New Assistant

I am pleased to announce that Woodside has a new Assistant Superintendent and his name is Brent Lees. Brent has been on the grounds crew at Woodside since 2008 and has recently completed his second year in the turfgrass management program at olds College. Brent will be continuing his studies in the fall as he pursues a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in turfgrass management. Since day one Brent has been a positive influence here and does a tremendous job each and every day. I do know that he has a very bright future ahead of him in the golf course industry.

Great Blue Heron

10 Years

It's hard to believe that it was 10+ years ago when John MacKeeman took over as the golf course mechanic (or Turf Technician as he prefers) at Woodside. But I suppose that time flies when you are having fun. John really has been a tremendous asset to Woodside, he is extremely motivated and a jack of all trades. He does an excellent job keeping the equipment in tip-top condition and always helps out on the course when needed. There is no job too big or too small for John and I know that he will enjoy his new Ridgid cordless drill. Thanks John!

Spring fertilization

It's hard to believe that we had a foot of snow on the course just 3 weeks ago. Since then we have started the irrigation system up and have done just three repairs and today I fertilized the greens with a 12-3-12 analysis with an ammonium sulphate nitrogen which has some acidifying properties as our soil is slightly alkaline and a neutral pH is preferred. This fertlizer can cause some leaf burn so it was watered in with a good irrigation cycle. If you are fertilizing at home, any balanced analysis will do fine and some people like a higher phosphorus (middle number) analysis in the spring to help with root development.

Finally

Finally we have had a decent run of weather and we have been working diligently on some cultural practices to help the turf recover from winter. Here you see Dale Deyo running the vertical mowers over the fairways to remove last season's growth and allow the new grass to start growing. This is Dale's second season on the grounds crew. "I was born in Kingston Ontario on May 28 1944 and lived there for 36 years where I met my first wife and had three children two of our own and one adopted. I worked for the Board of Education as a janitor for eight years and then grounds maintenance for four years. I came to High River in 1986 to work for the Town of High River for twenty three years. My first wife left me to return to Ontario, I married Wendy my present wife in 1994. I retired in 2009 and moved to Airdrie and I am at present working for Woodside Golf Course in grounds maintenance, seasonal and part time. I enjoy working here." Dale really does an excellent job at Woodside and is a real asset to the grounds crew here.

St Andrews golf club on brink of admitting female members

St Andrews Golf Club has warned members that it could face prosecution under equality laws for failing to allow women to join.


Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 April 2011 19.17 BST
Article history



One of the largest men-only golf clubs in St Andrews, the spiritual home of golf, is on the brink of allowing women to become full members, abandoning one of the sport's most contentious traditions.

The committee at the St Andrews Golf Club, which is run from a handsome Victorian mansion overlooking the greens and fairways of the fabled Old Course, has written to its 2,000 male members recommending that it admit women to the club. The club, founded in 1843, has warned its members that under the new Equality Act, the club could face prosecution for failing to allow women to join. Keeping the ban would be a "retrograde step" as it would mean women would also have to be barred from its clubhouse as guests.

Its past club captains and trustees had decided that allowing all members, regardless of their gender, to have full access to all its bars and facilities would be "the best way, in their opinion, of safeguarding the long-term wellbeing of St Andrews Golf Club", the members were told.

The proposal was welcomed by women's rights campaigners, who have repeatedly called on the major clubs such as the Royal and Ancient (the R&A), which is the sport's most prestigious and influential club and sets the game's rules, to admit women members.

Agnes Tolmie, chair of the Scottish Women's Convention, said: "This is an absolutely fantastic initiative. We shouldn't have any area of the sporting world where women are excluded. It will send out a message in the area, particularly to the R&A, that it's time they thought again."

The R&A, which has 2,500 members around the world, has resisted calls to admit women as full members.

It provoked criticism from Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, and the Labour party when it refused to extend honorary membership to the latest principal of St Andrew's University, Dr Louise Richardson, because she was a woman, in 2009.

But the main women's golfing organisations were much less enthusiastic. Shona Malcolm, chief executive officer of the Ladies Golf Union, which has 3,000 affiliated women-only clubs, said: "We have absolutely no problem with single-gender clubs at all. We're very supportive of single-gender clubs: what it does is allow golfers the freedom to choose what kind of club they want to join."

Sheila Hartley, company secretary of the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association, which has 442 affiliated women-only clubs, said many female golfers had experienced more unfairness and sexism when their previously male-only clubs admitted women as full members.

Hartley said she was comfortable with single-sex clubs: "It appears to be only an issue to the public when it's male-only clubs. There are female-only clubs and that doesn't appear to be an issue."

• This article was amended on 29 April 2011. The original showed a photograph of the Royal & Ancient, not St Andrew's golf club as captioned.

The gloves are coming off and so are the covers.

In between snowstorms we were able to get the remaining patches of ice off the greens as well as the permeable greens covers. In the picture you can see, from left to right, Don, Terry and Dale rolling up the cover for 10 green. John is out of the picture, probably petting Cheeta the cat and I am of course supervising and taking pictures. In the background is the green with some healthy-looking Penneagle creeping bentgrass. A little birdie tells me that someone is going out on the course today to see if it's ready to open....