US Turf Conference 2016- San Deigo

As my last post I went to the US for the GIS conference as it is called. This year was in San Diego which is about 3 hours south of LA. Its a great city and people say its very similar to Sydney with the feel and the harbour. It does somewhat and the weather was glorious. We were very lucky as it was  26C everyday and not a cloud in the sky

My week started as soon as i landed and headed to Mission Viejo Golf Club where I was shown around by course superintendent and my mate Scot Dey. I met Scot last year after speaking to him on twitter for a while and we have been communicating ever since. It was great of him to give me so much time on a Saturday to show me his course. The unique things about the course is that its all kikuyu. Not uncommon in Australia but it is in the US. They have some couch left but this is being eradicated and the kikuyu taking over. When I was there they had some frosts around which hit the roughs more so. The greens were 100% poa and looking and playing very well. They are going through one of the toughest droughts of the moment but Scot and his crew have done a fabulous job.

Myself and Scot

Looking at the clubhouse Par 3 drop

iphone 7-3-16 011 (Copy) A very long tee

Scot also hosted a group of Aussies the next day. The course management were quite impressed with how many visitors and how far we had come to see the course.

Feel free to hit Scot up on twitter @scotdey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GIS week for me started with meetings (I wont bore you there) and the education conference which I attend each time. This years lectures for me were:

  • Advanced Stress Management Strategies for Cool-Season Turfgrasses
  • Practical Turfgrass Microbiology
  • Enhanced Weed Management

All three were very informative and i will be positing in the future information from these talks.From what I picked up what we are doing here is the right thing in regards to managing healthy turf especially with the weather we have had this summer. However there is always room to fine tune your program.

One thing I did get was a video of syringing a green. which can viewed on our you tube channel. I received this from Dr Bingru Huang at Rutgers university.

These are the stats from the show

:

  • 5240 attended the education seminars
  • 450 played in the golf championships with Chris Burgess our Australian representative
  • 12571 total attendees for the week
  • Trade Show Size 2.3 hectares

You can see from the pictures in the gallery how big the show was. I did like a few features that were different this year.

The electric avenue area was a new where you could try out different machinery. I have a video as well here from a one man golf cart where you can view from our you tube channel

As well which is not turf related but golf related is this company I saw who allow people with disabilities can play golf. Have a look at the video below.

Lastly the GCI Magazine Social Media Awards 2016 were on again sponsored by Aqautrols. Take a look a all the winners from the show and feel free to hit them up for any information.

 http://www.golfcourseindustry.com/article/scissor-kicking-in-san-diego-january-2016

i will be posting more in the coming months so stay tuned.