Eudora, Kansas: A Place Dreams Are Made Of Part 2

After almost a week to recover from my whirlwind trip to Lawrence, Kan., I wanted to take more time to share more of my experiences in, as Seth referred to it, God’s country.

If you were following our Twitter feed last week you saw Seth and I got a tour from Lawrence CC’s superintendent, Bill Irving. He probably had better things to do than show me around his maintenance facility, but Irving was gracious enough to take an hour and a half of his time to do just that. You could tell his passion for his job from the way he talked about the maintenance equipment and chemicals. I do not come from a golf background (hopefully I get my own column in the magazine someday to elaborate on that), and I learned so much from the experience. I definitely felt pretty powerful sitting on a Toro riding mower compared to the push mower my dad made me mow the lawn with while growing up.

That evening Seth and I were invited to dine at the course’s clubhouse and we asked Bill to join us. We enjoyed a couple of drinks, great food and even better conversation. It was a great experience to interact outside of a professional setting with someone from the golf course maintenance industry.

While I was in Lawrence Seth was determined to take me to his favorite bars while he was in college at Kansas University. Again, if you were monitoring our Twitter feed last you saw a picture of Seth and me with a couple of schooners in front of us from Louise’s West.

During the course of my stay we visited multiple bars along downtown Lawrence’s Massachusetts Street, or Mass Street. Among them were Free State Brewing Company, the Red Lyon Tavern and Louise’s Bar. Of all the bars visited there was only one we went to multiple times and that was Seth’s No. 1 bar in the world, Rick’s. It is the kind of place I would frequent if I lived in Lawrence, but I kept telling Seth that he should go to Columbus sometime so I can show him the array of bars by my collegiate stomping grounds, Ohio State.

Another stop along the tour of Lawrence was a stop by GCSAA’s headquarters. We only had enough access to get a picture with the Old Tom Morris statue out front (believe it or not it was 65 degrees and sunny that day), but no tour of their facilities for some reason…

The final stop before getting dropped at the airport was a visit to Sporting Kansas City’s Sporting Park with their head groundskeeper Justin Bland. Seth Previously met Bland a few years ago while working for our sister website, AthleticTurf.net. You can see the video interview here, where Bland talks about hosting the MLS All-Star game. You also can see Seth dwarfed by Bland, who is a former professional football player.

We were lucky enough to see Sporting Park’s field, which Bland and his team is starting to prepare for the March 8 opener. All of the spectators get to see the field during a game but we were given the back scenes tour and saw their Sub Air System. Which is by far largest and loudest equipment I have seen yet. We were shown a great tool for conservation and, dare I say, sustainability, their Waste 2 Water treatment area.

If my first three months with Golfdom is any indication of what my future holds I am very excited for it to come. I came into my role as associate editor with little knowledge of golf and even less on the maintenance of the courses. Since late October, I have already learned so much from the staff of Golfdom and the various superintendents I was able to interview for the Golfdom Report. I cannot wait for my first GIS and the chance to interact with as many people of this amazing industry as possible, professionally and after hours.