Our course is closed today through Thursday. We're hosting the state junior amateur. 150 kids 11 - 17 will be competing over a 3-day event. Today, the course is theirs for practice rounds. Competition begins tomorrow with two "waves" of players. Some members grumbling. We expected that. Still, the exposure of our course to many who may well return and play the course later is something we could not pass up.
Our course went through a difficult few years. The Board, back then, hired a lazy, worthless alcoholic as the club pro. His work ethic was drowned in alcohol. Did not know how to run tournaments, if he was even sober enough to show up for them. Took almost 4 years to get enough new Board members that they could get rid of him.
During that same time, they hired a course superintendent that did not have a clue. I usually say it takes a superintendent two years to either kill the course or maintain/improve it. This guy killed our course in about 9 months. He did not know how to grow grass. Would not designate. There were mornings we saw it taking two workers just to dump trash and three workers just to mow tee boxes. Dumping trash, one would drive the cart. The other would ride along and dump the baskets in the barrel on the cart. The driver sure couldn't have dismounted the cart and dumped the baskets himself!!! More than once, we saw a worker in a cart waiting by a tee box for the mower. As the mower approached, he would removed the tee markers and then drive to the next tee box to wait. The mower would mow the boxes. A third worker would then arrive in a cart and replace the tee markers.
A number of our corporate outings either left the course or threatened to. Area wide tournaments would not consider our course. Membership began to drop off.
Today, we have a professional clubhouse manager and a fantastic greens superintendent. We have had compliment after compliment from the outings so far this year. The ability to host this many junior players and have their parents/grandparents/siblings follow them and see how pristine the course has become should be to our advantage.
I do plan to take the grandson to a local executive course a couple of times. Can also use the driving range at our home course. Not any real competition until at least Friday.