At the turn of the last year, our Superintendent Radio Network featured a single podcast — a single excellent podcast in Tartan Talks, hosted so well by editor Guy Cipriano just about every month for almost four years now, but still just a single podcast.
At the turn of this new year — and the start of a new roaring ’20s — SRN features four podcasts, a new one almost every week, with focuses spread across this great game. The time seemed right to expand — I am a bit of a podcast evangelist who listens to … a lot of different podcasts — with more than half of all Americans having listened to a podcast and almost a quarter of us listening to something every week, according to the most recent edition of the annual Podcast Consumer report from Edison Research. (And did you know more than half of us have listened to a podcast while driving? The study didn’t differentiate between driving trucks, cars or, uh mowers, so we’re going to just assume mowers were considered.)
We hope you’ve already dived into some new episodes. In case you haven’t, here’s a quick primer on the roster:
Off the Course will open each month with one long conversation focused on anything on the life end of the ever-precarious life-work balance. Consider it an escape from the next task at hand. Our first episodes have featured TPC Deere Run’s Alex Stuedemann talking about his skin care regimen, Georgia Southern University’s Patrick Reinhardt sharing the story of his son’s ultra-rare kidney disorder and the support provided by the Wee One Foundation, and Panorama’s Steve Gilley going back to his decade-plus trying to crack the PGA Tour. We hope this podcast adds to the excellent industry conversation about health, both physical and mental, and that it highlights life.
Guy and I visit a lot of golf courses (somewhere between five and six dozen between the two of us just last year, most of them by Guy) and we never seem to have enough time to write about all of them, which is why we launched Greens with Envy. Part travelogue, part buddy comedy, Greens is our opportunity to share our road stories and recap the best about what we’ve seen and heard — and sometimes even played. We’ve already covered courses in Arizona, Canada, Colorado, the Carolinas and West Virginia, which isn’t even scratching the surface. There are so many more great courses we want to check out and talk about in 2020 and beyond.
Beyond the Page provides more context and more details about some of the stories included every month in the magazine — because sometimes even 3,000 or 4,000 words aren’t enough to really go as deep as needed. It won’t be an audio version of each issue but rather a complement to columns, cover stories and other features that we hope stick with you long after you shelve (or, teardrop, pitch) your GCIs. November cover subject Drew Miller joined us for the first episode to talk more about building a great high school turfgrass program, Judd Spicer has shared more Las Vegas stories, and columnists Matthew Wharton and Tim Moraghan have picked up the phone to go beyond the limitations of their single page.
And, of course, the SRN OG Tartan Talks is still running strong, wrapping up every month with a conversation with a member of the ASGCA. Guy’s passion for golf course architecture is evident in every episode, and we hope our passion for the game — and, more important, for you — is evident every episode of every podcast.
New episodes will drop at noon Tuesdays (and occasionally a little earlier) on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts — and, always, on golfcourseindustry.com (just click the Media tab). We’re also planning to produce other topical- and event-driven podcasts throughout the year. Our commitment to the printed page remains as strong as ever. The magazine remains our sun, the life-giving globe around which everything else revolves. Our podcasts are like little stars, so bright and unknown, and full of promise.
Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.
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