of Homeowners hit by Balls and if you stay to the very end, you will be rewarded with information that might save your turf from thinning like my…

Frank Speaks at length with Professor William (Billy) Crow from the University of Florida about all things nematodes. How they work as a species? Where we find them? How to sample them? How do you know if you have a nematode problem? And what are the long-term effects of nematicide use? Billy speaks Frankly about nematicide use in warm season turf …