Wednesday, June 26, 2013


Hey all... it's been a while since we've posted on this blog.  We've been focusing our efforts these days more on Facebook (click here to follow us) and Twitter (here).  We're also updating our website which will allow us to be more interactive with all of the social media outlets.  That should be coming end of next month.

In the meantime, just wanted to share some photos from a project we're working on in Appleton, WI, at the Reid Municipal Golf Course.  It's a huge storm water project that's impacting several holes on the course.  We've been consulting on the golf while the engineering firm AECOM has handled the storm water.

Ryan Inc. Central is the contractor on the job, and they are doing some magnificent work, especially given the fact that they have not had a full week of work yet this year given the multiple large storm events that keep hitting the area.  Even so, the work is nearing completion.  We were there yesterday and took the above photos which show the new naturalized channel being built offline while the old concrete channel still handles runoff.  Once the new grasses establish, Ryan will remove the old channel and transfer the water.  Quite a process to say the least!!

You can also see golf still being played in the background.  It's been crazy there, but good planning has kept things running pretty smoothly and the locals are excited about what's happening.

Monday, April 1, 2013

 
The story Bob Lohmann just wrote for Golf Course Industry magazine (see
here, starting on page 44) centers on the value of Asset Management Plans — or AMPs, as we like to call them. Bob touches briefly on the deployment of in-house labor, which is a key to making the AMP a viable alternative to traditional master plans. Indeed, with crews that have the necessary skills (and the right oversight), in-house labor is often a major factor in keeping these smaller projects affordable enough for golf facilities to tackle.
There is, of course, a learning curve for maintenance crews who undertake what are essentially golf course construction and renovation techniques. They need to be guided, which is what LGD and Golf Creations normally provide under these circumstances. But good crews do learn, and they can be darned good. As noted in the GCI piece, many superintendents do their own roto-tilling and tree clearing. They buy their own materials, including installation of some of them. 
 
It's all about finding the balance of tasks that works for your facility.

Monday, February 11, 2013

A good article about the fundamentals of public speaking, especially for anyone looking to entertain or educate their membership, board, golf associations or any other audience:

Stand Up and Deliver:  The Art of Public Speaking

Monday, January 28, 2013


LSF brings golf acument to sports field realm

For many years, golf course architects bristled when landscape architects, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, sports field contractors, attempted to cross over into golf course design, renovation and construction. We’re all human, even golf course architects (!), and so it chafed a bit to see this — mainly because this move clearly requires a considerable learning curve to deal with all of golf’s nuances, not to mention the scale and complexity of golf projects.

The best response, we’ve learned, is switching that formula around — bringing golf design and construction skills to sports field construction. What we’ve seen time and again since the launch of Lohmann Sports Fields in the late 1990s, is this: In the realms of siting, circulation, drainage, agronomy and design for multiple uses, the golf course design/construction process transfers to sports field design/construction in a pretty seamless fashion. In fact, we bring more skills to the table than are required. The process of effectively planning, siting and building sports fields requires all the skills of golf course design and construction, only on a smaller, more simplified scale.

Comparing the master planning a 250-acre parcel for golf — with all the changes in elevation, water, forested areas, and environmentally protected areas — with master planning a 60-acre sports complex is like comparing chess and checkers. We’re glad to have been trained in chess, frankly.

Boil it down and consider drainage alone, probably the single biggest concern in the layout and reconstruction of a sports field campus. Maximizing existing grades and drainage patterns — to move water efficiently from the playing surface — is the golf architect’s primary specialty!

A much overlooked aspect of sports campus design is the availability of a water source and the efficient transfer of water from that source. That’s the first thing we look at, be it a golf or sports field project: Where are we getting our irrigation water, how much do we have, and what will it cost? From our experience, this isn’t given nearly enough attention in sports field design and construction.