**Ask a golf course employee** - Page 3

nehianh · #21 11-07-2007, 01:57 AM

i work at Southview Country Club

JTrout · #22 11-07-2007, 10:07 AM

Walking my dog early yesterday morning on the course, I see a gutted raccoon laying in the fairway. Coyote got it, I guess.
Never seen groundhogs, but sometimes beavers are pests.

Right now, a flock of Canadian geese that have settled into our lakes are the annoyance. Shxt everywhere.

tuq · #23 11-07-2007, 01:52 PM

I don't know why it would be a "beat" to cut the holes. Sounds like fun. That said, their latitude as far as picking where to put them is very limited on every course out here, which either do zones like front/middle/back (often denoted by the color of the flag) or GPS systems, which typically have six fixed locations on the greens that dictate within a very tight range exactly where the hole is supposed to be cut for that day. If you ever see a situation where the GPS and the hole don't agree, it's human error - either the guy put it in the wrong place or, more likely, the pro shop didn't advance the pin set in the system to the current day and it's supplying old data.

Among the courses that babysat me all summer was a little 9-hole pitch and putt in front of a hotel. There was a 36 hole course affiliated with the hotel but it was actually several miles away. This little course's longest hole was maybe 90 yards. Anyway, I would be left there for twelve hours or so every day and would play the hell out of it (never paid, the place to pay was up the hill and I never went in there and they never bothered me).

One thing that annoyed the hell out of me is how they never changed the holes. As in, for years. I don't know how they didn't get totally grown over to be honest. I was super tempted to take my putter and gouge out a new hole location and move the cup to there. Surprised I didn't actually, because in my active imagination some of those holes would play totally different if the hole was elsewhere on the green, since several of the holes actually had sand traps. Never summoned enough courage to do it though, and some time later they did actually cut new holes. It was like christmas.

Troll_Inc · #24 11-07-2007, 02:59 PM

LOL at GPS on a golf course.

I'd say the average age of the courses I play is about 60 yrs with technology to match.

tuq · #25 11-07-2007, 03:07 PM

Trolley,

What do you mean by "LOL at GPS"? A fairly sizable percentage of daily fees here in town have cart-mounted GPS systems, many with distance to pin (not just the center of the green). Also, I have a friend whose company has mapped thousand of course coordinates and sells GPS hand-held devices to sporting good stores. I find the technology very useful and quite accurate. The days of 150 markers being the only coordinates are long gone, as much as it pains HDPM to admit it.

nehianh · #26 11-07-2007, 03:25 PM

tug if you interpreted my explination as being a beat for cutting cups, that was not my intention. i was just saying that i hear it gets boring and i just never had interest in learning how to do it. cups are placed in a front, middle, back rotation as i'm sure you know. we dont have any GPS at our course

holes need to be changed on a course with a lot of play, after a round of a tournament at our course the area around the cup is probably the most undesireable thing to see on a green

nehianh · #27 11-07-2007, 03:28 PM

the course i work at was founded in 1919 fwiw

offTopic · #28 11-07-2007, 04:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
The days of 150 markers being the only coordinates are long gone, as much as it pains HDPM to admit it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dude. Ben Hogan did that [censored] by sight. Eff the 150 yd markers. Courses shouldn't have them. Maybe a rock. Or a tree (but it has to be a native tree).

Troll_Inc · #29 11-07-2007, 05:17 PM

[ QUOTE ]

What do you mean by "LOL at GPS"? A fairly sizable percentage of daily fees here in town

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure it's common in areas that have new/modern courses. It's just completely foreign to me.

duvvard · #30 11-07-2007, 05:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know why it would be a "beat" to cut the holes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I cut cups most days the when I was working maintenance and it was one of my favorite things to do. It was cool as hell playing after work knowing exactly where the pins were on 9 or 18 of the holes already.