I first met Tyler McCool after I started at Mississippi
State in fall of 2011 when he was assigned to be my “Turf Buddy”, an idea
proposed by legendary professor Dr. Barry Stewart that paired new students with
upperclassmen to help introduce them to the turfgrass management world. I met
Stephen Miles while working the 2013 USGA Mid-Amateur Championship at the
Country Club of Birmingham, and later met Jeremy Stevens at the 2013
Mississippi Turfgrass Association social event in Starkville. As faith would have
it I ended up working under all of them during the summer and fall of 2015
while on my eight month internship at The Preserve Golf Club.
I interviewed with Stephen during the MTA Internship
Interview Extravaganza during November of 2014. A few weeks later a phone call
by Stephen let me know I was a wanted man. Getting the chance to work at The
Preserve put me in an elite group of MSU greats that include Alex Marshall,
Keair Edwards, and The Preserve’s own Tyler McCool. Living in the Biloxi area
for eight months was also a big selling point on my internship decision. I moved to the coast on May 16th and began work on May 18th.
My
Preserve experience got off to a rocky start when I forgot my Social Security
card to use as a form of identification to go with my pre-hire paperwork, and
also, due to a still unknown injury to my big toe, I was barely able to walk.
The week progressively got better as the swelling in my toe steadily decreased.
The first few weeks at The Preserve was a lot of grunt work: walk mowing
greens, raking bunkers, flymowing, buffalo blowing, and I’m pretty sure I
pushed a fertilizer spreader about 800 miles. As the summer went on I had the
opportunity to operate more and more equipment: tractors, triplex, fairway
mowers, etc. I found a strong interest in mowing the step-cut and back lawn
once or twice a week ;however, the older model triplex did not come with a cup
holder, so I had to make one with cardboard and duct tape. By the end of the
summer I had operated every piece of golf course maintenance equipment.
For a short time my internship settled into an uninteresting
weekly routine of mowing, spraying greens, and topdressing. Around the second
week of September we began preparing for a busy couple of weeks in October with
the coming of Golfweek writers, a golf course photographer, and the Deep South
Turf Expo golf outing. I was assigned to help re-sod a struggling tee-box known
to hold water and have shade issues when I suggested the idea of just
renovating it entirely. A small discussion by the people in charge later and we
began ripping up the old sod. I got to experience firsthand all the steps to
tee-box renovation, which was a great experience for me. In addition to this
project, I had the opportunity to do things like collect soil samples for
testing, aerification, fertilization, pesticide application, and irrigation
repair. There were also days where I was left in charge to make the schedule
and run the crew, which was a good management experience. I also became the
last Preserve intern to ever be tortured via Nemacure application. In addition,
I got hands-on experience working with the Precision Air system under our
greens.
Working at The Preserve was a hard but fun learning
experience. I believe having fun at work is the main component to work
satisfaction, even if having fun is just joking about the idiotic things your
coworkers do or say. I can honestly say that the crew members at The Preserve
are the absolute best crew I have ever worked with. Not only was I able to
learn under the direction of Tyler, Jeremy, and Stephen, but I learned valuable
lessons from easygoing spray tech and set-up expert Keith, hole digging and sod
laying specialist Enano, the top rated hoseman in the nation Pipi, and even
more from the rest of the crew.
Now that my internship is over I will return to Starkville
to work on my Master's degree in Turf Management. I look forward to keeping in
touch with my former coworkers, and I want to thank Stephen, Jeremy, and Tyler
for giving me the opportunity to complete my internship at The Preserve.
Written by Ethan Flournoy
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