Coping mechanism

If there is one trait a golf course superintendent or sports turf manager should never be without, it’s a decent sense of humour, especially after what 2022 dished up for many across the country. Milton Berle, the famous American TV personality, actor and comedian, once noted that “Laughter is an instant vacation”, referring to its ability to take you away from the moment, albeit just briefly, and release feel-good endorphins which re-energise the soul.

One turf manager who knows all too well the importance of keeping a sense of levity when the silt hits the fan (pardon the attempted flood pun) is Colin Foster. Known affectionately throughout the Victorian golf course superintendent community as ‘Shorty’, Foster has plied the turf management caper for nearly 45 years and for the past eight has overseen the upkeep of the modest 18-hole Barwon Valley Golf Club in Geelong, Victoria.

Just one of the many wonderful characters this industry has a knack of producing, Foster has certainly had his share of knocks over the journey, but none quite bigger than the one he has endured in recent months. Over a six-week period, from mid-October through to late November 2022, as Victoria was lashed by continual rain events, Barwon Valley was inundated six times in as many weeks by the adjacent Barwon River.

With the Otway Ranges – one of the wettest regions in the state – as part of the river’s wider catchment area, it was a mere inevitability that Barwon Valley, located on the southside of a wide sweeping bend in the river, would be swamped. It has happened on a number of occasions since the local council first built the course back in the 1970s – the club celebrated its 50th anniversary last year – but not quite to the extent experienced this past spring.

As the clean-up from each flood event began in earnest, along with a good pair of gumboots and a squeegee, Foster always made sure he packed his sense of humour. We all have different ways of coping with things when adversity strikes and for Foster it would be through sharing a joke or laugh with crewmates, the member volunteers who came out to help or the many colleagues who rang to check in on him that would get him through. Being able to make light of the predicament they were in and laugh about it gave them that brief respite, that “instant vacation” Berle talked about, and helped prevent them from getting down too much.

As an aside, if you read the excellent Victorian Golf Course Superintendents Association quarterly newsletter, do yourself a favour and check out the Course Reports section and peruse those from Foster and his Curlewis Golf Club counterpart Rob Bradley. The ex-pat Kiwi (and one-time goat whisperer – remember Morwood?) has for a long time used his course reports to trade hilarious barbs with his fellow superintendents, something which started back when Brad Marsden was in charge of another local course Clifton Springs. Since Marsden’s departure a few years back, Foster has picked up the baton and run with it since arriving at Barwon Valley and the to-and-fro between the two elder statesmen (sorry gents) always elicits plenty of laughs.

Another who could do little but laugh at the predicament he faced last October was Nathan Turner. Arriving as the new superintendent of Latrobe Golf Club in Melbourne’s inner eastern suburbs on the first day of September, Turner was just six weeks into the role when the Yarra River broke its banks twice in two weeks, causing massive damage to Latrobe’s cool-season fairways.

As you will read in this edition’s lead story, the club made the brave decision to convert its fairways then and there to Santa Ana couchgrass, necessitating a mountain of work for Turner and his small crew. With a proactive committee, as well as support from many industry colleagues, the project was successfully enacted in the lead-up to Christmas. While a massive achievement in itself, especially from a logistics point of view, what was even more remarkable was the fact that the club hosted the WPGA’s Melbourne International tournament in the weeks that followed the fairways being reopened.

In this edition we look back at the recovery efforts that Turner, Foster and a number of other Victorian superintendents instituted at their clubs in the wake of the floods last spring. Just like their colleagues north of the border went through earlier in the year, their endeavours to get their facilities back up and running were above and beyond and a reminder of the work ethic which is a hallmark of this industry. Let’s hope 2023 is a little kinder weather-wise for us all. Enjoy the read…

Brett Robinson, Editor

THINKING WITH MARK UNWIN, CEO