This year the 4th Annual Pink Lady Golf Tournament was held at the Ohio Turfgrass Foundation Research and Educational Facility, Columbus, Ohio.  The tournament is held for students in HCS 2270 in October around the middle of the semester and in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month.  The course is a difficult 6 hole layout played in an alternate shot format.  Each player is allowed two clubs.  This year’s winner was the team of Nate Smith and John Schroeder who have their names added to the Pink Lady Trophy the most coveted trophy in the program. Congratulations!

Past winners include:

2014 – Greg Manuel and Matt Roesch

2013 – Co-winners: Michael Sanders and Aaron Dumke; and Garrett Lebo and Brian March

2012 – Lance Gorby and Kyle Danneberger

The photographs are from this year’s tournament.

Today’s class was conducted at the OTF Research and Educational Center and the theme was to become more familiar with the types of mowers used for maintaining putting greens and mowers that are used for higher cuts of turf including primarily golf course roughs but also for athletic fields and landscapes.  We concluded class with the “Grand Prix of Turf” where students went “off road” to identify turf equipment objects or properly set up tee-markers using an alignment tool they build during class.  The results are listed below along with a select few videos.  As a note John Averman and Adam Sharp were rewarded with the best “tee-marker” setup by the judges.

Today we measured green speed, surface firmness and soil moisture on a “dry” putting green and a “normal moisture” putting green.  The measurements were similar from the data collected on September 4^th class, but we did use the “Firmness Meter” in place of the USGA TruFirm.   The results are listed below.

After looking at the data can you make any conclusions with regard to differences if any in green speed, or which firmness meter do you think is more consistent, or (for those who were taking data) do you think the moisture levels on the dry green are too low based on putting green appearance.

Location 1: Putting green that appeared to have adequate moisture

Location 2: Dry putting green

Today we measured green speed, surface firmness and soil moisture (at 3 inch depth) on a soil fairway (mowed at 1/2 inch), soil green (0.125 inches), and sand green (0.170 inches)  As background the previous night we received close to 3 inches of rain from the thunderstorm that passed through.  Additionally, the fairway had been mowed today (Friday) but not the greens.  For green speed, a stimpmeter was used except where designated (1 Pelzmeter), and firmness was made with the FieldScout TruFirm except where designated (2 USGA TruFirm).

As you look at the data, feel free to comment below on why you might think that firmness on the sand green was less (softer, higher number) than the soil green.  Or what might account for differences in soil moisture as measured by the groups. Continue reading Class Results: Green Speed, Firmness & Soil Moisture →

The height of the earliest buildings was based on the load bearing of the walls and size of the base.

From the earliest times man has wanted to build big buildings from the Egyptian pyramids to the cathedrals throughout Europe to the skyscrapers of now.  The actual building of skyscrapers was not possible until the later half of the 19th century.  Prior to the skyscrapers building like the pyramids and cathedrals were built with stone or masonry walls that supported the weight of the building (called load-bearing walls).  How high these buildings could be built was limited by how massive the base could be.  No wonder people suffered building these buildings having to pull and lift huge masses of stone.   Continue reading Skyscrapers and the Relationship to Golf Course Architecture →