Golfdom, February 2015

summit Continued from page 40 America has more up and comers Is Jordan Spieth the real deal Best chipper on Tour Is Phil Mickelson a good dude or a bad egg A good egg but if youre having lunch with him at Five Guys it might be a good idea to get your own order of french fries G Joel s Jour ney s BY JOEL JACKSON new ideas Rattigans plan to keep golf on dry ice Call it the global warming of golf if you want Golfs economic meltdown has raised the heat on golf course owners to make a profit Jim Rattigan former general manager and superintendent of the Schuylkill CC in Orwigsburg Pa see page 9 and winner of the 2014 Herb Graffis Businessperson of the Year Award took the podium to challenge all of us about what we know about the game of golf Rattigan compared the golf industry to a melting iceberg referencing the book Our Iceberg is Melting Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions written by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber Rather than issue platitudes about growing the game Rattigan is trying new things to get more golfers and families to the course and hopefully slow that iceberg down a little This might make you a little uncomfortable but I need you to go inside yourself and find that place with everything you know about golf and let it go Rattigan opened raising a few heads Find yourself open to new opportunities for at least a couple minutes He then talked about a game he created called Chesterfield Golf which includes a few variations on the rules of golf as well as the installation of both regulation sized cups and 8 inch inch cups on every green This is an attempt to serve serious and beginning golfers as well as family golf outings Using a larger putting cup size isnt revolutionary but it addresses two of the three biggest complaints about golf amoung the Millennial Generation difficulty of the game and the time it takes to play I have no fear that the wonderful historic traditions of the game of golf will endure on those idyllic bastions of golf history which are on display during major golf championships Rather it behooves the rest of the golf world to encourage more participation but daring to offer alternatives to the old ways Joel Jackson CGCS Ret is senior contributing editor for Golfdom Thank you 2014 SummiT SponSorS air o Lator Corp BaSF Cushman FmC professional Solutions healthy Grow holganix Jacobsen oregon Cordless Tools Quali pro Smithco Soil Technologies Turfco underhill international 42 Golfdom February 2015 Golfdom com