Staff Outing

Typically, every winter I take our full-time staff on a winter excursion of one type or another.  Last year we toured the Twins Target Field, we've also visited Turfco Manufacturing in Blaine, Toro's Corporate headquarters in Bloomington and have also gone bowling or found other types of fun activities we can do as a group.  It's a nice way to incorporate an activity to our winter chores and take a break as a group, sometimes to learn more about a company in our industry and sometimes just to go and have some fun as a team.

Joseph Garske, Founder of Par Aide

This year we finally made our way north to Lino Lakes to visit Par Aide Products, Inc. The owner of Par Aide, Steve Garske along with Dan Brown, Scott Melling and Mike Hillard were gracious hosts.  Par Aide has a long history in the golf industry and you would be hard pressed not to find a Par Aide product on just about every golf course in the world.  Steve spent the first hour of our excursion explaining the history of Par Aide and how their business has evolved throughout the years and then gave us an in depth tour of the manufacturing plant.  Par Aide was started by his late father, Joseph Garske in the 1950's and has been a leader in the industry ever since.

Steve Garske showing us a raw cast version of the ballwashers

A traditional red Par Aid Ballwasher

Assembling ballwashers by hand.

Applying a powder coat of red paint to flagsticks

The majority of all products manufactured by Par Aide is done so right there in their 35,000sqft facility with only a staff of 30 full-time employees.  Not a very big facility for a company that has such a global influence in the game of golf.  Following our tour we were able to enjoy a nice lunch together.  Since Steve is a big race car fanatic and our Mechanic Ken Diethert drag races on the weekends, they really enjoyed the company of each other exchanging race talk for the duration of the lunch.  I have to believe this was the highlight for both of these guys :)

Thanks to Steve Garske and the guys at Par Aide for taking the time to show us their facilities.  It sure is wonderful having all of these major manufactures in the golf industry right in our back door.

No Need to Panic, It's still Winter

Typically throughout the winter I make no attempt to scout the golf course, my rule is as long as there's snow cover and it's frozen there is nothing we can do to change what Mother Nature has in store for us anyways. Last week many of us in the golf industry attended the Golf Industry Show in Orlando, Florida and for me that's my indicator as to when we need to get on the course and check it out. Since the 10th of November the golf course has been covered in snow. A lot of snow. We are at twice our annual snow accumulation for this time of year.

So with the forecast this week predicting above normal temperatures, I thought it would be wise to scout the golf course and see where things are at. But I really don't have much to report, and we should all look at that as a good thing. Snow depths are anywhere from 12-24" and over 95% of the course is covered in snow. That's a lot of snow to melt in the next 6 weeks and guaranteed we will have more snow before we see green blades of grass.

So if you're a snowbird or have vacation plans scheduled, stick to your plan, it's going to be a while before we even begin to consider when we might be open for play.