Nice guys get nicknames

Full disclosure: Back in the early 2000s, one of the guys on the front cover used to boss me around. “Oh, so you’re writing about your friends now, Seth?” Well, yes and no. I’ve always written about my friends. (In every issue there’s “The 19th Hole,” after all.) But in this case, new Topeka CC Superintendent Kent Morgison and I had fallen out of touch until journalistic fate brought us back together.

Honestly, the quality of work I produced for Kent back in the early 2000s prevented us from being really friendly.

I did course set-up and cut greens for Kent about 15 years ago, when I was a young guy working for GCSAA, still “learning my beat” and working weekends at what was then the 36-hole Alvamar Golf Club in Lawrence, Kan. Dick Stuntz, CGCS, well known in the industry, hired me. He then turned me loose to Morgison and Darin “Lumpy” Pearson (now the superintendent at Eagle Bend GC in Lawrence; Lumpy was featured in the December 2015 “19th Hole”).

Lumpy was fun loving and laid back. His nickname is “Lumpy” — of course he’s laid back. And Kent… well, Kent had no nickname that I knew of. I was a little scared of him. For that crew, if Lumpy was the friendly superintendent, Kent was the intimidating one. If I messed up and cut into a collar, I was hopeful it was Lumpy I’d see back at the shop and not Kent, because Kent would be pissed.

Unfortunately, I would typically catch Kent.

So fast forward 15 years to this spring. Regional magazine publisher Sunflower Publishing reaches out to me every now and then to see if I’m interested in writing something for them (they publish Kansas Magazine and Kansas Outdoors, but I was most excited when they asked me to write a story for Kansas Basketball magazine last summer — Rock Chalk!) On this occasion, they wanted a cover story on Topeka CC for their publication Topeka Magazine. I thought, hey, sounds like fun, and who knows — maybe there’s a Golfdom story out there too.

My Topeka Magazine story was mostly about the rich history of the course and the money they’re investing in the club to make it appealing to the younger generation (think pools and sports bars.) The story I found for Golfdom was more along the lines of a smooth transition from one superintendent to the next… something I just don’t hear about too often. I won’t give any details here, but it seemed like a good one to sandwich around the last (and best?) part of our series on labor, our 2017 U.S. Open recap, Dr. Koch’s annual snow mold research update and the other usual goodness you’ve come to expect from the team here at Golfdom.

I don’t know that I had seen Kent other than the occasional wave when I was out playing Alvamar in the last 15 years. I did call him to invite him to one of the first Golfdom Summits, and that’s when I learned he coaches high school basketball (I’m guessing Bobby Knight is his hero) and travel is impossible for him in the winter months when the team is active. We caught up briefly, and that was it.

It was great to finally really catch up with Morgison. He brought along Topeka CC head pro Cory Proehl, and the three of us teed it up. Morgison is still a stick. Is he still intimidating? Well, I still politely called him by his first name.

At least he’s lightened up enough that he waited until the third hole to mention to Cory how lousy I was at mowing greens.