Turf Care Center Self Evaluation Form

In an effort to quantify the maintenance facilities conditions from various golf courses I have built a short self evaluation form. It is my hope that the information gathered from this form will be used as a tool to help superintendents identify the general conditions of Turf Care Centers throughout the industry.

Only superintendents that complete this rating form will receive the final data compiled by me. The more superintendents that complete these evaluations the more exact the data will be. Perhaps the use of this data will enable superintendents to “sell” a new and/or improved facility at the golf course they manage.

Please take several minutes and complete this self evaluation form, follow this link.

Turf Care Center Self Evaluation Form

I will email results one month from today to all that respond.



Mike Vogt, CGCS

Measuring the Success of the Golf Maintenance

Methodology: A post was made on LinkedIn Groups - GCSAA, Golf Superintendent, Golf Course Superintendents / Turf Professionals, Golf Course Superintendents, Assistants & Interns; also on Facebook Group; Golf Course Maintenance and the blog, Golf Course Business. At these sites a copy of the question or a link was posted to the poll. These posting links and polls where left online for 10 days and active for 10 days.

The question was: If you were ask to measure the success of the golf maintenance business you manage, what one metric would you use?

The selections were:

• Budgetary
• Conditioning
• Player satisfaction
• Increase in rounds played

Of 132 respondents that weighed-in, no confirmation was made as to the respondents livelihood as a golf course superintendent.

I asked the question to investigate what was considered the mission as viewed by the golf course superintendent to his/her golf course maintenance endeavor. This poll is unscientific but it revealed that the metric that best described success in the business of golf maintenance is Player satisfaction.


Golf course conditioning garnered 21% and is the top response from golfers perennially from the National Golf Foundation.

An Increase in Rounds played could be construed as perhaps a function of discounted pricing but I like to think if an increase was had it was due to better overall management - cost controls as well as proper pricing.

And lastly success as a Budgetary category, the ability to properly manage a golf course to a budget came in last, at 11%.

In McMahon Group's survey database the golf course has always scored highest in satisfaction considering all club amenities, services and features. Most important, the golf facility was always listed as the most important feature at clubs that offer golf.

We can easily take away that the management of golf course maintenance as viewed by golf course managers, superintendents and others in the same business is driven by Player satisfaction and Conditioning, more so than financially driven by increasing rounds or achieving a budgetary goal. Golf course superintendents should also be keenly aware of the facts that sound business management will also be an integral part of the important metrics equation when judging success in golf course management.

Important to the above equation is also a Value – Price – Quality comparison. Golf has a dramatic range of product, from a mom & pop nine hole to a deluxe high end, oceanfront, private clubs. Consider these variables when making decisions on appropriate golf course maintenance techniques.

Being a golf course superintendent you must consider the above dilemma. Golf course superintendents are constantly being asked to achieve two seemingly conflicting goals: assure the highest quality of the course while keeping costs low. While it may seem futile to try to resolve these two conflicting issues, a structured approach towards cost and quality can help, player satisfaction and conditioning are still the most important drivers to success.

Efforts to quantify these elements are always going to cause ulcers. Great superintendents make their best effort to supply the best conditions that will yield player satisfaction and good conditioning along with a cost that can be tolerated by the business. Once this balance is achieved the market will generally reward the facility with increased business, whether it is memberships or daily play.

The lines are generally blurred when it comes to successful management and key metrics involved. All of the choices are indeed interrelated, if one area is left without attention the rest of the categories won’t matter. Players must be satisfied for them to return, a budget must be closely met or the business will not have appropriate funds to operate, conditioning of the course speaks to satisfaction levels and in increase in usage will generally bring in more dollars.

The Front Fell Off!

Divide and Conquer Environmental Issues at Your Club

Begin with a plan to implement an environmental program at the club you manage. This guide will help focus plans and responsibilities to separate departments and measure progress.  

environmentalchecklist v 2.1

Is a Union in Your Future?

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has just announced bad news for the golf industry. As you may know, the NLRB issued its final rule regarding the new employee notice that all clubs must post beginning November 14, 2011 dealing with employees rights to organize and form a union.

To add insult to injury, just this new legislation hit the streets; the NLRB handed down its first ruling that will make it much easier for the union organization process in clubs across the country. In a 3-1 decision, the NLRB has said that unions may now organize smaller subsets of employees in a business. For the golf course industry, this means that a union could organize the golf maintenance staff staff rather than the entire club staff.

Since a union is formed when a majority of employees vote for it, it will be much easier for union organizers to get the 51% they need if they can focus on a smaller number of employees. Clearly, 20 golf maintenance workers is a much more interesting target than going after the entire group of employees at a club that enjoys a large staff of 75 to 100 all encompassing club workers. Once this subset group is unionized, the club will need to negotiate a contract with these 20 while dealing with the needs of the other club workers (golf shop staff, kitchen staff, servers, pool staff, administration staff, etc.) separately.

Such a situation will increase administrative issues for the club and soon push the other club workers to look to unionize when they begin to realize the differences in pay, benefits and/or treatment from the club’s leadership. This is exactly what labor unions have wanted for years and it is why the NLRB has finally given it to them. With the increase in cost of labor clubs and golf will begin to become out-of-reach to more, continuing the death spiral already being experienced at some golf facilities on the edge.

This policy also places the burden on employers to prove that any excluded employees “share an overwhelming community of interest” with those in the proposed union group. So, golf facility leader’s will now have to struggle to include more employees into a proposed union group to help dilute the chance the union will succeed – an awkward and expensive task no facility wants to have to undertake.

What makes this ruling even more regrettable is that there is no direct federal or state court appeal that can be made of an NLRB judicial decision. The only course of action is, an employer will have to be challenged with a union that wants to organize a small subset of workers, let those employees unionize and then refuse to recognize the newly formed union. When that happens, the new union will sue the employer and the employer will then be entitled to argue the NLRB overstepped its authority by allowing this small subset to be unionized in the first place.

In short, this NLRB ruling cannot be addressed until a business decides to accept being slapped with an unfair labor practices lawsuit for failing to accept the new union representation of a small group of its employees.

The NLRB has an agenda that will only cause the golf course industry more and more of a problem as these new regulations and rulings are handed down. The cost of golf will begin to increase as the H2B program remains under assault, health care laws will either fine of force clubs to insure all staff members and labor prices will escalate due to unions and the high cost of imposed increases in wages and benefits.

Powerful forces are at work to change the labor landscape in our industry, it behooves each of us to have a dialog with our appropriate representatives on these small business harming, draconian policies.