Charles Schaeffer, 42-year GCSAA member, holds a snap valve irrigation piece at the GCSAA Centennial Experience on the GCSAA Trade Show Floor. Photos by Phil Cauthon
Some 20,000 people may have been on the GCSAA Trade Show floor on its first day today, and a good many were captivated by the GCSAA Centennial Experience. It is an expansive wraparound timeline of 100 years of GCSAA’s milestones and highlights, including — in the center of it all — dozens of what are now decades-old relics from its members’ storied past.
Palmer Maples Jr., CGCS Retired and 1975 past president, was among those soaking it all in. “This display, it’s just magnificent. Just magnificent. Because I’ve used a lot of this equipment,” said Maples, a 66-year GCSAA member who started his career as a superintendent in 1959 at Charlotte (N.C.) Country Club. “Like that divot replacer there, that’s shaped kinda like, well, just like the divot is. It’s all magnificent. The old Toro mowers, the old Jake greens mowers. That’s one of those I learned when we changed to the grass greens from the sand greens.”
The Centennial Experience sent him down a memory lane of when his dad planted grass greens in 1943 at Benvenue (N.C.) Country Club and when he was called up in 1959 to plant grass greens and be the superintendent at Charlotte (N.C.) Country Club.
“I was there 12 years and then got the call to go to Standard Club in Atlanta in 1970, and that’s the year I was elected to the Board,” Maples said. “So seven years I was on the Board from ’70 to the end of ’76. I went as a Board member to the 50th anniversary. And for the 75th I was on a plane in Atlanta. The plane was loaded and getting ready to take off. And then the pilot came out and said ‘Folks, we’ve had a little trouble in the country. And all planes are grounded. That was 9/11. We didn’t get to come to gather for the 75th. But to be here for the 100th celebration — I’ve got 65 years’ worth I can talk about.”
Randy Nichols, CGCS retired, with a Toro triplex mower.
At 78 years old, Randy Nichols, CGCS Retired, says the Centennial Experience has a lot of the equipment he came up using. “In 1967, I went to work at Memphis Country Club for a guy who had been the superintendent there for 50 years. So there was a lot of history. He told me a lot of things that went on in the early, early days. The old maintenance building was a horse barn. And they had horses there to pull the fairway units. They had aluminum shoes that would leave indentations in the fairways,” he said.
“But I never used anything like that. But things in here, yes. Like that right there (a vintage Toro triplex mower) a newer model than that but very similar. Some of the handtools and that computer over there (a model from the 80s), I bought one in about 1985,” said Nichols, a 50-year GCSAA member who also attended the 50th anniversary celebration.
“I was around when they came out with the first riding greens mower. They didn’t know how to operate them, how to cut straight lines. They were cutting around in a circle. Kinda funny,” Nichols said.
“What amazes me is all the autonomous stuff. Labor is getting harder and harder to find. This younger generation doesn’t want to get their hands dirty and they don’t want to sweat and they want to make $100,000 a year. I still have a lot of friends in the industry and they say they’ll hire somebody for $15 an hour and they won’t even show up the next day. They don’t know what work is. I grew up in a time where people were still plowing with mules — that was work.”
Charles Schaeffer is technically retired from Riveria Country Club in Ormond Beach, Fla., where he started in 1962 and became the superintendent in 1970. But the 42-year GCSAA member says he keeps working just for something to do.
“I’ve used some of this stuff,” he said with a laugh. “Some of the old greens mowers and aerifiers and irrigation stuff I’ve used back in those days, the 70s.”
As he picked up a snap valve sprinkler irrigation unit, he recalled all the long nights he changed them in and out.
“I’ve changed hundreds and hundreds of these. It was one of my nightly jobs,” Schaeffer said. “Plug these in and water the fairways. Come back 30 minutes later and move it someplace else. You get eight or 10 of them going at one time. It’s all you did all night, riding around screwing them in and unscrewing them,” he said with a laugh. “I’d start at around 6:00 or 7 and it was maybe 11 or 12:00 before you’d get done. Same thing on the edges of the greens, every time you needed to water. It was fun back in those days. I had a good time doing it.”
GCSAA past presidents (From L to R): Palmer Maples Jr., CGCS Retired (1975), Sean Hoolehan, CGCS, (2006) and Pat Finlen, CGCS (2013).
Schaeffer said it was a lot of work compared to now, but “Of course now you’ve got a lot more problems, electronics that go bad, the internal parts of the heads need much more work on them. With these snap valves, there’s nothing to go wrong.”
He said he’s worked all over — Panama, the Caribbean, Virgin Islands, Saudi Arabia, Chicago, Charleston, S.C. — but came back to the Riveria. “It’s been an interesting journey. I’m retired now but I do irrigation repairs and stuff like that. I was superintendent for 35 years, so I just kind of hung on. They needed the help.”
Schaeffer said it’s been interesting to revisit all the changes through the years in the Centennial Experience, and it reminds him of his own course. “They were privately owned, bought in in 1953, and charging $50 a year for memberships. I don’t know what it is now but it’s a little bit more than that. And they went from doing maybe 15,000 rounds to I think they did 57,000 this year. Just seeing those changes, it’s something else.”
Phil Cauthon is GCM’s managing editor