Technology designed to connect with most common sprayers.
SiteOne Landscape Supply has launched the new LESCO Smart Guided precision spray system. This new system features an easy-to-install GPS that maximizes labor efficiency, minimizes application error and optimizes chemical budgets.
The LESCO Smart Guided system is designed to connect with most common sprayers.
1. TerraStar GPS satellite technology that allows the system to spray within a 2-inch level of accuracy so there are no missed areas, overspray or overlap.
2. Precise control of each separate nozzle to reduce overspray. If a nozzle is outside the defined application boundary, it will automatically turn off.
3. Tracking of when and where certain products are sprayed to simplify documentation and record keeping. This feature also allows the system to remember and repeat boundaries after they have been driven once and saved.
LESCO Smart Guided systems are available now at SiteOne locations.
Deceased architect George Cobb also to be enshrined with the 2019 class.
The Carolinas Golf Association has announced three selections for the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2019. Honorees include Pinehurst Resort director of golf course maintenance Bob Farren, deceased architect George Cobb and past USGA President Jim Hyler.
The Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame Award Ceremony will be held in 2019 at a date TBA.
A native of West Virginia, Farren earned a degree from Marshal University in 1979 in recreating and tourism. He worked his way up the ranks as superintendent Kanawha County Park and Berry Hills CC in Charleston W.Va., and Pinehurst CC in the Village of Pinehurst, N.C. He has been director of golf course maintenance at Pinehurst Resort since 2001. He has been involved in 14 USGA Championships, including three United States Open Championships. He was honored with the President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship from the GCSAA in 2007 and Golf Digest magazine’s Green Star Award for outstanding environmental practices in 2014.
Born in Savannah, Ga. in 1914, Cobb attending Savanah Public Schools before graduating in 1936 from one of the first classes of the University of Georgia’s landscape architecture. He also played on the university’s golf team. In WWII, he was a marine engineering officer at Camp Lejeune. With his love of golf and background in landscaping, Cobb was assigned the task of constructing a golf course to help aid the rehabilitation of physically injured GIs. The result was two golf courses: Paradise Point in Camp Lejeune, N.C., and the Marine Air Corp Station in Cherry Point, N.C. Cobb’s shortest course might be his most famous – the par-3 course at Augusta National Golf Club. He was later recalled to active duty in the Korean War. Cobb designed or co-designed over 115 golf courses, including East Lake Golf Club (Atlanta, Ga), Bald Head Island Club (Southport, N.C.), Linville Ridge (N.C.) CC, Surf Club (Myrtle Beach, S.C. and Quail Hollow Club (Charlotte, N.C.).
Hyler was involved in corporate banking much of his life. It was not until the 1999 U.S. Open that Hyler began showing his wares as a true champion for golf. With unsureness of the first U.S. Open event on Pinehurst No. 2, Hyler helped create the President Council and he served as the point man. A retired banking executive, Hyler is a 1970 graduate of Virginia Tech. He was also instrumental in launching a new chapter of The First Tee in Raleigh, N.C. He was a member of the USGA Executive Committee from 2004-11, including USGA President from 2010-11.
Atlanta’s Bobby Jones Golf Course receives a multi-directional reboot. Will it be a grand slam model for public golf?
Clutching a set of sketches and routing plans on a sweltering late-September afternoon, Bobby Cupp stops on a hillside overlooking the 6th green of the Azalea nine at Bobby Jones Golf Course. Cupp begins describing the green and the flow of the hole while general manager Brian Conley gazes at a hillside adjacent to the fairway.
After Cupp finishes speaking, Conley directs a visitor to the hillside, which offers a glance at Atlanta’s gleaming, expansive and expanding skyline.
Cupp rolls up the sketches. “I never thought of that,” he says.
Those responsible for one of the nation’s biggest urban golf transformations learn something each time they tour the 128-acre site, which debuts a reversible 9-hole course this month to residents accustomed to a dearth of selfie-worthy public golf courses.
The Atlanta metro area, hometown of Jones, winner of the 1930 grand slam, supported just one 18-hole public course per 64,754 residents in 2016, which ranked 314th out of 345 cities the National Golf Foundation examined for its 2017 “Golf Facilities in the U.S.” report. The option of hopping in a car, bus or train, traveling 15 minutes and playing a two-hour nine or blasting a bucket of balls doesn’t exist for thousands living near Atlanta’s urban core.
Once a stagnant city-owned, 18-hole facility opened in 1932 and operated by a management company, the Bobby Jones GC marks the first urban reversible layout opened in the United States during the current construction wave. High-end resorts in remote parts of Michigan and Oregon have also introduced reversible courses.
A reversible course stretching from 3,164 to 7,313 yards utilizing the versatile Longleaf Tee System when played as 18 holes represents only part of the Bobby Jones GC transformation. Changes also include the addition of a practice range and 6-hole Cupp Links with holes ranging from 50 to 70 yards. The short course is named after Bobby’s father, Bob Cupp, a legendary architect who died in August 2016.
The conglomeration of influential Atlantans, including Robert Tyre Jones IV, the grandson of Bobby Jones, comprising the Foundation raised more than $23 million for the project. Each hole has a naming sponsor who contributed $150,000 to the effort. A breakthrough occurred in November 2016 when the state completed a swap of underground parking lots it owned for the golf course. The state then granted the Foundation permission to lease the course. Plans include the construction of the 23,000-square foot Murray Golf House, which will serve as the headquarters for the Georgia State Golf Association, Georgia Section of the PGA of America and Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. The Murray Golf House is scheduled to be completed in 2019, the same year superintendent Kyle Macdonald and team are expected to receive a new maintenance facility. The course will also serve as the home of the Georgia State University men’s and women’s golf teams.
A mutual friend, former USGA executive committee member Gene McClure, introduced Elgison to the elder Cupp in 2012. Elgison, the Jones family attorney, made resuscitating the Bobby Jones GC a personal endeavor following his retirement in 2011. Cupp and Elgison developed an instant connection, with Cupp offering his services for free.
A landlocked site – Atlanta’s trendy Buckhead neighborhoods border the property on all four sides – prevented Cupp from designing a course approaching 6,000 yards. Elgison says an 18-hole course lacking significant yardage without a practice range would fail to attract significant donor support.
After completing an 18-hole, 5,400-yard routing without a range, Cupp started working on a 9-hole plan with a range. The plan changed in 2013 when Cupp started pondering the Old Course at St. Andrews, which has a reversible history. Six months later, Cupp presented Elgison with a reversible plan for Bobby Jones Golf Course. Bobby says his father spoke numerous times with fellow architect Tom Doak, whose reversible layout, “The Loop,” opened at Michigan’s Forest Dunes Resort in 2016.
Construction commenced in November 2017, with Wadsworth Golf Construction, one of the project’s founding sponsors, turning the reversible plans into a physical reality. The course will utilize just two heights of cut for its TifEagle greens and TifTuf hitting surfaces, Macdonald says. The Bobby Jones GC is an early adopter of TifTuf, a bermudagrass variety developed and tested by the University of Georgia’s Dr. Wayne Hanna and Dr. Brian Schwartz.
Rates have yet to be finalized, but officials and employees envision a diverse customer base enjoying the course, range and Cupp Links. Selfies will come at no extra cost.
Guy Cipriano is GCI’s senior editor.